Earlier this month, the fifth issue of Rachel Rising hit the stands, capping a pretty big month for Terry Moore, who recently announced that he will be taking his work to ComiXology, beginning on February 22. His first-ever digital day-and-date release will be Rachel Rising #6, which will hit on March 7. We spoke to Terry about the choice to go digital, and the direction of the story with this month’s issue.So the last time around, we talked digital and between then and now, you decided to take the plunge. Was that e-mail you posted to the blog really the straw that broke the camel’s back?Terry Moore: It was just one of many letters saying the same thing: for a variety of reasons, we can’t get your books out here. Not everybody lives near a store. Not everybody is direct market savvy. So I’m going to provide a comics shop finder on my home page and start releasing digital versions. I just have to in this day and age; it’s time to adapt or fade away.When can we expect to see that come to fruition in terms of Strangers in Paradise and Rachel Rising being made available on ComiXology?
You mentioned those two specifically–is Echo getting no digital love for a while?
TM:
Echo
Echo
How do you talk a retailer–who is already hesitant about picking up a smaller book like this–into giving it a try when they know it’s available digitally? Or is the easy availability of back issues actually a plus?
TM:
Is it fun to write a character like Aunt Johnny, who really hardly misses a beat and takes all the weird in stride?
TM:
She reminds me a bit of David, who at times faced some pretty awful, bizarre and confusing circumstances and just kept moving forward. Do you think it’s important, when you’re dealing with heightened drama, to have someone there for whom it seems like a day’s work?
TM:
You know, in this issue we see a somewhat less grave (no pun intended) side of Rachel. She has a handful of facial features and expressions that hearken to Katchoo, but she’s visually very different. Is that difficult to do in a black-and-white comic or is it just kind of second nature to you since that’s what you work in?
TM:
Echo
Certainly story-wise Rachel’s plot takes a bit of a sharp turn here (assuming the good doctor is right). Is Johnny surprised to hear that, or just surprised that he said it so bluntly?
TM:
In those two middle pages, where Rachel’s family and then Zoe are eating, there’s a very similar layout. It isn’t identical, but they’re very similar and the panel of Rachel and the panel of Zoe are nearly identical. Was that an intentional way of drawing a parallel?
TM:
It really is almost a literal parallel because halfway through the issue, we go from following Rachel exclusively to following Zoe exclusively.
TM:
The Boyles aren’t exactly who they seemed when introduced–is there anyone in Manson you can take at face value?
TM:
It’s very hard to get a bead on Zoe–her motivations, whether she’s a “good” or “bad” character and all that.Will you be exploring her character in a little more depth?
TM:
