Paradise Too

(Abstract, 2000-2003)
™ and © Abstract Studio

Insightful. Delightful. Hilarious. Surprising.

These are but a few of the praises that come up short of describing cartoonist Terry Moore’s Paradise Too. In issue #5, for instance, the main story involves a pretty mathematician (a cross between Veronica, Laura Petrie, and Alice T. Schafer) anxiously awaiting the arrival of her date. In the process, she’s chastised via phone by her overprotective mother, greeted by who she thinks is her date (in the issue’s funniest two panels), and asked by a quirky, distrustful, English-abusing Miss Lulu to feed her cat, which turns out to be Kixie, an annoying (if amusing) little fairy.

Following the opening tale are a number of comic strips that rival Rose Is Rose, Foxtrot, and anything else in the funny papers — and single-panel cartoons that are as insightful and as witty as some of the better stuff found in Playboy and The New Yorker. “How Britney Spears Sees the World” and “No Matter What He Tried, Ronald Couldn’t Hide the Fact That He’d Bought a Chick Car” are certainly worthy of photocopying and magnetizing to the office refrigerator.

This is the comic book to give friends who “don’t read funny-books” and have no interest in “that super-hero stuff.”

— Brett Weiss

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