Comic Book / Strangers in Paradise

The cover of the Treasury edition showing David, Katchoo, and Francine.

"I can sniff out the potential SIP fans, those looking for something different, some character driven drama with fear and loss being the kryptonite and love being the hero. This book will always continue to draw new readers in."

— Guest review of Strangers in Paradise from "The View from Flying Colours".

First there is Francine, a nice but insecure girl who dreams of a perfect marriage and cannot quite let go of her Jerkass ex-boyfriend. Next there is Katchoo, her edgy best friend who is madly in love with her. Finally there is David, a sensitive young man who is in love with Katchoo despite her constant (and harsh) rejections.

Then there is the Mafia, who Katchoo used to work for. Some of them want her back, others just want her head.

That is how Strangers In Paradise starts. First published by Antarctic Press in November 1993, the series moved by Abstract Comics, creator Terry Moore's own company, between 1996 and 2007; it consists of over 90 issues. It is generally acknowledged as a Slice of Life classic, although the occasional vergings into crime drama were not quite as well-received, and it is frequently hailed as the number one comic book to give to your girlfriend. What that means is a bit unclear, but it probably means something.

In early 2018, Terry Moore revived the title with a new story, Strangers In Paradise XXV, published 25 years after Antarctic Press published the first series.

Not to be confused with the film Stranger Than Paradise or the video game Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.

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Strangers In Paradise contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Frequent. Some loose ends are left loose forever, and some seemingly important insights and revelations are never mentioned again. The Time Skip moments were believed to fall under this banner until Francine explained that they were her psychic visions and / or speculations of the future based on her choices. One of the biggest was the "Body Bomber" storyline that was ramping up in the last couple years of the comic, and then was suddenly abandoned (possibly due to Moore deciding to end the series after starting the arc).
• Abusive Parents: Katchoo's step-father beat and raped her when she was fifteen. Her mother then told her to stop making up vicious lies.
• The Alcoholic: Recovering. Katchoo began attending AA meetings when she was eighteen. Now she is in something of an odd place; she drinks recreationally, but manages to avoid any severe over-indulgences...except for when things get out of hand.
• All Just a Dream: Happens from time to time. Sometimes the dream sequences are surrealistic parodies and clearly not "really" happening, other times it isn't clear whether or not it's a dream until much later.
• Amazonian Beauty: Tambi Baker. Even as a fictional character she is tough and hard. To a slightly lesser extent, her twin Bambi. Even Katchoo can only tell them apart by Tambi's scarred hands.
• Art Evolution: It's very gradual, but Terry Moore's art gets much less cartoony, a lot more realistic and detailed, and with much finer and surer inking.
• Art Shift: Some sequences are drawn in radically different styles. The dream sequences are most prone to this, sometimes imitating the styles of other comics.
• Ascended Extra: Casey, who is introduced as Freddie's "rebound fiancee" and initially seems mostly like a joke character, gradually gets more and more major roles in the storylines until she's one of the main characters. She easily eclipses Freddie in screentime and importance to the plot.
• The Atoner: Katchoo and David, both of whom are hoping to make up for the mistakes of their youth.
• Bad Boss: Darcy Parker was vicious and disliked by all of her staff.
• Bittersweet Ending: David dies from his brain tumor as expected, leaving Katchoo pregnant as planned along with a note telling her to move on with Francine. Katchoo and Francine embrace their love for one another, ending up together and raising their children, living each day to the fullest as a couple.
• Bookends:
  • The covers of the first and last issues are nearly identical: Francine and Katchoo in an art gallery, in the same poses. Notably, on the first issue cover, Katchoo wears a necklace with two interlinked venus symbols, indicating her sexual preference. On the last issue cover, Francine wears the same necklace. The tenth and last issue of Strangers In Paradise XXV also has the two in the same pose, this time accompanied by their daughters.
  • At the end of the very first issue, after Freddie breaks up with her because she wouldn't sleep with him (right after she discovered he was cheating on her), Francine has a minor breakdown and angrily strips naked in front of him, throwing her clothes at him while yelling at him. In the penultimate issue, after Katchoo has accused her of not being willing to commit to a relationship, a much more in-control Francine angrily begins stripping naked in front of her and throwing her clothes at her. Luckily for them both, this time everything turns out a lot better.
• Brawn Hilda: The Baker twins are tall, muscular and scarred from battle (And self-infliction) and aggressive enough to overpower any other character in the series. Unlike most examples of the trope they are not unattractive, but their long hair is their sole "girly" trait.
• Break the Cutie
• Breast Expansion: Casey gets breast implants. Twice.
• Broken Bird: Katchoo is introduced as a Sour Outside, Sad Inside Jerkass with severe anger issues, who verbally and physically abuses people around her for petty reasons and sometimes for no reason at all. But frequently she lapses into a Broken Bird state where she just gives up, wallows in depression, alcoholism and self-loathing.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Darcy has an...unhealthy interest in her half-brother.
• Butt-Monkey: Freddie just can not catch a break. Of course, maybe if he did not set himself up for so many falls...
• Character Development: The series defining characteristic as, without an overarching plot beyond day-to-day life, the progression of the characters is what drives the story.
• Comically Missing the Point: Casey, the sweetest girl there is, had no idea that Katchoo was talking about joining the new iteration of the Big Six when she mentioned "going back to work." It was this display of naiveté that helped keep Katchoo out of the game and got her painting again, which was what Casey thought she meant in the first place.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: It shows Francine’s growth on how she views sexuality and relationships when she’s more upset at Brad for not just telling her he was attracted to another woman, instead going behind her back and cheating on her.
  Francine: Did you ever ask me to do anything I couldn’t handle? If you wanted to be with another woman, why didn’t you just ask me instead of going behind my back? I might have said yes. Did you ever think of that? Maybe I like women too. We could have had a three-way.
  Brad (stunned): ...Really?
  Francine: Well, now you’ll never know, will you?
• Crossover: In Terry Moore's subsequent series Echo, Ivy Raven, an NSB agent who has gotten involved in the potentially world-shattering events of the story, begins to suspect that her superiors in Washington might not be as trustworthy as she had previously believed. The other characters ask if there is anybody she can go to for help, somebody outside the system who would nevertheless be able to give the important answers, and Ivy mentions that she might have somebody she can call. The next panel is apparently Katchoo getting a phone call. Tambi guest stars two issues later, #28, where she tracks down a former Parker Girl who stayed in her cover as a member of the US military after the operation collapsed.
  • Five Years, a new title Terry Moore started in May of 2019, ramps this up into a Massive Multiplayer Crossover as Katchoo and Francine encounter cast members of Echo, Rachel Rising and Motor Girl in an effort to save the world from the threat of the Phi Bomb, a proposed weapon that, once it's completed in five years, will start a chain-reaction that will destroy all hydrogen atoms. Everywhere.
• Darwinist Desire: After Darcy Parker's death, Katchoo's half-sister Tambi demands that Darcy Parker's half-brother David have a child with Katchoo to ensure her family line will have a legacy in the Parker empire. To her shock, David turns the tables and offers to make Tambi the mother instead, which would leave Katchoo free to pursue Francine. Later, we see it didn't work, but she had a great time trying.
• Deadpan Snarker: Katchoo speaks almost entirely in sarcasms and quips. Good-natured ones if she's happy, hurtful ones if she's annoyed or upset, LOUD ones if she's angry.
• Dead Person Impersonation: David Qin/Yousaka Takahashi
  • Later on, Katchoo also impersonates Darcy, in order to confuse and distract Veronica and rescue Francine. Of course, it's not a long term impersonation, but it still qualifies.
• Death of the Hypotenuse: Of course, which hypotenuse is the more tricky question.
• Depraved Bisexual: Darcy and Veronica, both of whom are just fucked up people.
• Derailing Love Interests: Conveniently, Francine's husband turns out to be cheating on her.
• Direct Line to the Author: In the (possible?) future, Katchoo and Francine's daughter Ashley is attempting to publish a story, based on their life, titled Strangers In Paradise. Since the canonicity of this future isn't quite clear, it's a little vague whether this scene means the entire comic is actually Ashley's fictionalized retelling of Katchoo and Francine's story or not — though it does rather neatly explain away some continuity errors and Aborted Arcs by having Ashley admit that since she's writing about things that happened before she was even born, she got some details wrong.
• Dirty Harriet: Special Agent Sara Ryan
• Does Not Like Men: Katchoo. David is a begrudging exception, except when he's not.
• Dogged Nice Guy: David is potentially the very epitome of this trope.
• The Don: Sal Tucciani, chairman of the Big Six.
• Door-Closes Ending: How the finale ends.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The comic is quite generous with showing women beating on or otherwise heaping notable abuse on men, and either playing it entirely for laughs or brushing it off as no big deal. Katchoo slapping and punching David is shown as proof of her terrible mental state, but the narrative still treats their relationship as basically romantic. This aspect of the comic is toned down considerably in later issues, though.
• Dragon Lady: Darcy.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Katchoo is a recovering alcoholic. She's mostly on top of things, but when life slaps her too hard she hits the bottle hard.
• Everyone Is Bi: Seemingly all of the women. Oddly, none of the men.
• Flanderization: Not within the main comic, but in the Spin-Off Babies mini-series SIP Kids, which re-imagines the characters as young children, David has been hit with this big time. While the other characters are mainly slightly exaggerated and more childish version of their adult selves (Darcy is a Spoiled Brat, the Tomboy and Girly Girl contrasts between Francine and Katchoo are more pronounced), David's Nice Guy and Butt-Monkey status have been exaggerated to make him a Friend to All Living Things and an outright Chew Toy. He's also become a total Cloudcuckoolander who only makes the occasional contact with reality.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • "Molly and Poo", a dark psychological thriller.
  • "Princess Warrior", a Xena parody in which Francine is cast as Xena while Katchoo plays Gabrielle. David, of course, gets into the act as Joxer.
  • "Not With My Cape, You Don't", nominally a superhero parody, but one that keeps going off the rails and being more about the comically awful relationship between waitress Casey and loser supervillain Freddie, with Katchoo as an amnesiac superheroine who accomplishes nothing except falling off a skyscraper (she forgot she couldn't fly), before Freddie accidentally blows up the world, leaving everyone arguing with each other in the afterlife. It's All Just a Dream.
• Freudian Excuse: Katchoo's sour, bitter attitude is the result of her Trauma Conga Line of a life: raped by her stepfather as a teenager, living on the streets of Los Angeles as a homeless alcoholic, working as a call girl, and getting involved with Darcy and her criminal empire. Frankly, it's a wonder she's as functional as she is.
  • Freddie also has one, though it's only detailed in one issue: his father was an alcoholic who bullied and criticized him constantly, and his mother smothered him in affection to try to make up for the lack of fatherly love.
• Funbag Airbag
• Gambit Pileup: It would be faster to list all of the characters who weren't working under the auspice of some secret agenda at least once during the series.
• Genki Girl: Casey, "cheerleader for the soul"
• Genius Bruiser: Tambi, whose terror-inducing physical presence is almost equal to her abilities to pull the strings.
• Generation Xerox: They don't play a very large role, but in XXV and Five Years it gets increasingly obvious that Francine and Katchoo's respective daughters Ashley and Koo both take heavily after their mothers, not only in looks but in personality as well — though thankfully they seem to be a lot more well-adjusted. They're both rambunctious little girls, but Ashley is the sweet-natured and romantic Cuddle Bug while Koo is the cheeky Mouthy Kid and Fearless Fool.
• Genre-Busting: It's a Slice of Life story, mixed lesbian romantic comedy, crime drama, and on occasion a Xena parody.
• Genre Shift: From relationship comedy/drama to crime drama and back again...and again...and maybe a third time, too.
• Girl Next Door: Francine really is a sweet, good natured girl from a small town. This is what makes her so special.
• Girlish Pigtails: Casey occasionally wears them, after she divorces Freddie and her Genki Girl persona really begins showing.
• Handwraps of Awesome: The Baker-Choovanski family's Harbinger of Asskicking.
• Heel–Face Turn
• Heir Club for Men
• Hidden Depths: Everyone. Especially Casey, who debuts as an apparent Dumb Blonde before showing her softer and more insightful side, and having been a near-Parker Girl assigned to protect Katchoo from assassination attempts all along.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Tambi and Bambi Parker are both tall, blonde bodybuilders with extremely long hair, with only one detail differentiating them: Tambi has Self-Harm scars on her hands.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Pretty much Katchoo's opinion of sleeping with David.
• Intimate Artistry: Art and its creation is a recurring theme:
  • Katchoo uses her art to express her anger, resentment and guilt spurred by her abusive childhood and drug/criminal early adulthood. She starts the series working mainly in male figures of exaggerated sexualization, but branches out into different styles as she grows and deals with her issues. Her portraits of Francine, who she has had feelings for since childhood, are regarded by everyone as an expression and profession of love.
  • The trope is deconstructed when FBI agent Sara Bryan goes undercover to get close to the Katchoo, showing how the emotional connection can be dependent on the intent and thoughts of the participants. She originally asks to be Katchoo's assistant, but agrees to be an artistic model after Katchoo says that she does not need an assistant. To Katchoo, their interactions and resultant artwork are expressions of femininity and personal beauty (Not to mention a general friendship), but behind the cover identity Sara feels ashamed and violated by the semi-erotic portraits and the intimacy of the situations. She particularly dreads the reaction from her parents and the rest of the Bureau after the artwork is disseminated to galleries and collectors across the country. When the truth of Sara's background comes out, Katchoo feels crushed and betrayed.
  First meeting between Katchoo and Sara, looking at old paintings of Francine
  Sara: Can I ask you something? Did you love her? Or is it an illusion—this feeling of intimacy in your work? Are you really this insightful...this tender...or just a gifted mirror?
  Katchoo: It's not my place to say.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Various characters are doing this constantly. Freddie, however, inverts it.
• Jerkass: Freddie really is a jackass son-of-a-bitch. Despite being given a fair amount of development throughout the series and at times even seeming sympathetic, he never stops being a jerk... though there are hints of him slowly developing more compassion during the later parts of the story, and during his last appearance he gives the upset Casey a surprisingly heartfelt and insightful pep talk, telling her not to give up on her friends. While he never really loses his Small Name, Big Ego tendencies, it does seem like he Took a Level in Kindness to some degree.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Ok, Freddie Femur is a jerkass of the first water; he's a creepy obsessive patronising sleazebag who treats women like sex objects, has all the tact and charm of brain surgery performed with a hammer and chisel, and he thinks he's hilarious while he's just slimy and cheeseball — but that doesn't mean his often mean-spirited comments are always wrong. In fact, on several occasions he has a point, especially considering Katchoo and her toxic attitude.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: With everything he does, Freddie also goes out of his way to try and get a rapist convicted because it's the right thing to do, (rarely) helps people because why not, and successfully recovers David's inheritance, fully knowing that Katchoo, who he barely tolerates, is going to inherit it, out of respect for the trust David had in him when he gave him the job. Also, when Casey is about to leave for home after being revealed to have been working as a Parker Girl all along in David's will his attempt to convince her why she should stay after all is actually kind, pretty endearing and most of all honest and completely correct - and lo and behold it helps work everything out. Ok, he makes a pass at Casey while he does it might just be showing form on his part, but it seems more likely he's actually trying to be a nice guy while making a joke at his own reputation as a horndog jerk to his ex-wife.

• Kill and Replace: Yousaka Takahashi began to live the life of David Qin after he killed him in a pointless gang fight.
• Kissing Cousins: The Takahashi family has a few issues.
• Knight Templar Big Sister
• Kudzu Plot: Between the espionage drama, the soap-opera romance drama, the fantasy sequences and the visions of possible futures... yeah.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Casey experimented in college and is more than open to a relationship in the present.
• Locked in a Room: Invoked. Casey, sweet devious Casey, figures out how to help Katchoo and Francine make up
• Love Dodecahedron: Katchoo, David, and Francine are the constant objects of desire for every character in the series, including each other.
• Love Triangle: Which gradually grows and evolves and turns into a Love Dodecahedron (See above)
• Loving a Shadow: A big conflict amongst the cast is they all want to be loved for who they are rather than the idealized version their potential partners have in their heads. Even as Francine becomes more amendable to loving Katchoo, she still thinks Katchoo puts her on a pedestal and doesn't see the messy, flawed person she is.
• The Mafia: The people Katchoo worked for are somewhere between this and The Illuminati.
• The Mole: Almost everyone at one point or another. Well, maybe not Francine or Freddie. Maybe.
• Morality Pet:
  • Francine is a big one for Katchoo. Especially in the early comics, it's quickly established that while Katchoo is incredibly angry at the world, she's got the world's biggest soft spot for Francine. Their relationship isn't perfect by any means (on some occasions it can come across as directly abusive), but Francine is the person that Katchoo will consistently try to be a better person for.
  • Later in the comic, Casey too gets this role for Katchoo. As somebody who is not involved in any way with Francine or the Big Six or the Parker Girls, she often gives Katchoo a good grounding in reality and at least once helps pull her away when she starts to sink back into her past life.
• Murphy's Bullet: Bambi's death is caused by a stray bullet.
• Naïve Everygirl: Francine is a clear example of this trope in the high school flashback stories; she's sweet and not terribly aware of herself or the world around her, but she's got a ton on insecurities and body issues. In the main story, and to some extent in the "potential future" segments, Francine is an example of what might happens when a Naïve Everygirl grows up and has to live in the adult world — turns out she's not the world's best at coping.
• No Guy Wants an Amazon: Tambi's default attitude towards romance for most of the series. In the last few chapters, she admits to Casey that she's grown tired of always maintaining the badass facade and I Just Want to Be Loved.
• Not Helping Your Case: Brad insists his affair didn't mean anything and he doesn't love her like he loves Francine. That makes it worse, that he was willing to risk their marriage for something less than love.
• Not So Stoic: Tambi, if this exchange in SIP XXV #1 is any indication:
  Katchoo: Okay,I know that look, what's wrong?
  Tambi: I don't have a look. I'm stoic.
  Katchoo: Oh please. Y'know I used to think you only had two looks, mean and meaner. Then I saw you hold my babies.
• Obfuscating Genki
• Off the Wagon: Katchoo has a pretty rough history with drugs and alcohol that she tries to keep a handle on, but when things go bad and she winds up back with Tambi she loses control and goes wild.
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Big Six, who have controlled America since The Great Depression...sort of. Their actual level of control of the government is never specifically nailed down.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Katchoo is only ever called by her legal name of Katina by people who aren't familiar with her: among her circle of friends, it's exclusively "Katchoo".
  • Even more than her is Tambi and Bambi: it's not even clear at first that those are nicknames until an argument between Tambi and Katchoo reveals her real name: Mary Beth. A later issue gives us Bambi's legal name as well: Sara.
• Pair the Spares: Tambi/Casey, which came way out of left field even with recent revelations.
• Paranoia Fuel: In-universe. Katchoo's life is so full of spies and double crosses that by the end she's flatout asking people to their faces if they're setting her up. Couldn't help her preexisting trust issues.
• Parental Neglect: Katchoo's step-father beat and raped her when she was a teenager, but her mother's refusal to take it seriously, even telling her to stop making up these vicious lies, caused just as much lasting damage to her psyche.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Tambi and Bambi Baker fit this to a T: Tambi is calm and stoic, not to mention more calculating and ambitious, while Bambi is more hot-headed, impulsive, and emotional. They also balance out their respective employers: Tambi works for the loud, violent, angry Sal Tucciani, while Bambi is a lieutenant for the colder and more scheming Darcy.
• Polyamory: Katchoo, David and Casey, for a while, as they deal with troubling news and try to make each other happy until the end.
• The Power of Trust: At one point, when it looks like Katchoo and Francine are really over (No, do not ask which time, there are too many to count) Katchoo decides that she might as well "go back to work." Casey is delighted to hear this, since she has always loved Katchoo's paintings and letting out some of her emotion will be good for her, and Katchoo never has the heart to tell her she originally meant "work" to mean joining the new iteration of the Big Six.
• Power Trio
• Progressively Prettier: Two of the main themes of the series are Francine losing weight and gaining self-confidence while Katchoo gets a handle on her drug/alcohol problems and deals with her personal issues stemming from her youth, both of which result in slimmer, healthier, more-together women than were present at the beginning of the series. How this explains Francine's longer legs and Katchoo's expanding bustline, however....
• Psycho Lesbian: Darcy, who has the "psycho" part down pat.
• Rape and Switch: Played straight...sort of. To the end of the story Katchoo never self-identifies as gay, but her experiences in her youth have made her permanently opposed to a relationship with men.
• Rape as Backstory: Katchoo's step-father beat and raped her for her fifteenth birthday. Her mother asked her to stop making up these vicious lies.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: A very realistic example; Francine is the target of lust for a lot of characters (Katchoo, Freddie, etc), but she deeply resents it. Partly it's because of her body issues, and partly it's because she wants someone to love the real her rather than some idealized version they've created in their head.
• Re Write: Issue 43. A much older Katchoo and Francine have a daughter, an author, who is trying to publish a story based on their life. At the end of this little interlude it says "end of version one," and the same events are retold in a slightly different fashion. Fandom's reaction was... mixed.
• Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!: The first issue begins with Katchoo shooting her alarm clock and they keep getting broken throughout the series.
• Scars Are Forever:
  • Katchoo has scars on her wrist in a "z" shape, but there was never an official explanation for their cause.
  • Tambi Baker is covered with scars, with the ones on her forearms the most obvious. She used to cut herself while in the employ of Darcy Parker.
• Scenery Censor: Sometimes, parts of the room or environment conveniently censor naughty bits whenever a character is completely or partially nude.
• Self-Harm: Tambi Baker used to cut herself while in the employ of Darcy Parker.
• Stalker with a Crush: Freddie is not a Dogged Nice Guy, he is just creepy and offensive.
  • Rusty's stalker in the Las Vegas subplot. Like him or not, Freddie was never like that.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The FBI investigation of Katchoo spans dozens of issues, but changes virtually nothing in the end.
• Satellite Love Interest: Subverted. Casey is introduced as the silicone-infused-aerobics-instructor, and this seems to be all there is to her, but as the story progresses her character, personality and history are expanded to equal any of the main characters.
• Spinoff Babies: A four-issue mini-series called SIP Kids, where the main characters are re-imagined as six-year old kids.
• Slasher Smile: Casey of all people gives a great one of these while conspiring with David how to get Katchoo and Francine to start talking with each other again. Particularly brilliant because she's almost never shown with anything but a big smile on her face, and this evil grin is so out of nowhere that it's incredibly funny.
• Slice of Life: Despite sliding into crime drama quite often, and sometimes playing around with other genres, "slice of life" is probably the comic's main genre.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: This is about as civil as Katchoo and Freddie ever manage to be towards one another.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Planned out by Casey and Katchoo when they find out David has a brain tumor.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: There are a couple of examples in this comic, but none more prominent than Katchoo — especially in the early issues. After a hugely messed-up life and suffering tons of trauma, she's by all accounts a terrible person, especially towards anyone who happens to be male, she actively pushes everyone away and keeps them at an arm's length by being verbally and sometimes physically abusive. Later in the comic she slips into Broken Bird more often, but her abusive tendencies still rear their ugly heads from time to time.
• Superhero Episode: Two of them, but both turn out to be All Just a Dream.
• The Syndicate: The Big Six are apparently everywhere with their influence stretching over everything.
• Tattooed Crook: Former Parker Girls can be identified by the lily tattoo they all wear somewhere on their body.
• Textplosion: It did this from time to time, under the pretence that the reader was looking at pages from a SIP prose novel.
• Time Skip: Frequent, none of which end up corresponding to what actually happens in the story proper.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Downplayed, but very much present, with Katchoo and Francine. The dynamic is repeated with their daughters Koo and Ashley.
  • Butch Lesbian/Lipstick Lesbian: Tambi and Casey, and eventually Katchoo and Francine if you are pretty loose with the definition of "Butch" and "Lipstick"
• Took a Level in Badass: David in the Child of Rage arc.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: David dies in the final act.
• Tsundere: Katchoo, towards David.
• Two Girls and a Guy: For quite some time, this was the main dynamic of the comic, with David, Francine and Katchoo. The dynamic got a little mixed up with characters moving apart and back together again several times, plus Casey getting bigger roles and essentially becoming the fourth main character.
• Villainous Breakdown: Veronica's starts pretty much the moment she becomes the boss.
• Villainous Incest: Darcy tries to hit on her brother David. He's very much not interested.
• Villainy Discretion Shot: Veronica's demise.
• Wall of Text: SiP can be quite wordy, and Moore frequently abandons the graphic format altogether and just resorts to full-on prose passages for several pages. "Molly & Poo" is told almost entirely in prose, with only a few accompanying illustrations.
• Wham Episode: Reading the will.
• WHAM Word: Casey saying Darcy's name when Katchoo mentions indirectly her past, the only forewarning about The Reveal of her being a near-Parker Girl that has been assigned to protect Katchoo from assassination attempts that happens during the reading of the will.
• Worst News Judgement Ever: A Running Gag is that the news tend to focus on the less important news and are incompetent about it. For example, in "Molly & Poo" the news that Molly has been aquitted in spite of overwhelming evidence because they forgot to read her her rights interrupts a reportage about the US bombing Alabama, and both the newscaster and the reporter on site fail to explain why in spite of Molly's lawyer saying it very clearly (to the reporter it was too complicated, and for the newscaster it was "too boring").
• Yakuza: The Takahashi family.
• Yandere: Veronica.
• Yo-Yo Plot Point: Will they or won't they? Or they?

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