Terry Moore is probably most famous for the Strangers in Paradise series of graphic novels, which starts off as a story about the friendship between two women and ends up turning into this crazy melodramatic story of ninjas and clones and secret billionaires or whatever. To be honest, I lost track of it while I was still reading it, so I dunno.
So now we have Terry Moore’s Echo: Moon Lake , which seems to be starting off right away in melodramatic land with a government conspiracy, and which also continues the chick-comics-for-guys vibe of SiP. It— what? Oh, you want me to expand on that chick-comics-for-guys thing? Sure!
So the thing is, Strangers in Paradise is ostensibly aimed at a female audience, which you can tell because it has female protagonists and also feelings. Except it’s hard not to notice that the protagonists spend an awfully large amount of time in various stages of undress, and plus there is all that ninja conspiracy stuff. The net feel is that it’s a comic for the kind of guys who play female elf druids in their RPG games rather than for actual chicks.
And Echo continues that theme. Female protagonist, right, but she spends a lot of time in her panties, and when the plot-driving accident happen, it ends up covering her bosoms with liquid metal, ripping away her shirt and bra in the process. It’s a very tit-centric sort of accident, really, and the upshot is that this ends up feeling actually more sexist and retro than something like Dan Slott’s work on She-Hulk.
It’s a weird world when a third-rate corporate-owned character like She-Hulk is both more sophisticated and less sexist than a black-and-white indie comic done by a famous chick-comic guy, but there you are. If you want more proof that I’m correct, Harlan Ellison has a smug cover quote praising Echo, and if Ellison says it that smugly, you know it must be wrong.
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