Spotlight on Fandom: Strangers In Paradise

[thatsamilkshake]

Spotlight time, yay!

thatsamilkshake and thismaskiwear here this week, with the Crazy Toon People edition, otherwise known as the Strangers in Paradise Spotlight.

SiP is a comic series by Terry Moore; it started as a three-issue miniseries published by Antarctic Press in 1993 and ended in 2007 under Terry's own Abstract Studios imprint after a three volume, 106 issue run. (There was a brief detour into publishing under Image Comics' Homage imprint for a few issues there, and then it was back to Abstract Studios.)

By the way, if Terry's art style looks familiar to any of you who read the Buffy comics, he did the artwork for the Willow and Tara: Wannablessedbes one-off that Amber Benson wrote. He's also the current writer - but not artist - on Marvel's Runaways.

ANYWAY. The official tagline of SiP is that it's about "two ordinary women living extraordinary lives," and sure, okay, that works, but it's a little bit more . . . well . . . complex than that.



Things look pretty ordinary when the series begins. Katchoo and Francine -- introduced to us in a brief and embarrassing moment from high school that starts off Francine's trend of public nudity -- are now best friends in their late 20's who live together in Houston.

Francine's an office temp dating Freddie, a schlub she's been putting off actually having sex with because in her experience once a guy gets that, it's all downhill from there. (Freddie's also the dude whose clumsy foot caused said intro to public nudity, back in high school.) Katchoo is an artist who says she's not interested in men, and paints almost nothing but, when it's not frustrated stylized portraits of Francine. Needless to say, Freddie's not her favorite person in the world, unless that world is the world of anywhere but here (and preferably has no breathable atmosphere). Which, hey, works out when Freddie dumps Francine on their anniversary, just before she was actually going to sleep with him.

Francine moons and eats her way through several pounds of chocolate; Katchoo simmers and eases her frustrations by painting and hitting the museum to make scathing...critiques... of modern art. There she meets David, an earnest and annoyingly lovable doof (otherwise known as "The World's Worst Haircut") who can't seem to comprehend the phrase "I. Don't. Date. Guys." Throw in a nervous breakdown (Francine's), car accident (Francine's), snarling revenge (Katchoo's) involving moar public nudity (Freddie's), arrest for same (Katchoo's) and a little blackmail (Francine's) to get her out, and you've got the makings of a damn fine episode of Three's Company.

But that's just the first three issues. Cue the thirteen-issue run of Volume 2, and enter the Lesbian Mafia. This is where Katchoo's past gets introduced, the cast of characters expands, and where the groundwork gets laid for what will eventually become an increasingly complex, increasingly retconny storyline. Without going into too many details of the plot (because that's a labyrinth that would make Daedalus jealous) maybe it's a good idea to run down the list of characters here.

Joining Francine, Katchoo, Freddie, and David, we have:

	Casey Bullocks - A blonde, cheerful ditz, and Freddie's new fiancee -- guess which meeting sets Francine off into a new spiral of self-esteem crises? But it's not Casey's fault. She's just an aerobics instructor with a penchant for repeated breast augmentation surgeries -- OR IS SHE? DUN DUN DUN.
	Emma Glass - Met only in flashbacks, she was Katchoo's friend and (heavily implied) lover during part of that Mysterious Lesbian Mafia Past. Volume 2 actually starts off with Francine and David meeting Katchoo at the airport after an abrupt and unexplained trip to Toronto to visit the aforementioned Emma, who we later learn is dying of AIDS. OR IS SHE? DUN DUN DUN.
	Marie Peters (and Muffins) - Francine's mother (and small yapper-type dog). Just your average overprotective, smothery, Southern housewife whose husband left her to traipse the world with his secretary. OR IS SHE? DUN DUN DUN. (No, srsly.) (It may be worth noting that it's kind of hard to tell how much of this DUN DUN DUN-age was planned by Terry ahead of time, or how much of it he just decided to throw in as a twist later down the road; interviews and convention panels with him seem to imply a mix of both, although the series inconsistencies seem to lean toward the latter.) (My partner-in-crime is kinder than me. If you think Joss Whedon makes shit up as he goes along, you really need to meet Terry Moore. ~MP)
	Griffin Silver - An aging, Bowie-esque rock star whose appearances for the first half of the series consist largely of tone-setting lyrical interludes bookending issues. He's Katchoo's favorite singer, and despite existing mostly as background music until a ways into Volume 3 develops into a full-fledged character in his own right.
	Darcy Parker - Ah, here's the big one. Darcy's the head of the Lesbian Mafia Parker Girls, a crazycakes crime boss whose staff is all female, hence the name. Also tattooed with THE DIRTIEST LOOKING LILY ever, Darcy's "brand" and symbol of ownership. She doesn't do the small stuff: she's all about getting her finger into every pie (dirty? Totally.) possible, from the international financial system to the government, and her Parker Girls include DUCks, Deep Undercover Capability operatives whose job it is to insinuate themselves into everything Darcy wants to control. Minor detail: in the time between Francine's high school play nudity experience and the point at which the series starts, Katchoo was Darcy's lover. Oh, and by the way, David is Darcy's brother. Yeah.
	Mary Beth "Tambi" Baker - Militant, Amazonian (as in six foot plus and scary muscular), and bleached blonde, Tambi is Darcy's head of security, and in charge of all the dirty work. You know, the kind of dirty work that includes torturing people for information or killing them for squealing. She also has a twin sister, Sara, AKA Bambi, who's just as musclebound and vicious, but with an extra dose of crazy. She has a particular interest in Katchoo -- both Baker sisters do -- and call her "Cinderella." It's not that subtle. You can figure it out.
	Brad Silver - Although he's not introduced until Volume 3, this mild-mannered goateed gynecologist is destined (not without some very unsubtle help from Marie) to become Francine's husband. Note the last name. Yeah.
	There's a host of other minor characters as well, including Francine's ex-boyfriend Chuck Jansen, Freddie's former secretary and Francine and Katchoo's sometime landlord Margie McCoy, Francine's booze-soaked Uncle Maury, Frank Peters, Cherry Hammer and Becky the Gun Girl, but there's one who kind of deserves special mention, and that would be . . .
	Pat - A sleazy middle-aged pervy guy who randomly shows up all over the place and keeps trying to entice Francine into the backseat of his car. It is worth noting that a) Francine never actually says the line depicted in this icon, sadly, and b) Francine never actually seems to notice she's being hit on by the same guy. Over a several-year period.

Cue hijinks and relationship drama and two women trying to live their lives, except that this plan keeps getting foiled by obsessed exes, FBI files, and all manner of Issues With a Capital I coming back to bite them in the butt. Oh, and the occasional wacky fantasy sequence, often poking fun at superhero comics. Nobody ever said this series wasn't overly aware of its own buzz as "a comic for people who don't usually like comics."

SiP has its flaws, certainly, but what long-running comic series doesn't? There are a lot of reasons to love it anyway:

• It bounces from cute Sunday Funnies antics to crime drama to soap opera to exploration of personal and sexual identity without (for the most part) dropping the ball.


• Just about every character has more to him or her than meets the eye, and some of the most initially shallow and stereotypical ones end up with the most interesting development.


• Terry tries a lot of different storytelling styles, from standard comic layout to illustrated text passages to song lyrics and musical notation interwoven with the background. Some styles work better than others, but it's never boring.


• The art styles vary as well, and definitely get more complex over the 14 year run. Never enough to throw you out of the story, just enough to make you go whoa when you look back at some of the earliest issues.


• There are Easter Eggs in a lot of the panels. Take a look at what's going on in the background and find things like random celebrity "cameos" (Bjork makes a few appearances), pop-culture references (the trash can that thinks it's R2-D2), or just some wacky byplay from random people.


• It's over. You can read the whole damned 100+ issues at once. You will never have to wait 3 years to find out WTF WAS GOING ON WITH THAT FLASHBACK. (THAT FLASHBACK. WTF, THAT FLASHBACK.)
  
  
• Katchoo has pretty hair.


• Francine has a nice rack.


• We'll pay you.


• Okay, probably not that last one.

Where can I find it?

The whole series is collected in softcover graphic novel, larger hideously expensive hardcover volumes, and -- the most bang for your buck and the easiest to find -- 6 smaller-format Pocket Books, which you can grab on Amazon, or straight from the author's website. The only drawback to the Pocket Books is that the 7 or so color issues are reprinted in black-and-white.