Now we’re playing Hide and Seek. The clock’s ticking.
The loser dies.
If the first issue of Strangers in Paradise XXV felt like it was starting in the middle of the action, the full-page picture on the first page of issue #2 looks like the moment just before the climactic (and tragic) scene. We find Katchoo standing on a cliff face, the ledge crumbling under her feet as she wonders how Francine is going to react when she hears that the love of her life has fallen to her death after doing something incredibly stupid. Again.
Terry Moore obviously wants to draw in new readers to this series, and that means walking a fine line. When starting up a new chapter of an ongoing story, you can leave people to flounder when they don’t know who these people are and why we should care, or you can scare off newcomers and longtime fans alike by greeting them with a wall of text. Moore’s strategy was to give the barest amount of backstory in issue one – getting everyone good and hooked on the drama already in progress – and then backload all the information about the characters and their history into issue two, every bit of it crammed around Moore’s clean, easy to follow and yet somehow impressively intricate line art.
Be warned, this issue is heavy on the exposition.
It’s entertaining though, and I say that as someone who read the original SIP story cover-to-cover. There’s something definitely fun about more than a hundred issues of storyline getting summarized in a few panels highlighting of some of the more memorable scenes. That bit with Becky The Gun Girl taking out a rogue Parker Girl, I remember that impressing the hell out of me when I first read that issue, almost as much as it stunned me that an entire storyline had been ended like the author had gotten bored and decided to set it on fire.
I’m really hoping Moore will use this new story as a chance to tie up a few loose ends from the original SIP, or at least explain some things. I’m not 100% clear how a former Parker Girl was able to cut a deal with her testimony and still stay hidden from the remnants of Darcy Parker’s empire. And I could have sworn that Katchoo’s half sister Tambi had protected Katchoo by cutting a deal of her own with Agent Sara Bryan (someone who was inexplicably furious with Katchoo selling nude paintings of her that Katchoo had paid her to model for. Sure it’s an awkward result from being undercover, but how was Katchoo supposed to know her professional model was an FBI agent?) And hey, while we’re talking about loose ends, whatever the heck happened with that ambulance-bomber storyline that Freddy Femur’s forensic pathologist girlfriend was working on?!
Ahem. Obviously this new storyline is reminding me about how obsessed I was with the old story. And still am.
Some parts of this issue were less familiar to me. We already learned last issue that this latest story revolves around Stephanie Kelly, the former Parker Girl who provided vital information towards the close of Terry Moore’s Echo title. Now, as Katchoo tries to track down someone who could expose her whole history to the world, she follows the trail to Manson Massachusetts, snow-filled scenic location for another Moore title, Rachel Rising. Moore seems to be weaving all of his storylines together, so if you’re like me and haven’t finished reading all the Rachel Rising graphic novels then you should probably get on that, because the events of those stories are going to play a part here.
Heck, at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam and Mike from Motor Girl make an appearance too.
