JPKComics.com

Terry Moore interview

June 8, 2007 | Interviews

Strangers In Paradise creator Terry Moore.

This week marked the end of an era in comics as a group of characters that many readers discovered as strangers for the first time 14 years ago departed as friends.
The final issue of Terry Moore’s Strangers In Paradise, a highly acclaimed independent comic book centring around the day-to-day (and often offbeat) lives of two women — Francine and Katchoo — arrived in stores on Wednesday, much to the delight of its creator.
“It really feels terrific,” Moore said in a telephone interview from his Houston home yesterday. “It’s the completion of a dream for me.”
Moore said the stretch run to completing this long-running story wasn’t without stress.
“It’s been 14 years and I have to admit for about the last year I was just hoping I wouldn’t get hit by a bus,” he joked. “I just wanted to finish it.”
The monthly book had been building toward a natural conclusion for a while, said Moore, a guest of honour at this weekend’s Paradise Toronto Comicon at the Direct Energy Centre, Exhibition Place (www.torontocomicon.com).
“I always had in mind to end it when Katchoo and Francine got to a certain point in their lives,” said the 52-year-old creator. “After a long, and kind of wandering middle, the story did reach the point where it needed to end.”
Now that this milestone issue is released, Moore admits he’s looking forward to the same thing many of his fans are.
“When I get home from all this touring, I’m just going to sit down and read the series from beginning to end and to just try to enjoy it as a reader,” he said. “I haven’t done that in quite a while.”
And don’t look for Moore to rest on his laurels.
He said he’s going to write a couple mainstream books that have not been announced yet and he also has a few more original creations to share.
“I do have a backlog of characters and stories here waiting to go,” Moore said. “I just got kind of fixated on the Strangers In Paradise cast.
“It’s kind of like writing a play and it becomes a hit and you’re stuck performing it for a long time. I’ve had a lot of plays backing up in the studio and I’m looking forward to getting them out.”