Comic Radio Show

Or would you rather read the translation?

CRS: Where did you find the ideas for "Strangers in Paradise" (SiP), how did it all start?

TM: I had the idea for SiP from living with women my whole life, seeing what they go through, listening to what they were yelling at me, seeing their frustrations and what they're dealing with. I'm certainly aware of all the big men stories, stories of men conquering the world and all that, but I didn't feel that there were enough stories about what women go through. And I just found it interesting.
On the other hand I knew I was going to draw a story for a long time and I just decided I would rather spend the rest of my life drawing women than men. That's just a personal interest. (laughs) That's kind of it, in a simple way.

CRS: You have a lot of female readers from what I can see in your letter column, a lot of them saying that SiP is the only comic they ever read.

TM: I never planned on that. I didn't think that that's gonna happen, it's a complete surprise. At first I had a lot of criticism, no, not criticism but a lot of questions, a lot of doubt, a lot people, women included, had me on probation. It was like: Here's a man trying to write about women. Let's see what he does with this, let's see how good he is at this. If he starts doing all the male fantasies... They were ready to pounce on me, ready to attack, ready to get after me if I do it wrong. So I felt that pressure, but I just did the story that I had in my head and fortunately for me a lot of women seemed to approve.

CRS: Even my girlfriend liked your comic, although she's not interested in comics at all.

TM: I hear that a lot. I've been hearing this from the very beginning. The women who already read comics did not originally read SiP. They were too busy reading Elfquest, Sandman and Wonder Woman. The women readers that I had in the beginning were all girlfriends and wives. They started talking to other women and then the new women readers I got were women who didn't read comics at all. They heard about it by word of mouth. And now at the very end I gradually getting those women that where in comics all along, the veterans. They have been the hardest to get. They are already very loyal to some other comics, they don't switch over very easy.

CRS: Do you know the percentage of female readers?

TM: Yeah, it's about 50 percent. From what I can tell from the people I meet and the letters I get 50 percent of my readers are women and 50 percent of those women do not read another comic. I'm not proud of it but surprised, it's amazing to me, because I didn't plan on that.

CRS: How do you plan to continue with SiP? There's a new story arch starting in August.

TM: I know the whole story all the way to the end. I have the end scheduled for November 1999.

CRS: What's going to happen after that with SiP? Some new stories are something completely new?

TM: I'm going to start a new series called KAIPPI and gonna run that for a little while. After that I either come back to SiP or do a totally new series, maybe one called Katchoo. SiP as the big story has an end. It's one story with a beginning and an end and it's time to get there. And I have these other ideas that I'm very excited to do. This Kaippi story is a big, big one and
it's really three series jammed into one. The way I made SiP, it was not just one idea but it was a whole bunch of ideas put into one story. I try to do the comic like a Beatles song, it's not just one tune straight through but it was a lot of ideas in one song. I think that's a good way to create and so I tried to do my series that way. With Kaippi it's another thing, it all mixes together. I could have made three different series but I'm only going to do one with all the stories meshed together.

CRS: Is this new series again something women might like?

TM: I hope so. I'm not an expert on that, so it would be foolish for me to predict. I hope they like it. I can tell you that the lead character Kaippi is a woman. It's kind of a cross between SiP, Xena, Blade Runner, Star Trek. I don't know, it's hard to describe.

CRS: O.k., we'll have to wait for that. Back to the present: In July (1998) you'll publish "The Warrior Princess" one shot of SiP. How did you come up with this idea?

TM: I just love the Xena story, it's one of the TV shows that I watch. I heard from a lot of retailers that whole lot of my readers like Xena, too. So I thought: "You know what? Our characters are kind of the same." We have the tall brunette and the short blonde and the third wheel guy, who's kinda tagging along. We have the villain big blonde. I've got all of those characters, too. It would be very easy if my characters did a little dream sequence and it fits. And it's fun.