Terry Moore is no Stranger to quality reads
By Terry Moore – Everybody’s got a list of books they love and remember. I can’t begin to tell you everything I love in 600 words or less, but I can give you a primer. And to make it look official, I stayed up all night alphabetizing it! You’re welcome.
Anything (that starts with an “A,” see?) by Milo Manara. Like Butterscotch, Click!, or the Fellini book. Manara is known for his erotic tales and beautiful art done with a single pen, but oh, God, it is so beautiful. Nobody draws like Manara. His women are sexy, with tiny noses and long legs. His linework is deceptively simple, defining a world of space and magnificent architecture without heavy blacks or shading. This is a technique similar to that found in work by Carl Larsson, Aubrey Beardsley, and somebody else I can’t think of right now. I adore this kind of art. If it had gone to my high school, I would have tried to ask it out, I adore it that much. Anyway, be warned: Manara’s work can be very explicit, so don’t try giving one of his books to your mother for Christmas. On the other hand, if your love life’s gone a little stale lately…
By God (see, that’s a “B”), pay any price asked for a copy of Idyll, by Jeffrey Jones. Inside it are some of the most gorgeous pen-and-ink drawings of women you will ever find. I stared at this book for years. Then I lost it and haven’t seen a copy since, but I still remember it. It’s that good. If you get a copy, can I borrow it?
Certainly, I can’t leave out National Lampoon magazines from the 1970s. This was the decade that made that magazine’s reputation. P.J. O’Rourke was the head edit honcho. The writers were incredibly funny. (NL’s Family Vacation was originally a wickedly funny article from this period.) But one of the best things was in the back—the comics! (Yay! The crowd goes crazy.) Two that really made an impact on me were Trots And Bonnie and Two-Year Affair. Two-Year Affair was just that: the ongoing story of a couple’s relationship and how they broke up. Sound familiar? It was drawn very realistically. I’d never seen anything like it before. And Trots and Bonnie was about girls and their friendship. (Hey! There’s an idea, huh? Why doesn’t anybody write about stuff like that nowadays? Oh, wait…) T&B also showed their most private and embarrassing moments, like the time Bonnie tried to masturbate in the bathroom while her dog made sarcastic remarks. I mean, how many times has that happened to you, y’know? That’s why a lot of people have cats, I think.
Do I ever read anything besides comics? Have I read anything done since 1985? Sure. I read the back of my Lucky Charms box every morning. I read the cable TV guide. I’ve also read and recommend everything by Robert Heinlein and Roger Zelazny. Time Enough For Love, by Heinlein, is a masterpiece of science fiction that should be read only while listening to Beethoven or Garbage, either one—but never both at once. Actually, go ahead and try it. And when your mom or girlfriend comes into the room and tells you to turn that crap down, just hand her your Manara books and shut the door. When you hear screaming from the other side of the door, you can rest assured they are squeals of delight and gratitude from another grateful convert to the world of imagination.
