I edit comics.
I love my work. I love it with a ferocity that surprised me when I first discovered it, and which surprises me still.
It’s not that loving my job is a foreign idea to me, nor that I am suspicious of any job that’s more than a daily grind, a roof, and an HMO. But I didn’t expect to love this job, not this much, nor this confidently – not when I handed out my self-consciously awkward cover letter at a convention, and not even when I gave up graduate school and moved four thousand miles from friends and family for the chance to edit comic books.
I came into comics by hook, crook, and sheer dumb luck. I’d spent the two years since college running an undergraduate writing center; my plan, at that point, was to go to graduate school and from there, either to a career in academia or writing or both. Comics wasn’t even a Plan B so much as a casual and slightly sheepish flirtation fueled by on-and-off correspondence with an editor I’d met at a convention a few years previously.
When I first came into comics, I saw editing as a means to an end – a means of getting up to my elbows in the publishing process, of accumulating experience and contacts on the way to my long-term goal of writing full time.
And somewhere along the way, the destination less changed than became irrelevant. I had fallen for the road. What started a job had become a vocation: At some point, I had stopped just editing and become an editor.
# # #
Editing floats my boat, rocks my socks, scratches itches I’d never even had the means to reach. In college, I double-majored in literature and writing, and I’ve spent my professional life torn between analysis and action, theory, and practice. Editing is the first work I’ve found that seamlessly straddles that divide. I’m a challenge junkie, easily bored by routine; editing is constantly demanding and delightfully varied.
And, more, I’m greedy. There’s an old snipe that editorial careers are the fate of frustrated writers. In my case, it’s true, but not for the implied reasons: For me, editing feeds an insatiable hunger for more that writing alone never could. As a writer, the world of my work is limited to my own stories, and regardless the breadth and volume of that work, it has never been enough. As an editor, I am custodian and curator to a body of material whose range extends far beyond the scope of any one writer: a never-ending ocean of voice and thought and idea. In comics, especially, I am witness and catalyst and alchemist to a million revelations, no two quite alike.
The span of books I edit and have edited is wildly, wonderfully eclectic: dark supernatural horror, slice-of-life memoir, high fantasy, satire, science fiction; from the U.S., Australia, Great Britain, Spain, Argentina, Japan, Canada. Many are stand-alone works, original to print; others are series, collections of webcomics, companions to albums, spinoffs from video games. Most are comics; some are prose or art. Their creators are novices and seasoned professionals; rock stars and critics and storytellers. One is a six-year-old boy; another, a woman in her seventies with over 300 books under her belt. Each comes with her own unique strengths, his own unique demands.
More than anything else, it’s that multiplicity that keeps me coming back.
# # #
I am a midwife: I will hold your hand as you labor to produce your life’s work, tell you when to push and when to catch your breath.
I am a gardener: What grows here isn’t my creation, but I can cultivate it, fertilize and nurture and prune until it reaches heights and takes shapes far beyond what it could have reached wild.
I am a producer: I take your raw sounds, mix, adjust, slide; record and balance and burn.
I am a roadie: My job is to make yours look easy; and if I do it right, the audience will never notice me there at all.
I am a nerve center: I coordinate, cross-reference, translate signals and impulses and needs and wants between brain and body, writers and artists, letterers, colorists, agents, designers and marketers, pre-press techs and public-relations reps.
I am a mechanic: I may not have drawn the blueprints, but I know every inch of these engines, inside and out; and I can tell by the rattle of a bolt or the smell of the smoke what needs to be tightened, oiled, hammered.
In terms of creative engagement, what I am first and foremost is a professional reader: I can take apart an outline, or a set of thumbnails, or a manuscript, see what makes it tick, and anticipate the places where that machinery might catch. I’m far enough from the source to notice what the creators themselves are too entangled with their work to catch; and close enough to communicate it in practically useful terms.
The most common conception of an editor is a fixer. I fix things, sometimes; more often, I point other people towards the right tools and tell them gently but firmly when it’s time to let go. I curate and coordinate and integrate and synthesize; manage crises; reconcile necessity and reality.
# # #
Editing is inherently interstitial. Done right, it’s invisible, or nearly so: stitches so subtle as to create the illusion of seamless integrity. Pay no attention to the girl behind the curtain.
If you can hear me, I’m doing it wrong. If you – even you, the writer; you, the artist – can recognize moments where my aesthetic overwrites yours, or my voice wells up between the notes, I’m doing it wrong.
More or less often, a book will call for a direct hand – paragraphs rearranged, entries added to story notes, copy extended. Here, I play mockingbird: Show me two paragraphs of your prose, and I’ll be able to call up your cadence, spin so smoothly through your turns of phrase that, looking back, you’ll swear those words were yours from the start – and, in the end, they were.
# # #
Regardless what sentences I spend in someone else’s shoes, the real price of editing – setting aside might-have-beens – is immersion. To edit well requires a clear eye, and controlled momentum. Getting swept away is a luxury I can’t afford, and editing comics I love is always bittersweet: To allow a work I love to catch me up and carry me along is to cheat the story and its creator.
The passion isn’t lost, but tempered, from searing blast to steady flame, explosion to illumination; its fuel a future’s worth of stories.
# # #
I edit comics.
And I love my work.
An Interview with Terry Moore
Terry Moore has been writing and drawing critically acclaimed comic books since 1993, beginning with his award-winning, seminal comic Strangers in Paradise (SiP). The series is self-published by Moore through his Abstract Studio imprint, and navigates the changing relationship between two women, Francine and Katchoo. Having garnered numerous industry awards and having been published in 14 languages, Strangers in Paradise remains a perennial bestseller. Moore recently completed his award-winning SF series Echo, and is currently working on two ongoing series published by Abstract Studios: the suspense/horror series Rachel Rising, which is already a fan favorite, and the popular How to Draw series, which is published quarterly. Moore has also recently worked on Vertigo’s Fables, and Marvel’s Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and Runaways.
Q. What led you to a career in comics, and how did you start out?
A. Strangers in Paradise #1 was my first published comic book, and was released in September 1993. Before then, I had been working as a musician and TV editor. I was tired of editing, and I noticed the indie comics movement that was so strong in those days. Because I’d been cartooning and writing stories for myself my whole life, I thought I’d give it a try. Once the first issue of SiP came out, the next 18 years were a blur.
Q. Knowing what you know now, is there anything about the business of self-publishing your early work that you wish you’d done differently?
A. Actually, no. I think the winding road got me here, and that’s what matters. When I was in music and editing, working on other people’s projects never got me anywhere. When I made comics, I was determined to stick to my own thing. That made all the difference, I think.
Q. Strangers in Paradise is currently your most iconic work,
and is a series that many people have very strong positive feelings about. Yet, having finished it, would you write it differently? Now that you can see the end, would you write the beginning some other way?
A. Probably, yes. The thing about comics is you’re publishing a chapter at a time, as you write them – so the opportunity to go back and retrofit better ideas later, like a novelist, is not there. Some major plotlines in SiP were developed simply to cover errors I made early on in the story – like giving David, a Japanese-American, a Chinese surname. What was I thinking? So I developed the whole “David Qin” storyline as a way of explanation. That turned out to be a strong storyline, but it wasn’t initially planned. In a novel, you never get a chance to see those developments, because they’re found and fixed before the book is printed. Silly comics.
Q. Your work is one of the most-frequently recommended works in discussions of women reading comics. How do you feel this has affected your career?
A. It’s been good for me. Women are so good at sharing information. I also meet a lot of guys who say they got their wife or girlfriend to try my book, and now they will read other comics. My books are sort of a hybrid gateway for women who don’t read comics. If I wasn’t making comic books, I would write pop fiction and hope for the same audience. Either way, I’m happy.
Q. Do you have any idea how often you’ve been told by fans at conventions, “I thought you were a woman”? What does that interaction say to you, and what do you feel it says about your work?
A. It’s a compliment, isn’t it? It means the writing rang true for them. Maybe, when Rachel Rising becomes better known, people will say, “I thought you were dead!”
Q. Your second major creator-owned work, Echo, recently concluded. Was there anything with Echo that you wanted to do, but hadn’t been able to do before?
A. I wanted to question the validity of the great debate between science and religion, and show both sides as having strayed from some sort of third answer. I never say what the third side is, but it operates throughout the story, apart from science or God. Fun, huh?
Q. We have to ask: What is in Julie Martin’s box in the closet in Echo?
A. Something she is ashamed of but can’t help. I love her for it. Hopefully, Dillon will, too.
Q. The first installment of your How to Draw series focused on drawing women. How did that series come about?
A. There are so many books showing you how to draw, but I’ve found it also helps to know why you draw something. It makes a big difference in the final work. Several artists can draw the same thing, and each work will look very different. That has more to do with the why in each artist’s head than the how of their skill. So my How to Draw series will focus on what to do with your anatomical expertise. It’s the book I always wished I could find.
Q. What has your experience been when you’ve drawn sketches for fans at conventions? What are some memorable characters and scenarios you’ve been asked to draw?
A. Eesh, my experience is that a convention sketch is a lot of hard work done under highly distracted circumstances, in a fraction of the time you should devote to it. But you do what you can. It’s nice when someone loves their sketch and you can tell. It’s awful when they don’t.
I’ve probably drawn a couple of thousand fan sketches over the years and the No. 1 request is for Katchoo. After that it’s Francine, Tambi [from SiP], Supergirl, Casey [SiP], Batgirl, and all the other Marvel and DC women. I’m actually trying hard to not to do con sketches anymore. It’s no fun when the fan is very specific about what they want and has strict rules. I’d rather not draw at all than work like that, so I’m trying to stop altogether. It’s hard for me to say no to nice people though. I’m working on it.
Q. You’ve done both creator-owned and work-for-hire – are there more work-for-hire projects you’d like to do in the future?
A. Not really. I have my hands full building my own worlds right now. Besides, no one remembers I drew Batgirl, but everybody knows I drew Katchoo. Priorities.
Q. Finally, one of our editors would desperately like to ask you why Kixie from Paradise, Too is obsessed with strawberry cake.
A. Oh puh-leeease. Because it’s just the bestest ever!
Nineteen Panels about Me and Comics
Sara Ryan is the author of the YA novels Empress of the World and The Rules for Hearts, the Eisner-nominated short comic “Me and Edith Head,” and various comics and short stories. Most recently, she contributed to the anthologies Welcome to Bordertown (Random House, 2011), edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner, and Girl Meets Boy (Chronicle 2012), edited by Kelly Milner Halls. She is working on the graphic novel Bad Houses with Carla Speed McNeil, creator of Finder.
Panel One
CAPTION: I can’t name all the members of the X-Men. I couldn’t tell you who killed Superman. Or didn’t it happen more than once? Aren’t there actually a lot of Supermans? I know there are more than three Robins, and that one of them, notably, is female, but that’s as far as it goes.
But I can tell you Mo had a string of unfortunate rebounds after Harriet, [7] Maggie most likely won’t get back together with Hopey, [8] Roz and Chicken will never fully succeed in calming Hothead, [9] and Maybonne at any given time is more likely to be riding a bummer than feeling groovy. [10]
The comics you read inevitably inform the comics you write, or to put it slightly differently, you can’t separate your fandoms from your creations.
Panel Two
1980. I’m nine, curled up on a couch with a magazine.
The first non-newspaper comics I remember reading were in the margins of Cricket magazine. At their most minimal, the comics in Cricket functioned as footnotes, with Cricket, Ladybug, and the rest of the gang explaining hard words and potentially unfamiliar concepts. But the characters were in longer narratives, too. Stories and poems occupied the bulk of the space on each page of the magazine, while the Cricket gang’s adventures took place in the footers. I always liked the feeling that the division of space created, that the gang were close to the ground like real bugs, sometimes intersecting with the work above them, sometimes not. I didn’t know it then, but I was learning something about page layout and storytelling.
Panel Three
1985. I’m fourteen, at a sleepover with my best friend. I’m in the top bunk. It’s dark.
That’s why I can say “I think I kind of have a crush on Skywise,” [11] without actually dying of embarrassment, although I may have giggled. I might also have said that I thought “Separate Ways” by Journey was, like, the perfect song for Rayek [12] to sing to Leetah, [13] because that’s what he’d want to tell her in case anything went wrong between her and Cutter, [14] you know?
The ElfQuest books were my first graphic novels, and I devoured them the way girls growing up now devour manga. In fact, ElfQuest’s aesthetic is manga-influenced; Wendy Pini was one of the first American artists to draw in the style. She brought her own spin, of course, and the series’s palette and designs are of their time – by which I mean, lose the pointy ears and the elves wouldn’t be out of place in a hair-metal video. Why was it engaging? First and most importantly, my friends were reading it, so we could discuss the characters’ situations and speculate about future plotlines at delightful, ridiculous length. Also, the elves were totally having sex, in a sort of best-of-both-worlds framework; frolicking pre-battle free-for-alls wherein everybody gets all up in whomever they want in the heat of the moment, and super-meaningful Recognition, wherein the parties involved are not only immediately compelled to mate, they become able to read each others’ minds. If there’s a better-slash-worse combination for an adolescent simultaneously awash in generalized hormones and media-damaged enough to want a One-True-Soulmate, I do not know what it would be.
I don’t remember thinking about the ElfQuest books as comics, per se. They were simply containers for stories about characters I cared about. The fact that they contained pictures and text juxtaposed in deliberate sequence was incidental.
Panel Four
1988. I’m in high school, but I’m hanging out on campus because that’s what you do when you grow up in a college town. I’m in a coffee shop reading the alternative newsweekly.
There’s that comic again; the one that isn’t always funny, with an art style that isn’t slick and polished, and I don’t really get the title. I mean, who’s Ernie Pook, anyway? There’s something about it, though, haunting and true. So much is implied in the spaces between the panels.
Still, I was resistant. But ebullient, bossy, showoffy Marlys and her earnest, frequently lovesick big sister Maybonne won me over, and I grew to love Ernie Pook’s Comeek.
Lynda Barry accomplished so much within the constraints of four panels. One week, the strip would feature a hilariously pitch-perfect school paper by Marlys and Maybonne’s cousin Arnold in which he summarized the plot of a kung fu movie with equally accurate kid-style illustrations. Next week, Marlys and Maybonne’s mother would be reviling her children, their father and her own life. Barry’s ability to swing from goofy humor to bleak, clear-eyed realism, not simply from week to week, but often from panel to panel, was endlessly compelling.
Panel Five
1991. I’m at Common Language LGBT bookstore. I’ve just gotten up my courage to buy the queer identity accessory of the moment, freedom rings. Can I also handle buying a book with the word Dykes on the cover? I can. A dismissive friend says Yeah, I read those for a while, they’re just such a soap opera. I don’t care. I need all those dykes in my house.
Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For became my field guide to a particular lesbian subculture – based in a college town, with drama unfolding in food co-ops, political protests, group houses, classrooms, vegetarian restaurants, and, of course, the women’s bookstore, Madwimmin Books, helmed by the no-nonsense Jezanna. Once again, my way in was through the characters: neurotic self-righteous Mo, calm pragmatic Harriet, blunt libertine Lois, intellectual commitment-phobic Ginger, and the rest of the equally pleasing cast. Despite the art history classes I was taking, I wasn’t yet thinking much about the way Bechdel – or any other comics creator – drew.
Chicks Dig Comics: A Celebration of Comic Books by the Women Who Love Them Page 6
