Lost Girls (HC)
Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Melinda Gebbie
Company: Top Shelf
A few months back, legendary cartoonist John Byrne called me a “complete asshole” for wanting to read Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls (it happened here). I wasn’t taken aback. Byrne’s infamously cranky and took issue with Lost Girls being an explicitly sexual story featuring characters from kids’ lit, including one whose rights aren’t public domain in the UK. That last item’s a purely legal matter, irrelevant to the book’s quality. As to whether it’s beyond the pale for the heroines of Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland to engage in fictional sexploits, I say poppycock. Not only is Lost Girls never, ever going to be confused with the girls’ original adventures (and at $75 for the three-volume, slipcased set, no kid could afford it anyway), but I firmly believe those original adventures are a foundation sturdy enough to survive reinterpretation, analysis, even deconstruction.
Or did Anne Rice’s erotic Sleeping Beauty stories cast a permanent pall on Charles Perrault’s original fairy tale? Hell, Disney’s cartoons are more likely to distort fairy tales in the public psyche than Lost Girls. And for those who think it simply goes “too far,” I hope you’re not reading Vertigo’s popular book, Fables. Fables is the best monthly book on the market, but let’s not pretend it hasn’t recast Prince Charming as a womanizer, planted one of the Three Little Pigs’ head on a pike Lord of the Flies-style or revealed Goldilocks to’ve bedded one of the Three Bears.
Alright, so Lost Girls has a right to exist. Whew! But is it any GOOD?
Umm… parts? I’d love to join the chorus of voices proclaiming Lost Girls to be a bold artistic vision, but I think they’ve bought into the Moore mystique. Beyond Moore putting his rep slightly at risk with a project he stridently refers to as “pornography” (let’s be honest, though: that it puts literary aspirations before wankability distances it from the definition of porn for most), there’s nothing profoundly daring at work in Lost Girls. Even Moore’s immaculate plot structures and historical research feel a bit old hat this go-round. You go in expecting the Kama Sutra, you get the missionary position.
Set in the months prior to World War I, Lost Girls imagines that fairy tale heroines Alice, Dorothy Gale and Wendy Darling are all real women, each the appropriate age to their story’s original publication (Dorothy’s in her 20s; Wendy her 30s; Alice her 50s). Circumstances have brought them all to a posh Austrian resort where they become both friends and lovers. Their sexual lives equate roughly with their backstories and ages. Alice is mature and comfortable with her appetites; Dorothy has some outward shyness but a fierce streak of adventurousness; and Wendy, who “grew up” at the end of Peter Pan, is portrayed as sexually sheltered, trapped in a loveless marriage to a white-haired businessman.
Amidst the dreamy sensuality of the resort, the girls quickly break the ice and find themselves engaged in guiltless lovemaking. The heart of Lost Girls is the stories they get to swapping of their youthful adventures – Freudian retellings of their fairy tales, with the fantastic occurrences revealed to be metaphors for sexual awakening and taboo-breaking experimentation. Moore’s as clever as you’d expect with these: The Cowardly Lion of Dorothy’s story is revealed as a farmhand who talks a big game of getting laid but secretly fears women. Captain Hook is a pedophile who stalks the innocent-if-incestuous sexual games of Wendy and friends, the ticking croc chasing him visualized as the vagina of a grown women - the embodiment of his fear of aging.
Uneasy about any of this stuff? If so, Lost Girls isn’t for you, as it features innumerable sexual acts, both straight and gay, increasing in frequency as a meta-parallel to the act of lovemaking itself (foreplay to sex to climax). Rape, incest, and bondage all make the scene, and underage sexual experimentation is depicted in both negative and positive (or at least neutral) contexts. Where I was hoping for a thoughtful exploration, though, I mostly got a heavy-handed treatise calling for the reader to cast taboos aside and “make love, not World War I.” Consequences to sexual abuses are glimpsed, but ultimately minimized in relation to the sheer omnipresence of sexual glee. In one of the more disturbing chapters, the hotel owner (a connoisseur of erotica) speaks persuasively for the distinction between immoral sexual fantasies and actually acting on said fantasies: “Fiction and fact: only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them.” A laudable sentiment, but eventually he confesses that he really has prostituted children, only to have his confession dismissed by the girls as “dirty talk” in the midst of an orgy. In the larger context, Moore may be warning that the lines can blur dangerously, but since the characters don’t take the confession seriously and ecstasy is the order of the day in most scenes, it feels like a tacked-on warning. Nor is their any meaningful discussion of STDs or unwanted pregnancies, the guys in Lost Girls being exceptionally talented at withdrawing before their swimmers go swimming.
The one element of Lost Girls I’ve no reservations about is Melinda Gebbie’s amazing art. Colorful, painterly, baroque, imaginative, impressionistic… all this, and flexible enough to evolve to suit each chapter. Gebbie takes explicitness beyond the banality of strict anatomy and imbues it with a sweet artistry. And her visuals are up to the more ambitious elements of Moore’s script, whether it’s the humor of suggestive shadowplay on a wall or the merging of sexuality with fairy tale imagery. She even recreates in some chapters the styles of erotic artists of the past, from Beardsley to Mucha to Schiele. Stunning work, and buoyantly erotic even when Moore’s formal writing structures threaten Lost Girls with a decidedly mechanical quality. It might also be noted that the mere presence of a female artist dispels fears of Lost Girls as a purely male-centric fantasy, but it’s dismissive of Gebbie’s talent to fixate on her contribution as a mere act of legitimization. Her work is remarkable, period.
So what to say of the full impact of the year’s most controversial piece of sequential art? During the course of reading it, Lost Girls certainly pushed me to think about sex, though not in a particularly deep or meaningful way. There’s the usual Moore cleverness filtered through the usual Moore structure of ironically juxtaposed imagery. Nice enough. There are some imaginatively realized vignettes and I like the dreamy quality that envelopes the whole affair, especially the night of passion at the performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. But disappointment sets in when the reader realizes that Lost Girls only ever flirts with truly challenging questions, more content to trot out truisms that’d only make Pat Robertson sweat: sex is liberating and we’d generally be happier if we got more of it; sex is preferable to war; many sexual taboos have no inherent wrongness to them.
That’s it? Yeah, that’s it. Not the most exciting of follow-throughs. Or, put in its own context: Lost Girls is interesting, occasionally exciting foreplay…but the actual sex is pretty “meh.”
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Thanks for the review.
In Moore’s defense, the book is probably not primarily aimed at someone with your take on sexuality.* Of course, it can merely chip away at those more influenced by more puritan sexual morals, because they won’t buy it in the first place but that’s a problem with anything open about its attempts to broaden horizons.
I mean, I agree that none of the things you described are particularly revolutionary, but then again, I think the people outraged or revulsed by the mere thought of a porn comic starring Wendy et. al. are the same kind of puritans who made Janet Jacksons exposed nipple a major national drama in the US.
15 Sep 2006 at 6:02 am
QuoteThing is, I think that Moore is actually irresponsible to the call for sexual liberation in soft-pedaling risks both physical and emotional. From Gaiman’s early review of the book, I was expecting Moore to confront consequences head-on, and we did see how youthful sexual experimentation and abuse led the girls to where they were as adults, but even then the depiction of consequences seem mild. Alice gets raped and prostituted, and the only real effect is she’s off dudes? And even that consequence is undermined by the fact her resultant sexual openess frees up Dorothy and Wendy? No STDs? No pregnancies?
I think that if Moore wanted to do anything beyond preach to the converted and show off some clever symbolism, he needed to be more willing to confront some of the harsher realities of total sexual liberation. He almost did with the hotel owner’s confession of a sordid past, but seemed to bail at the moment of truth, leaving the heroines to air-headedly let him go as his dirty stories inspire them to sexual fervor. I presume this is meant to show the moral ambiguity of pornography, where dark acts might have gone into its creation, but the stimulation it provides can be healthy, but Moore merely hints, never pushing the confrontation between fantasy and reality. It’s a letdown, as if Moore was afraid to explore the very challenge he laid out for himself.
Why expect the puritanical types to give the book the time of day if it’s not willing to ask some harder questions of its own point of view?
15 Sep 2006 at 7:23 am
QuoteI’m not by any means a puritanical type. I don’t intend of giving the book a hard time. I just don’t have any intention of buying or reading it.
I usually enjoy seeing characters we know and love reinterpreted, put into new circumstances and situations. It is always interesting to me, and Fables, as you mentioned, is one of the better books out there for doing just that. But something just doesn’t sit right for me about “Lost Girls”. I don’t quite know why.
I’m a big fan of Alan Moore, and from the promo stuff I’ve seen of the art it looks gorgeous. But the book itself just doesn’t appeal, which is strange because those two factors alone would generally have me running out to the store.
15 Sep 2006 at 9:53 am
QuoteGreat review, Dave. It’s interesting, because the review at the same time makes me want to give this one a look *and* makes me think that my fears about it not being as amazing as everyone was saying are realized at the same time. Your examples of metaphor make me interested in seeing how Moore tackles all of these elements of the story, but I kind of worried that this was going to have a simplistic message of “Look how great sex is, shouldn’t we all be having more of it!”
But then, I’m probably the only comic critic in the world whose favorite Alan Moore work is not Promethea, Watchmen or V For Vendetta, but the more popcorn entertainment Top 10.
15 Sep 2006 at 9:57 am
QuoteAwesome review, Dave. Probably the best I’ve seen. I’m happy to see that critics are really critiquing this work and not just jumping on the Moore bandwagon on auto-pilot, assuming it will be the next (insert favorite Moore work here).
I, too, thought it was *good,* not great. One problem I had was that I felt it was a little too overt in spots, and could have benefitted from some subtlety in making its points. Anyway, I posted a review at my site (shameless plug): http://thirteenminutes.blogspot.com/ that elaborates on this point.
Kudos to you and Randy and the gang, Comic Pants is really, really cool. More podcasts!
15 Sep 2006 at 10:55 am
QuoteWell, I wasn’t planning on picking this up, not because of the subject matter but rather I’d read some of it when Kitchen Sink Press collected it some years ago and didn’t find it that interesting, though it certainly had promise of being so, from your review it seems the complete story doesn’t fair much differently.
Randy: While I’m not a comic book critic, I can put popcorn ya, or at least out mainstream you, as my favorite Alan Moore work is the two Superman stories he did to send of the pre-crisis Superman, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” and “For the Man Who Has Everything.” Best Superman stories EV-AR
15 Sep 2006 at 1:01 pm
QuoteHere’s my number one problem with the book: we get it, Al, yer into classic literature. You’ve been mining that route for a decade and probably never paid Phillip Jose Farmer a cent. LOEG was interesting and even got me back into comics after one of frequent escapes, but enough already. I know Moore and Gebbe have been working on LOST GIRLS forever, but between this, PLANETARY, various one shots by others, I’m sick of the riffs on Wold Newton.
Another problem is that Moore has got this following…they’d swoon if he put his name in the Mooreschire phone book. The problem is that a following follows. If St. Al believes something, or says he does, they will believe it. This is the day of comic fans getting their identity from their favorite writer. Wonder what that would have been like in the old days. Comic fan shows up for work at the soda fountain and says to the boss,”Hey, Happenin’ Hipster, Have A Horrifically Helpful Hand Here!” and the old man at the pharmacy counter says, “Shut up and get to work!”
Al starts telling us how the puritans want to ban him and the boys, who are old enough to be men but prefer to hang on Al’s beard, don’t want to be puritans. Censorship is bad because…it’s really bad! And isn’t Moore controversial.
I sort of wonder who needs this stuff. You can read books and comics. You can get porn (I understand the internet is full of it). If you have a consentual, of age partner, you could even have sex yourself, and if you don’t have one, instead of shelling out $75 bucks for a comic book, you could save up and get yerself a consentual-for-pay of-age partner (the more you save, the more attractive she or he will be).
Finally, Dave, I don’t think Byrne meant to call you an “asshole”. Maybe he was thinking of your old reviewing gig and meant to say, “@$$hole”.
But as Duckie said to Andrew McCarthy in PRETTY IN PINK, “From you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
15 Sep 2006 at 4:27 pm
QuoteThat reminds me, I heard for his next project, SIXTEEN PINK BREAKFAST GIRLS, Moore is going to have Samantha Baker, Claire the Prom Queen, and Andie Walsh go girl-on-girl when they return to Shermer, IL. Which is good because Farmer Ted has bet Ferris Bueller that he can get three pairs of middle aged women’s underwear.
15 Sep 2006 at 4:29 pm
QuoteI have no aversion or moral objection to pornography. I like Alan Moore and think he’s a good writer (although I don’t worthip him the way some do). I have no interest in this book whatsoever. It seems like an attempt to generate controversy and if I see it referred to one more time as a “controversial work” I’m going to scream. I haven’t read a single word of negative press about this thing. I’m not sure the mainstream media even know it exists. I’m dissapointed in Top Shelf for even bothering with this thing.
It frustrates me that Moore who is certainly one of the most creative talents the comics world has ever seen, continues to write other people’s characters. Between this, his work for Liefeld, LOEG, and the rest of the ABC stuff, all he’s done is explore other people’s creations (All the main ABC characters were simply archetypes for golden age pulp and comic heroes with different names).
15 Sep 2006 at 7:30 pm
QuoteBiscuits & Gravy wrote:
“I’m dissapointed in Top Shelf for even bothering with this thing.”
I’m sure Top Shelf isn’t. Regardless of one’s reaction to the books, Lost Girls has proven to be a resounding success for the small publisher. Debate the art all you want, but no one can claim it wasn’t a great business decision.
15 Sep 2006 at 9:45 pm
QuoteJohn Bryne doesn’t have a lot of room for calling anybody a “complete asshole”. I mean this guy said that he was glad that the Crocidile Hunter died. What a jerk. Anyways…
The price tag on this was way too much for me even though I like Moore’s writing but I was never really sold on why I should pick this up to begin with. The artwork does look really good however.
16 Sep 2006 at 12:24 am
QuoteJustin, I checked out your review. Very nicely put, though I obviously came away from the book somewhat less enthused. It does seem that the universal constant in both positive and critical reviews of Lost Girls is an appreciation of Linda Gebbie’s art.
Now, let me ask you something specific: did you feel that the heroines’ reaction to the war felt a little airheaded? This bothered me a bit, when they’d make these references to the build-up to war, and it would be along the lines of, “I see that some dreadful archduke or another is causing a ruckus in town. I hope he shan’t disturb our frolics at the lake!” And then they’d go frolic at the lake. Now on one level, this can just be seen as erotic fetishizing being juxtaposed with the milititary fetishizing of Wendy’s husband, but that they don’t seem to even care that the world is on the brink of war beyond how it affects their good-time lovin’…man, it just felt painfully self-centered at times. Was Moore making a point about the addictiveness of sex creating blinders to all else? Or was this some strange advocacy of the women’s head-in-the-sand approach? It’s not like they were in any position to affect the approaching tide of war, but to just run away with barely any notion of it?
16 Sep 2006 at 3:08 am
Quote>>I’m dissapointed in Top Shelf for even bothering with this thing.
Well, I’m at least behind the theory of publishing such a book. Lord knows if we can embrace books as wantonly violent as Preacher and find depth and meaning in them, we should be able to do them same with a book about sex.
I do share the frustration, though, that both you and Buzz mention with Moore focusing overmuch on other people’s characters. He really does seem to need such springboards to jumpstart his writing. Even From Hell, a personal favorite, uses a pop Ripper theory from Stephen Knight as its catalyst.
Which isn’t to say I’m against Buzz’s call for Moore to deconstruct the archetypes of John Hughes. It’s the smaller characters I’ll be interested in. I see Bill Paxton’s “Chet” from Weird Science as prime fodder for a “Tales of the Black Freighter”-style subplot. Or maybe he could be the source of some epigraphs to the story, like the Dylan and Shelley quotes in Watchmen. Consider:
I smell hit.
16 Sep 2006 at 3:38 am
QuoteDave, thanks for checking out my review! Ditto on your observation about the strength of Gebbie’s art and its seemingly universal appreciation. Random aside… but I was thinking that if Willingham ever decided to do a “prequel” to Fables, set in the time period(s) that some of those characters he’s playing with debuted, she’d be an amazing choice.
Saying that their reaction was “airheaded” sort of gives them credit for reacting at all. Don’t misinterpret, that’s not a slam of your comment, but Moore’s handling of this issue. You’re too generous! It’s a great question though.
I don’t have a real direct answer to your queries, other than to say it bothered me too. Why did he include references to the war at all if the character reactions would be so passive and dismissive? At first I thought maybe he included it contextually, only to state the obvious and say that wow, a lot of great literature came out of this period. Then I thought, maybe it was merely a framing device. How else would he indicate to the reader what time period it was? It’s a nice reference point to show that the princinpal characters have aged since their debut, ie: that’s why Alice is relatively older than the others.
I’m sure there’s a Moore (heh) intentional reason for its inclusion though. I like your idea of the fetishizing of war being juxtaposed with the sexual frolicing. It certainly rings true of Wendy’s husband, *everyone* seems to be into him, regardless of gender.
The obsession with sex creating “blinders” to other issues that you pose is a strong hypothesis too. Instead of pondering the larger question (*why* is the world at war?), they’re happy to just “support the troops” (albeit in the only way they know how!)… Not that I want to go into a political rant here, but that could kinda’ be applied to current wars as well.
16 Sep 2006 at 1:15 pm
QuoteGebbie on Fables? I like it! Even if just on covers, I’d love to see it happen.
18 Sep 2006 at 12:45 am
QuoteIf James Jean goes off covers for Fables, I’m going on a hunger strike.
18 Sep 2006 at 2:28 am
QuoteI heard that’s why Gandhi did it.
18 Sep 2006 at 3:01 am
QuoteNah, he was mad about Civil War.
18 Sep 2006 at 5:51 am
QuoteAwesome, man
03 Feb 2007 at 6:05 am
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