I love me some Terry Moore. There’s no other creator out there that does what he does. He puts out what he wants when he wants how he wants. It’s his own imprint. It’s just his stuff. He writes and draws all of it and never uses color. No ads. If Prince was a comic book creator he’d be just like Terry Moore although there’d be waaaay more naughty stuff, lingerie and purple outlines. Like Prince, you can tell that Terry loves women. All of his leads are pretty much women and to varying degrees they all kick serious ass although I've yet to see one do the splits.
If you look at actual pictures of Terry Moore he looks like the kind of guy that would be featured in an episode of ‘Six Feet Under’. He's that odd bald guy that would switch back and forth between bawling and making cartoonish faces in a funeral parlor. He'd have some hot vixen in heels and a pompadour with him and he'd be sketching her while Michael C. Hall stares and wonders how to get him to fork over a grip for a casket.
Anyway, many moons ago I was traipsing around the web and found
the entire ‘Strangers in Paradise’ comic book run on Craigslist here in LA; it
was selling for like $100. I dove right in and loved all of it. But then the
series took a wacky turn when it got into this international spy conspiracy
global conglomerate stuff. This was a while ago but I remember there being all these
threats on the main characters from these agents and hit men and I’m like ‘Whooaaa,
how did we go from two cutesy lesbians and a Metro dude in an art Gallery to Mission Impossible? So I
put it away and have yet to finish the series.
Since then Moore has had some hits and misses. His best book by far if you ask me is ‘Echo’; it’s just perfectly done and balances his whole global intrigue with deep interpersonal relationships. Then ‘Rachel Rising’ came out and that was also a spectacular series that blended massive biblical implications with a small town horror vibe. The subsequent series were…mnyeh. Nothing great but nothing unreadable. His last go round was called ‘Serial’ which spun out of Rachel Rising and followed the little psychopath hatchet loving demon girl as she tried to hunt down another killer. That series got waaay too gory and violent for my taste so I had to drop that one also.
Now we get ‘Parker Girls’. Hmm. So, I remember this whole deal from previous series. These chicks are bad ass global agents that do all kinds of spy assassin stuff and they’re the best at what they do yadda yadda yadda. Terry Moore, you are a genius when it comes to writing relationships and emotions. Die Hard 5? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination it’s just…I mean, Billy Joel doing Metallica could be okay but you’re like, ‘Dude, piano stuff homie, c’mon, bring the bottle of red and shit’.
The basic premise? Some accountant dude steals a bunch of
money from some rich white CEO assholy dude who finds him and leaves him naked
in a desert after he was banged the night before by a Parker Chick who takes
the money he stole. Then the CEO’s wifey washes ashore dead somewhere else
while the main Hulkamania lookin’ Parker chick goes to Kachoo in her art
gallery (the best SIP babe) to recruit her for God knows what. It feels a bit dated to me. Not sure if that's Terry's intent but it gives me 90s action TV show/late night HBO series vibe. A couple of the Parker Girls are called Cherry Hammer and Becky the Gun Girl which sounds more like Roller Derby names than international spy chicks. Maybe Terry should do a Roller Derby Suicide Girl series, that would be amayyyyyzing.
Look, the best thing about Terry Moore books is that you can gobble them up in just a few minutes. So if you’re in a rush and just sitting down for a sec with your morning java you can knock a few of these puppies out in a heartbeat, which is what I did. I’ll strap myself in for the ride but I got a parachute nearby and I'll disappear like Matt Fraction does in the middle of a series just in case Hans Gruber shows up.
Rating: 7.5
Verdict: Pull on alert.
No comments:
Post a Comment