Echo tpb v1 Moon Lake - Terry Moore

Echo v1 Moon Lake - Terry Moore, Abstract Studio $15.95

I was very excited to see the Echo trade paperback on the shelf today. I had missed being able to collect the floppies since I don't think they ever hit the shelves at my local comic shop. I have a great store near me with top notch people who work there, but I think economics keep them from getting shelf copies of a lot of non mainstream stuff. They have almost never failed to get things in for me when I ask for them, but I do prefer some degree of browsing and impulse buying .

I saved it for last, after I finished reading my haul of individual issues, and had time to post about them. I was able to read it in one sitting, and wish I had more of it already.

As in Strangers In Paradise, Moore once again gives us a nice mix of compelling characters, all of whom had lives going on before we started watching them. Julie Martin is in the middle of a divorce that she doesn't want to finalize, brought on to some degree by her effectively losing her whole family all within the past year. She is out taking pictures to beef up her portfolio when she is witness to something she can't fully understand.

In the skies overhead, a woman named Annie is coming to realize that she is not long for the world. She is test piloting a top secret 'super-suit' and loving it until it becomes evident that she is going to be blown up in the air as part of the testing by her superiors. We only see Annie for a brief time, but she was already immediately likable. She is the first person you see in the book, and then not too long after that, she is blown up and raining down on the countryside.

Julie Martin sees the explosion and takes pictures before she and her truck are covered in small beads of matter. Several pages later, Julie will be stuck in a breastplate of silvery metal with a tendancy for electrocuting people when it sees fit to do so.

After this, we meet Julie's soon to be ex-husband rick, Annie's boyfriend and all around decent guy Dillon Murphy, an NSB investigator Ivy Raven who we first see playing with her toddler before getting on a plane to go aid the search for the remains of the suit, Julie's sister Pam who is institutionalized with only a fleeting grasp on reality, a host of bikers, and a homeless guy who thinks he's god and has some amount of the device himself.

The book is a really great introduction to a new story. Plenty of characters, plenty of things to care about, lots of unanswered questions, and interesting people on all sides of the central conflicts. The art is clean and pretty. Characters are expressive, and I can tell them apart for the most part. They seem like real people. The storytelling is efficient and crams a ton of stuff in without seeming rushed and without skimping on anything.

I am hoping that it maintains this level and is able to run to whatever completion Moore sees for it. No... I'm not going to marry Terry Moore... He just happens to have some decent stuff and I happen to be reading lot of it lately.

Hello Stranger(s)

I have owned the Pocket Book editions v1-3 of Terry Moore's Strangers In Paradise for a few years. In that time I have repeatedly picked up volume 1 but have never been able to get all the way through it. I have no idea what makes a book an easy read for me, and what makes it one of those things where the planets need to be aligned just right for me to get past the first few pages.

I liked what I read each time. I liked the art. I have no issue with black and white comics. I have no problem with slice of life or relationship drama or thrillers or... anything really. In fact, with it's emphasis on characters and character development, and no shortage of compelling female characters in all shapes and sizes(Look! there's a character that gains weight yet is still portrayed as attractive and as a person... that's positively Love & Rockets!!) this should be an ideal series for me.

So why did it take me so long to finally get through the first volume? I'm just slow I guess. Seriously, I'm way slow sometimes. I only got into Sandman and Hellboy and Preacher, etc. in the past three or four years.

Strangers in Paradise is terrific so far. I am not the biggest fan of all the prose and poems and lyrics in it, but I respect their use. The art is terrific and expressive, it captures the characters and their emotions perfectly. In a few cases I get mixed up as to which character is which, but that never lasted long. Moore also makes use of Tex Avery style animation art and Sugar and Spike influenced cartoon styles in dream sequences to hilarious effect. This is a well done book by someone with a real knack for using the medium to full effect. There is a lot of real emotion between characters, It's good stuff and I highly recommend it to anyone that doesn't mind actually reading comics.

A side note that has recently been pointed out to me is how similar Frank Cho's women are to Terry Moore's. Man... They are really similar. I'm not sure that means anything. I have met both Terry Moore and Frank Cho at Comic Con's. Both seemed nice. This little bit really isn't going anywhere. Some day when I get through the series I will post something actually in depth about it.