Strangers in Paradise (Vol 3) by Terry Moore

Terry Moore certainly has a talent for writing soap opera-type plots. I wouldn’t call this volume a thriller, but it had elements. It also had a lot of heart, which is really what makes Strangers in Paradise the great series that it is. You care for Francine. You care for Katchoo. You care if they ever get together. You also end up caring for David and some of minor characters who start to shine like Casey. But let’s face it, no one is ever going to like Fred.

Moore does a great set-up of telling the reader he’s going to recount the tale of how Katchoo lost Francine and why the inseparable duo hadn’t seen each other in 10 years. But, of course, the reader sees their old dynamic coming back. Just how easily Katchoo slips into Francine’s life by making breakfast for Francine’s daughter Ashely and her mother Marie. When Katchoo tells Francine, she has a beautiful home and life, Francine starts to cry. And there Katchoo promises Francine she’ll never leave her again.

The story starts off with Moore doing a big fake-out of why Francine leaves. Katchoo gets an art deal and paints her muse, Francine, for the exhibit. Francine flips out because not only does she look beautiful — Francine’s known to struggle with body dysmorphia and low self-esteem — but Francine sees how much Katchoo loves her in the paintings. They fight; and Katchoo agrees not to show her masterpieces.

But this being a soap opera, the pieces get shown away. They’re a hit. Which makes Katchoo find her friend the bottle to deal with her conflicted feelings and we hear Francine screaming as she arrives at the gallery to find the pictures of her on display. Katchoo immediately has them taken down. But Francine leaves to go live with her mother in Tennessee. There’s a lot of crying.

Moore brilliantly adds Casey and Freddie to the exhibit’s viewers to help with the comedy-relief. Freddie’s always a slime-ball and obsessed with Francine, despite being married to the bubbly, but unhappy with her husband, Casey.

In fact, if there’s one character who really blossoms here, it’s Casey. Casey, who latter shows up to tell Katchoo that Freddie managed to buy/bribe a painting of Francine, clearly wants a new life and she looks at both Francine and Katchoo for inspiration. So much so, she tries to seduce David. Katchoo pulls her off. Which just causes Casey to ask Katchoo to turn her gay she too can be like Francine and leave Freddie. While Casey’s there, David gets a call that Darcy — his dead sister and a mobster — estate’s been settle and she left him 1.4 billion dollars. And as Katchoo decides David is the one, instead of the ever-rejecting-her Francine, she takes the new billionaire to bed. And in pops Casey.

Francine takes the opportunity to come home… See soap opera.

The big arch starts here as Katchoo and David head to NYC to sign papers. Their plane crashes. David’s badly hurt body’s pulled from the wreck, and Katchoo comes out with less bumps. However, Tambi shows up saying Veronica, one of the former Parker Girls, wants to take over the operation Darcy left behind. Tambi tells Katchoo that working together they can take down both Veronica and the Six (head mobsters who control the Strangers in Paradise world). But Katchoo must leave behind Francine and David.

Like only Katchoo can do, she tells Francine off. She tells her to leave her alone, and Francine walks away. Away with an injury so she can meet Brad Silver, her doctor and future husband.

Another character who really grows is Francine’s mother, Marie Peters. In the past books, Marie tries to play the good mom, trying to get her daughter away from what she sees as Katchoo’s bad influence (lesbianism) and wants her daughter to be happy in the heterosexual romance department. Here Marie may still not like Katchoo, but she begins to see the value in her daughter’s relationship with Katchoo, in whatever form it happens to take. She also becomes an adopted mother to David, and with Francine, she care-takes for him as he recovers. She opens her home to both Francine and David for as long as they need and whenever they need.

Here we see Katchoo transform into Darcy. Or perhaps the woman Darcy attempted to sculpt. Even Tambi looses her cool with her sister, who’s drinking and doing more drugs than paying attention to their business. But Tambi realizes that her heart is broken.

Once he’s healed, David goes after Katchoo like the puppy he is. Or perhaps the person he is and the person Francine isn’t as she wants Katchoo to run after her and is currently happy with Brad, who’s there. It’s worth noting that Francine has lost all the weight she always wanted to lose and has snagged a finance. She’s become the woman she’s always wanted to be. But there’s a clear Katchoo-shaped hole in her life. We also have a split-second appearance from Casey, just in case you forgot she existed. She still wants David, or more likely his money.

In the end, our girls are never quite reunited. Their reunion is fraught with mob plots and kidnapping. In fact, Katchoo literally has to muscle her way to Francine. But then, once again, things are too little, too late. Francine is marrying Brad, and so David goes off with Katchoo, who’s left Tambi with their business.

Oh, the on-going soap opera. I have to hand it to Moore, I haven’t been able to put it down once I’ve started reading. He’s definitely going to hold apart both Francine and Katchoo for as long as possible, as they’re the main source of dramatic tension in Strangers in Paradise.

Starman Omnibus Vol 1. by James Robinson, Strangers in Paradise Pocketbook Vol 2 by Terry Moore, and Hulk: Raging Thunder by Jeff Parker

Starman Omnibus Vol 1. by James Robinson

I feel like I should almost apologize for not liking this as much as I think I should’ve. Or as much as much as the guys around me — Steve, who loaned it to me, and Jason — did. I think Starman is well-written, interesting, and entertaining. It just doesn’t capture me the way it did the guys. (Steve was talking about cosplaying as Jack.)

Jack’s a little Marty-Emo-Stu who is an individual for me. Too cool for school. I feel there is a place where he and Nick Hornby’s Rob Fleming hang out together and re-organize their vinyls while listening to sad bastard music like Snow Patrol. Then meet Michael Cunningham’s Will Stassos for coffee. Until Jack has to go fight some crime, that is.

While at the same time, I’ve never wanted to mail a “famous” person anything more than I want to mail James Robinson the View-Master slides from my childhood.

Strangers in Paradise Pocketbook Vol 2 by Terry Moore

Ahh, beach reading. Which is how I’m looking at this series from now on, ever since the crime syndicate element was introduced.

While I think setting the narrative structured around a flash-forward to an older and sadder Francine without Katchoo is interesting, I don’t think Moore pulls it off gracefully. Even though I read most of this in two settings, I still found it a little jarring.

Though I did appreciate the Xena fun at the end.

Hulk: Raging Thunder by Jeff Parker

I couldn’t figure out if Parker was trying to say that even with cloning technology, women can’t live without men. Or if he was saying, that we can build better societies together and even Thundra’s people know this.

Mostly, I read this because it’s the origins of Lyra, Thundra and Hulk’s child. (And Jason would like to note that he found it in a 25 cent bin for me.) Lyra, the only child born “naturally” (or of female and male DNA) on Thundra’s version of Earth in centuries.

I also think it’s interesting to re-visit Thundra’s world and how today’s writers are dealing with it as it was written in a very specific gender-wars of the ’70s context. And this being comics, very literal war of the genders.

Strangers in Paradise always appears on those lists. You know, the ones by pretentious male comic book readers making recommendations of books your girlfriend might like. It always starts off with “Well, have you tried getting her to read Strangers in Paradise?” Author Terry Moore is also know as a women-friendly writer of “girl” books and usually another title he’s worked on appears on the list as well.

I’m really uncomfortable with the classification and pigeonholing of Strangers in Paradise and another “girl” books in the “girl” book category. I can’t help but wonder, what’s a “girl” book? And what does a “girl” book that non-girl books don’t have? Does that make other books “guy” books? Or does it just lead to theothering of women? (Not to mention the implied othering of racial and sexual minorities with the baseline normalizing of the white, straight fanboy as the sole comic audience.)

Hazards of the job make me tolerate marketing calling it a “girl” book. They make me okay with Target’s “Chick Lit” and the goings on about “Chick Flicks” starring Hugh Grant or Patrick Dempsy. That’s marketing, that’s companies wanting to make as much money as possible. That’s a publishing company making sure that it’s on the shelf of Barnes & Nobles and Borders as they know women are more likely to shop for comics there than the local comic book shops. This is the same marketing that also wants me to buy new, improved toilet bowl cleaners and yogurt. A lot of yogurt. Yum. Yum.

But the corporations are probably not controlling the fanboy who decides to write the “girl” book post after his begging of his girlfriend to go to the comic store every week or having to justify how he just spend over $100 on that really cool statue of She-Hulk on e-Bay. If she picks up comics than it’ll be what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Then they can have romantic weekends debating who would win Batman or Wolverine over burgers after sitting through two different convention panels which a guy on them did a “that’s what she said” joke.

My suggestion for fanboys is to find the woman who already reads comics. Who can tell you what issue of the New Avengers the entire team gets strung up naked in the Savage Land and how Batman could’ve totally not mended his broken back by working out really hard. Trust me, they exist. This is what my boyfriend did. Now when he goes shopping on e-Bay for those Alpha Flight comics, he also shows up with a box containing a She-Hulk bust and my lecture about saving money to buy a house doesn’t include sending the bust or the comics back. And if she’s not interested, I’m sure you can show her interest in her hobbies or the same respect as you expect her to show to yours.

And these books, like Strangers in Paradise, that I keep getting told are “girl” books, I’m going to classify as people books. People want solid stories about interesting, three-dimensional characters of all ages, genders, races, sexualities, abilities, etc. They want art that resembles what people, aliens, and creatures might really look like if you encountered them on the street. They want stories and art that are innovative and unique. Get that baseline and then we can start talking about targeted marketing.

I don’t see how a boy wouldn’t want to read Strangers in Paradise with it’s varied cast, thriller-plot, solid characterization, and good art. There’s even guns and violence in this “girl” book. The fanboy and his girlfriend should be reading it together. I think often times it’s not a “girl” issue preventing a newbie so much as a DC/Marvel have been in the comics business since the 1930s and it can be very overwhelming to try to figure out the back stories, not to mention expensive when you can’t get trades, for the person who’s trying to get into comics. No one has time to read all the Batman comics only to find out that Ace the Bat Hound and Bat-Mite aren’t regulars anymore. It’s much easier to pick up the first trade volume of a book like Strangers in Paradise and start there.

Besides, you can always get into the argument: Who would win Batman or Katchoo?

My money’s on Katchoo.