Strangers in Paradise

Title: Strangers in Paradise
Creator: Terry Moore
Published: From 1993 to 2007
Genre: Thriller, romance, drama, etc.
Pages: Very many. Try around 2000?


Okay, so I checked: the first Strangers in Paradise album was published in Finnish back in 1997. The only SiP album to be published in Finnish. I remember pestering the poor people at the bookshop about the second part a couple of times a month for the next year or two. Anyway, the point is that it took me this long to get to read the rest of the story.

And boy, there was a lot of it! Let's see, three issues of the first 'version', 13 of the second (first nine were the translated ones), and 90 of the third.

"Well, well... Miss Choovanski... what a long, strange trip it's been, huh?"

"Four years and you couldn't come up with anything more original than that?"

The base of the story is your usual group of 20-something friends, and how their lives go up and down. At the center of the stage is Katina 'Katchoo' Choovanski, a young recovering alcoholic artist who has a dark and complicated past. She loves her best friend Francine, who is looking for her knight in shining armour. Freddie the comic relief also finds that he loves his ex Francine as he marries Casey, and David the romantic artist loves Katchoo.

But besides that there's a mob family or two in the picture, violent women, FBI, sex scandals, politics and stripping in the park in broad daylight. Also, like G'Kar says in Babylon 5: "No one there is exactly what he seems." This is also one of the themes in SiP: the masks people wear, and what they are beneath, and what happens when those masks are revealed or taken away.

The relationship between Katchoo and Francine leads the show, but the rest of the cast also gets a lot of attention. This is a good thing, as they're quite an interesting bunch. When the 'I-love-you-I-want-a-man-and-babies-why-aren't-I-enough-I'm-leaving-no-I'm-leaving!-plus-a-lot-of-misunderstandings' on and off thing that is Katchoo and Francine makes the reader want to bang their head against a wall, the other characters are there to make you laugh or cry or both. And ohhhh boy but they do take their sweet time figuring out what they want. Well, Francine does. Then Katchoo gets stubborn and I headdesk again.

So do some of the rest of the cast as well.

A lot of women, even those who claim that they don't read comics, like Strangers in Paradise as it has a lot of strong woman characters. I have to agree with that, and it's one of my favourite things about it as well. Strong and real women, as well as unreal. I have so much love for Tambi right now, and even though her role was very small, Cherry Hammer, ooh la laa! I'll even dig Elvis for you!

*cough*

The art! I love Mr. Moore's art! It's realistic but still cartoony, especially during the funny bits. There are a few coloured issues in between, but luckily most of the long run is in black and white, showing off Terry's wonderful handling of black ink. He self-published most of SiP, with a short time under a publishing house before returning to self-publishing, to be able to be in full control of the story and art. Maybe an outside editor would have told him to bang Katchoo's and Francine's heads together at some point, but sometimes the characters just run away on their own. That's pretty much my only beef with the comic, which you, possible reader, might have gathered already.

Even with that, I'm really glad I finally got the opportunity to read the whole story (well... I didn't read the two Molly and Poo -issues completely. Yet. But there was, like, soooo much text and hardly any pictures! *cough again*), to catch up, laugh and cry with characters who I've been wondering about for some 13 years already. It was a long, strange trip, and I'm happy to have been a part of it, even only as a reader.


"And we're going to have babies and raise a family and grow old together and I'm going to make you so happy you'll be shittin' sunshine! Got it?!"

...

"You had me at shittin' sunshine."