I’ve gotten used to the fact that all of Terry Moore’s series feature cameos from his other titles. It’s obvious that Strangers in Paradise, Echo, Rachel Rising, and Motor Girl are all in the same universe, even if the characters didn’t interact much, if at all.
Moore ramped up the pace of cameo appearances in Strangers in Paradise XXV, and now the characters from all his series are sharing the spotlight in his latest ongoing title. Click the jump for a review of the first issue of Five Years.
My first thought when I saw the #1 on the cover of this was, “The who in the what now?” We’d just gotten issue #10 of Strangers in Paradise XXV, the series that started with Katchoo trying to track down a former Parker Girl who had the ability to expose her family’s secrets to the world. Well, turns out that was something of a red herring, and the entire title ended with issue ten. This new series is about the former Parker Girl’s real danger: her possession of a scientific formula that dates back to Cleopatra, and which scientists will use in no more than five years to accidentally blow up the universe.
I’m…I’m not quite sure how I feel about all of that.
The storyline about the Parker Girl was grounded in reality (close to it, anyway), and I was looking forward to maybe getting an explanation about how a former covert operative could cut a deal with the government that Katchoo and her sister Tambi wouldn’t know about for years. This new storyline blows reality right out of the water, bringing in the supernatural elements of Rachel Rising, the futuristic technobabble of Echo, and the six hundred pound talking gorilla from Motor Girl (Eeee! Mike’s back, Mike’s back! Definitely happy about that.)
Most of the Moore’s other series had to take at least a little bit of time for the characters to be convinced that the weirdness going on was actually going on, and not a joke or a hallucination or a dream (well, for Motor Girl it sort of ended up being all three anyway. Spoilers). Here, Katchoo and Francine have had to accept it pretty much right away to keep the pace going. The combination of all this – all these series, all of these characters, all of these genres – can be a little jarring.
Fortunately this first issue has Moore sticking with his strengths: his gorgeous artwork and his funny/touching/realistic interactions between the characters in their day-to-day lives. Katchoo spends a lot of the issue in the middle of a nightmare about what the end of the world is going to look like, but there’s also some hilarious dialog between her and Francine’s mother (pretty amazing how their relationship has transformed since the original Strangers in Paradise series), plus some more scenes with Francine and Katchoo’s adorable daughters (both of whom are growing up to be carbon copies of their mothers, which is all kinds of fun).
I have absolutely no idea where Moore is taking this series, and from the sounds of his interviews he’s pretty much going to take the story where it takes him (making it actually last five years might be a little unrealistic, but he’s certainly open to that option). Hopefully we won’t end up with too many storylines that get dropped like they’re on fire, but as long as we have Moore’s artwork, Katchoo and Francine’s relationship, and Mike and Sam snarking at each other in Sam’s head, then I’m definitely along for the ride.