Motor Girl . . . Automatic Focus

It was a song. Maybe. I just Googled and couldn't find hide nor hair of it. I'm thinking that it was by The Catholics, a Baltimore band that I used to see at Girard's, so maybe they never made it big enough to be Google-able. But I know I have a single somewhere, so I'll have a look for that later on.


But for now, I've come to speak to you about Motor Girl by Terry Moore. 

Terry Moore (who is Google-able, but he's not the actress nor the T.E.D. speaker) has been writing, drawing, & publishing comic books for almost a quarter of a century. He's produced 107 issues of Strangers in Paradise (1993 - 2007), 30 issues of Echo (2008 - 2011), and 42 issues of Rachel Rising (2011 - 2016). Plus some other stuff in between, but those are the three major works. And that is one hell of a lot of work . . . about 3500 pages on just these three books. And I guess he's been successful, since he's still at it and there are trade editions of those major works in print. But his new comic book, Motor Girl, doesn't seem to be getting a whole hell of a lot of attention. The first issue only sold 11,587 issues, and the second was down to 8,819. Which is not good. And more than likely the numbers on issue #3 will be down from that, because that's the way these things tend to go.

Now, I don't buy too many comic books that sell all that well, but I'm a regular with The Walking Dead, whose 161st issue sold 85,459 copies the same month that Motor Girl sold 1/10th of that. And it was #11 on Comichron's sales list of 385 comics for December of 2016. So using that as a basis for comparison, I can easily say that Motor Girl #2 is at least as good as The Walking Dead #161 . . . and a hell of a lot more fun. (And make no mistake, I love The Walking Dead comic book, have read every issue, and usually make it my first read on the week it comes out.) And I wish it were at least selling as well as, say, Snotgirl (God help us, not a joke, not an imaginary comic book).

Later On . . .