My Strangers in Paradise fandom story is actually directly linked to my X:WP fandom story, because SiP was recommended to me by a Xena-fandom friend shortly after the Xena-parody "Princess Warrior" issue of SiP came out; Steven L. Sears, one of the X:WP executive producers who was pretty heavily involved in the fan community, actually got into SiP because of that too, and talked it up a lot, so word of SiP spread fast and far among Xenites. It was partly silly and superficial, because hi, look, there's physical similarities even though personality-wise Francine and Katchoo are the opposite of their near-doppelgangers. But then -- particularly among the Xena/Gabrielle shippers -- the love story of SiP struck a chord.

So I got in my little car and drove down to Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood (and I look back and laugh at wide-eyed sheltered young me going "OMGWTF AM I DOING ON MELROSE ALL BY MYSELF THIS IS SCARY") and, not realizing the three-issue miniseries of volume 1 was actually where everything started, picked up the I Dream of You trade that kicks off volume 2 and the bulk of the storyline.

I fell in love with it instantly -- in an amusing reversal from thatsamilkshake I started out identifying with Francine much more strongly than I did with Katchoo, and over time that somehow went the opposite way. Over the next couple of months I collected all the trades available up until that point -- there were only 5 -- and then tried to keep up with the individual issues, but that got hard after a while when it was released on a more-or-less 6-week schedule that sometimes took a lot longer than that. (Yay for independently published comics.)

So I kind of lost track for a year or two, and then came back to it and wooooooooooooooo, dove right the hell back in and never looked back.

And that is the story of how I now have to have an entire bookshelf devoted to my SiP trades and single issues, and how thatsamilkshake and I made a beeline straight for the Abstract Studios booth at Comic-Con this past year as soon as we got our badges to pick up our signed omnibus editions of SiP (complete with sketch on the front page by Mr. Moore!).