Terry Moore Seeking Original 'Strangers in Paradise' Art

Indie comics icon Terry Moore is seeking the original art to Strangers in Paradise #1, his first published comic, so that he can get high-quality scans for an upcoming art book.

Strangers in Paradise will return for a year-long engagement in 2018 to celebrate the award-winning comic's 25th anniversary. A new edition of the Strangers in Paradise Treasury Edition is planned, complete with a CD soundtrack featuring the songs of Moore's in-universe musical avatar Griffin Silver, and the rights to a Strangers in Paradise movie were recently optioned.

At San Diego Comic Con over the summer, Moore revealed that Graphitti Designs was working on a coffee table art book featuring Strangers in Paradise.

Moore likely meant their Gallery Editions, oversized hardcover editions that present the comic as close to the look of the original art boards as possible, with an 11"x17" format reminiscent of the Artist's Editions at IDW Publishing.

Graphitti are interested in restoring what amounts to the "unaired pilot" to Strangers in Paradise: Moore wrote and drew an early version of the first issue, which he describes as "crude and unsophisticated"...but it got him his first publishing offer, and he edited the book from there to become what was eventually published.

Moore noted that the original Strangers in Paradise #1 actually has seen print before -- in the pages of the Strangers in Paradise Treasury, which was released in 2004 and served as a kind of companion to the series up to that point.

Moore indicated to his audience that he has been resisting Graphitti's attempts to reprint the "unused" first issue, responding to their offer with a counter-offer of maybe printing one or a few pages rather than the whole thing.

It is not yet clear whether he will reproduce any of the "first draft," but it seems the art book is going forward, with original art pages from Moore's first published comic.

If anybody has a page of that original art, Moore can be found on Twitter and Facebook with the handle "TerryMooreArt."