Terry Moore

Pre-orders for the Strangers In Paradise Omnibus are coming in and they are so very much appreciated. We had a nice run of orders for the first few days by informed folks who were waiting for the door to open. And I’ve asked—well, begged—people to spread the word to the rest of the world. I really need the orders to keep coming. So far I have 151 orders. Diamond is ordering 800. That’s 951 orders for 5,000 books. That’s what I’m up against. I believe with all my heart that more than 951 people want the SiP Omnibus. I’ve bet all my chips on it. I hope I’m right, but the trick is getting the news out to people, because so many SiP fans are not typical comics fans. Remember all the reports of SiP readers being wives and girlfriends and non-comic readers? That’s who we have to find now and let them know this exists. So please blog about the Omnibus Pre-order offer, add it to your pinterest, tumblr, whatever. Help me spread the word, whether it’s on a comics related page or not.

The window for preorders will be open until A) we sell out B)late June, when the books arrive from China. Once we ship the 1st  book order, the pre-order deal is off.

The pre-order deal is easy: order at the the SiP home page and your order will come with an exclusive print that won’t be included with orders once the book is shipping. We are offering the a 2nd, different print for retailer orders. It’s one print per box set.

All the Omnibus details are at the SiP home page. Feel free to grab any text and pictures you want to make your posts elsewhere. If you do so, you will have my undying love and loyalty. If we make this work, I’ll pretty much be your cocker spaniel.

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Here’s a very kind commentary by David Goodman at Geekadelphia on Strangers In Paradise and why you should buy the Omnibus box set. So very much appreciated.

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I love how readers who write to me from New Zealand sign off as “from Middle Earth”.

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So many times during the day I wish I had a What Would Katchoo Do bracelet. Would you like one too? I’m thinking of making them. What color would you like? What is the color of SIP/Katchoo?

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Before The Dark Knight, it was like this…

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I signed 26 copies of my cover variant of Drew Hayes Poison Elves and sent them back to Ape Entertainment. They will be chase variants for retailers who order in bulk, so your odds of finding one are slim, but I have a short stack of them myself and I plan to sell them for the going rate when the book is released and forward the money to Drew’s family. They deserve it.

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Today I’m inking Rachel Rising 16. Deadline is Monday, then we go to Anaheim for Wondercon next weekend. We’ll have a new booth display (that’s the kind of thing we get excited about), both Rachel Rising TPBs, the new SiP 20th Anniversary Print and Tshirt, the How To Draw book, Echo Omnibus and SIP Pocket Editions. Uhmm… and art. I always bring a portfolio of original art. Artists like looking at other artist’s pages, and sometimes a page is bought. They’re all for sale. I plan to take all the pages for Fables 107 to Wondercon and offer them as a set at half the price of my SiP pages. Some of the Fables pages are over the top, so I hope this attracts a collector. The income will be used to pay for, you guessed it, the SiP Omnibus printing.

Back to work

Remember this image? Of course you do. Remember the article? Of course not. Demi Moore, who reportedly has a high IQ, once said, “It’s the images people remember, not the words.” She was referring to being the #1 image download girl back in her day and all the criticism that brought her, but the principle is sound and proven true, time and time again.

Now professors at Oklahoma University have recently completed a study (soon to be published in Business Communication Quarterly) that found students, anybody really, learn faster with the graphic novel instructions over text only. Of course, you and I have known this all our lives, being comic book people, but now there is yet another study to back up the principles Will Eisner was using in the 1950′s… graphic novels as instructional manuals that show and tell things in a way students understand quickly and never forget.

To put his findings in action, professor Jeremy Short is following in Eisner’s footsteps and hosting a free MOOC class (open to all) June 10-July 15 using an original GN to teach the art of business communication, aka management. If you’re a comics fan studying business, or just want to learn how to manage and navigate the human race, check it out at http://management.ou.edu

I bet you learn something.

Ok, It’s on! Pre-Order the Strangers In Paradise Omnibus NOW to make sure you get one. http://www.strangersinparadise.com

Please help us tell the world. We need to have good orders to make this work! Thank you SiP Nation!!

There is no question that the ultimate Strangers In Paradise collection is the Omnibus Edition. To make that edition, I carefully went over every page and corrected art, spelling, errors, removed all censorship (words and images) and I rearranged some scenes to put them in perfect chronological order. No other tpb or pocket edition got this final edit. The story reads perfectly. The Omnibus is my final version.

Five years ago 1,250 hardcover edition box sets were offered and sold out immediately. It was grossly underprinted due to low pre-orders. (Pre-orders paid for the printing and that was all we could print.)

Now, finally, we are making an affordable, softcover version. The Strangers In Paradise Softcover Omnibus box set includes the same two 1200 page books containing every page, every story ever printed relating to SiP! The price for this 2400 page collection in a boxed slipcase? $100.

I can’t make it any more affordable than that, folks. That’s 4 cents a page for a labor of love I spent 14 years making.

Why has it taken 6 years since the end of SiP to make this softcover Omnibus? The answer is simple: it is very expensive to print and the printing must be paid before the book ships. This means, I have to pay for everything before the industry can help with purchases. The cost of printing the softcover Omnibus is shockingly high. But after 5 years Robyn and I have decided it will never happen if we don’t go out on a limb and take the risk. So we are printing the book at great personal risk, because we believe the fans and retailers will support us and buy the book once it is available. I’ve always believed in SiP. Now I’m putting my money where my mouth is. But I need your support.

We will be taking pre-orders soon. As a thank you, a new, exclusive print will be included with every pre-ordered Omnibus!

Note that I am also including a print for all retailer orders through Diamond, but that will be a different image, and the retailer can decide for themselves if they want to include the print in their book sale. That’s up to the retailer to decide. I suspect most of them will reward their customers by giving them the print with the purchase. Retailers love their loyal customers and so do I. I’ll show you both print images here when they’re drawn.

So, to recap…  YES! We’re finally printing the SiP Omnibus again! This is a huge deal for us!

Two softcover books, 2400 pages total, in a slipcase. Price will be $100.

The print run will be 5,000. We have committed to this. We hope it’s enough.

All pre-orders will also get an exclusive print—one print per Omnibus. All retailers will get a print with their orders, too—one print per Omnibus ordered— but it will be a different one.

When? June/July. I just solicited for the Diamond April Previews for June product. We’re basing our San Diego Comic Con in July around the Omnibus.

I really need fan support on this! Please, pre-order from us or put serious, persistent pressure on your comic shop—they have so many other books to think about. You have to DEMAND this book from your retailers in advance or you’re going to be left empty-handed. If they won’t order it, don’t argue—many shops only order from the Top 100 list— just order direct from us or a SiP friendly retailer on-line. There are many to choose from!

It’s VERY important we sell this book. We’re financially committed and can’t back out. Even if retailers/Diamond order only 10 copies, Robyn and I will still print this book, because we believe in our fans. But if orders and sales are low, this will be our Hindenberg.

Please, if you love Francine and Katchoo’s story, make your voice heard. Exert your power for them. Blog, tweet and tumblr the hell out of the Omnibus news repeatedly because no matter how many time you say it, most people missed it. You have the collective power to make SiP more than a cult classic. Tell the world to read this story and this is the book to buy. They will listen to you! I’m betting everything on it.

The Diamond ad:

A number of years back, during the years I was making Strangers In Paradise, a reader sent me a picture of this cloissone pin from the Austin Hard Rock Cafe because, well, the girl looked awfully familiar. Recently he saw the pin at a collector’s market and bought it for me. SiP readers were incensed when I posted a pic of this very Katchoo looking pin on Twitter. As Darcy Parker Bruce put it, “Looks like someone’s in for some shit, she would NEVER wear something like that.”

Below, a reminder of what Katchoo looks like, and the real Katchoo pin.

I didn’t know Drew Hayes very well when we shared a table at a small Dallas comic convention many years ago. He was big, loud and generally a happy guy and you knew if he was in the room, if for no other reason but the fact that his hair was always a different, bright color and, because Drew was tall, you could see that head coming at you through a crowd.

We were both struggling self-publishers that weekend in Dallas. We shared a table and spent Saturday morning meeting the 5 or 6 fans who knew us, and tried to bribe the rest of the crowd’s interest with cheap sketches. A con host offered to take us out to lunch and we readily accepted because “self-publisher” is Klingon for “broke”. Teri Wood joined us—remember Wandering Star?—and the 3 of us piled into this guy’s little commuter car. Drew filled the little back seat, so I called shotgun and let Teri sit next to him. As we rode to the restaurant, the car was quiet because it was full of lone-wolf cartoonists who didn’t get out much and didn’t know each very well. Not exactly a Kappa Kappa meeting. Only a car full of emoesque Fantagraphics cartoonists could have been quieter. But the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I saw a bird. It was a Disney day. In my best teenage-whatever voice I drawled a line Katchoo had already muttered in print, “Pretty day……. if you’re into that shit.” When Drew heard that he laughed and laughed. It broke the ice and we all started talking and had a great time at lunch. We became friends.

Back at the con, Drew and I resumed drawing anything for anybody and cracked jokes. After awhile, Drew stood and wandered off to take a break. About 15 minutes later he returned with a massive, elaborately decorated bowie knife—the chromed kind they sell cheap at the goth and fantasy tables, with a couple of holes in the blade and a wicked notch in the spine. I saw it gleaming in his hand as he walked up and before I could say anything he SLAM!ed it into the table. It quivered there as he sat down and smiled broadly at the people who’d stopped dead in their tracks to watch him. He bellowed like a stage actor, “Who wants a sketch?”

That was Drew. You just wanted to hug him for delighting you so.

Drew passed away 6 years ago, a victim of his own size, and I miss him. When you lose a friend you always have a hole in your life where that friend was. Nobody comes along and replaces them, they can’t. Today we can only appreciate the man and the labor of love he left behind, Poison Elves.

After the Dallas show, I later drew a pinup for Drew and included the super-sized knife in the girl’s hand, the weapon of choice for my girl elf to teach his main character a lesson for beheading his own creator. It was an in-joke and Drew got a kick out of it.

I heard Drew’s friends and family were resuming production of Poison Elves, creating new stories from Drew’s own notes and outlines. When I was contacted about drawing a cover, I immediately thought of the pinup and they agreed to use it. My cover will be extremely limited—the C cover of three variants—so if somebody wants this specific cover they’re going to have to hunt for it. Unless they read this blog. I got my copies today—a dozen or so. I only need 3 for my archive, so I will sell the rest in a few weeks when I know what the price should be. I promise it will be less than eBay.

Here’s the book.

Oh, and yep, that’s a page from Rachel Rising 16 underneath. That is not included.

Awards

This has been a good news week for me. First, my Italian publisher BAO informed me that Rachel Rising was awarded a Comicus Prize for Best Independent English Language Comic, and I won Best Artist/Writer. Coming from a country known for the arts, this award means a lot and I am very honored.

Here at home, the first Rachel Rising trade paperback, The Shadow Of Death, has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in the Graphic Novel category by the Horror Writers Association. It’s a great honor to be nominated for this highly respected award and it is, as the HWA notification said, “a fine recognition by your peers.” That made my day. Thank you.

Sketch Art

I promised to post the rest of the sketches I did for the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle last weekend. These are the preorder sketches I did before the trip and delivered at the show. If I’m coming to a con on your schedule, you can contact us to preorder a sketch at sipnet@strangersinparadise.com

Black Widow & Hawkeye…

Death, Takes Out The Trash…

The request was for “whatever you want”. So, drink?…

Francine and Katchoo reading…

I had a request for a sexy Ivy (Echo) and Tambi (SiP) being their baddass selves. So…

But Robyn saw that and said it wasn’t sexy enough. So I smiled and drew this…

And a page of phone doodles I made that day…

Robyn and I had a great time at the Emerald City Comicon. It certainly has grown since we were last there 4 years ago. This year they took over the entire convention center, every floor. I was told the event sold out and some 75,000 tickets were sold. Judging by the crowds we saw, I believe it. So much happened—too much for a blog brief—so I’ll just give you the highlights.

One thing I found odd was this button in the elevator. I was afraid to push it.

If you were brave enough to ride that elevator you could get to our room overlooking downtown Seattle. This was the view from our window. At night that Roosevelt sign glowed like the Bat Signal. Goodnight Seattle!

At the con we saw a lot of cosplay (costume play), like this couple. In Neil Gaiman’s story, Dr. Who’s Tardis was a woman, but in Seattle the roles were reversed.

Naturally the point of it all is to have fun, so it was a kick to see things like this, a boy posing with Spidey and crew.

I drew a lot of sketches for the con. Some beforehand, some at the show. Here are some of the sketches I did at the show. I’ll post the others in the next post. Sorry about the poor iPhone pics.

A couple of requests for Francine and Katchoo…

“Please draw me a sexy Jet and her bass…”

“Draw Annie (Echo) flying.” She’s taking a picture, by the way, because the view is incredible…

“Draw Katchoo and Dan (Echo).”

This next guy had a jam board going for horror sketches. Somebody had already done a nicely colored Swamp Thing face, so I added Natalie/Hannah and her snake…

On Saturday I was on a panel discussing the state of comics. The panel title was The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times. You can find a video of that panel, and all the other panels at Emerald City, on FlipOn.tv

On Sunday I did a 45 minute Spotlight interview that was also recorded and posted on FlipOn.tv. You’ll find it here.

Monday we rode to the airport with David Peterson and his wife Stephanie, then ate breakfast while watching planes take off over the snowcapped mountains heading for Alaska. A few hours later Robyn and I were back in sunny Houston and the whole weekend in Emerald City was like a dream. Except we didn’t keep telling people we wanted to go home,  we told them we’d be back.

It’s official. The softcover SiP Omnibus is coming in June. Two 1,014-page books for one price… $100. That’s every story, every cover, every page I ever published that had anything to do with the series, including the one-shots and short stories. That my friends, is a lot of drawing. About 13-14 years worth, in fact.

At some point between now and then, we will take preorders—this helps us in establishing an initial print run—and I’ve just listed it with Diamond to run the solicitation in the May Previews catalog for products shipping in June.

Help us get the word out, please. As you can imagine, we will need your full support to get a massive pair of twins like this in print! This will be the Dolly Parton of graphic novels, so start clearing space on your strongest book shelf.

Here’s the ad that will run in May Previews:

I was delighted to see a hearty recommendation of Echo: The Complete Edition by the Harvard Book Store.

Here’s a fun, detailed podcast discussion of the Rachel Rising: Shadow Of Death trade paperback by the guys at ECHORIFT.

NOW is the time to sign up for a FREE online class assembling: GENDER THROUGH COMICS. It’s the first comics-related Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and it is free. All you have to do is sign up to be part of classes taught by university teacher Christy Blanch with a Who’s Who of Comics guest list: Brian K. Vaughan, Scott Snyder, Matt Fraction, Brian Bendis, Gail Simone, Mark Waid, and more, plus myself. Signing up for the class also gives you unique access to Blanch’s interviews with Jonathan Hickman, Jason Aaron and more. This is a no brainer, comics fans. You don’t want to miss this, ut you have to sign up now. Go here to sign up. Go here to see Mark Waid’s detailed post about the class.

See how I did that, I gave you five places to hit the sign up link. Now six. That’s called handing it to you on a plate. Go, sign up! Seven.