From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment. I'm sitting across from Terry Moore, who, 1993, started Strangers in Paradise as a three-issue series.

And a scant 14 years later came to an end, an epic piece of storytelling, which I think is both novelistic and works as a film in some ways as well.

Of course, his newest book is Rachel Rising, which we have to talk about, because anything that could spin out of Batman with a positive take is pretty great for me.

And his terrific series, too, is also the limited series Echo.

First of all, Terry, thanks so much for being here.

Oh, it's a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

One of the things I was saying before we got started about Strangen's in Paradise.

First, I want to ask you about the title because it's such a great evocative title and it reinvents itself basically like every volume of the story,

doesn't it? Yeah, because it went on and on and on, like a television series, it kind of evolved

over the years as to what it was focusing on. There was always one main theme, but the title,

I pulled that from a song that I heard as a child that always, I thought it was kind of a pretty song.

This old Tony Bennett hit, Stranger in Paradise, which was from the play Kismet, which actually Harlan Ellison was in the Broadway cast of that Kismet play, by the way.

Did they fire him because he was so angry?

Yes, he cussed out the mouse.

He was in the chorus, and he told me that one time.

But anyway, I just thought that was such a pretty little melody.

And years later, when I wanted to write about relationships, I thought about people going

through their love relationships like Bulls in a China shop,'re they're strangers in a paradise when it comes to love

so I just put that title on there and the kids didn't know where it came from

so it sounded fresh but it's also the kind of lost horizon island feel of the

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