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Top Shelf Productions (2009), Hardcover, 320 pages
User reviews
LibraryThing member Widsith
Pornography, according to John Soltenberg, tells lies about women but the truth about men. But is that because the genre’s inherently flawed, or just because everyone who makes it is so mediocre?
Lost Girls is certainly an effort to say something truthful about women – as well as about men,
Is it…is it sexy?
The premise is an interesting, almost Stoppardian, one. Three girls from classic children’s stories – Wendy from Peter Pan, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and Alice, of Wonderland fame – meet by chance as grown women, in a Vienna hotel in 1914. As they tell each other their stories, their childhood adventures are re-imagined as sexual coming-of-age tales, which all three of them find they still have to come to terms with in some way.
Uncharitably, you could say this is a relatively flimsy excuse for three volumes of hardcore sex. Or you could find yourself wanting to cheer about the fact that someone’s taking pornography and trying to do something interesting with it. And if this does have artistic merit (which it does by the way – in spades), does that make it somehow not-porn? Moore and Gebbie seem to have tried to stop anyone thinking of this as anything less: this can’t be classified reassuringly as ‘erotica’. They aren’t just dipping their toes in here, playing with some of the conventions. This is out-and-out porn. It’s like they’ve rolled their sleeves up, and taken on every stereotype they could think of.
We have boy-girl sex, boy-boy sex, girl-girl(-girl-girl-girl!) sex; sex with children, sex with parents and siblings, sex with animals; consensual sex and rape; sex oral, anal and vaginal; sex with toys. Sex in vast, pullulating groups. Sex alone.
How much any of this turns you on will depend on where your tastes lie, but anyway turning you on isn’t necessarily a high priority of Lost Girls. Working out what the priority is exactly is one of the many pleasures to be had here. The systematic way all of these set-ups are worked through in the book makes it seem almost parodic at times; but some serious effort is also being made to work out what artistic effect can be drawn out of a famously un-artistic genre.
Visually, it looks stunning. Gebbie has gone to town in the most incredible way with the period, creating sexy Matisse take-offs, Victorian erotica imitations, parodies of Schiele and Beardsley, and erotic references to the original illustrations associated with these characters. All of this works well with Moore’s approach to the material, which is to reinterpret the fairy tales as parables for adolescent sexuality. So the Lost Boys from Peter Pan represent a rich girl’s view of the unbridled lust of the working classes; the wonderful wizard of Oz (who of course turned out to be a foolish old man) here becomes an examination of how a daughter outgrows her psychological attraction to her father.
The wish to make all this fucking somehow more meaningful sometimes leads to some fairly ridiculous prose. Here’s Alice describing an encounter during the famous first night of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring:
I lanced my tongue in Mrs. Potter’s anus, up and fast between the tropic lips into her beast-peach hole. Crowned hot with bronze, American girl heat rubbed shameless as a cat against my thigh. The smash of wet cymbals inside me as the maid surrendered to the sacrifice. I’m weeping.
It’s like a letter to Penthouse written by Sir Walter Scott. And the sex itself, however beautifully drawn, can get a bit fatiguing after three volumes of it.
But that aside, you have to give Lost Girls full marks for ambition. Time and again it deliberately throws up challenges to you as a reader, prompting you to question every response you have to the material. Wendy, for instance, worries about the incest which characterises a book they’re reading: isn’t it wrong to be turned on by stuff which is legally and morally reprehensible?
‘It’s an…unngh…exciting story, but the children, doing things with…ungh…with their own Mother! I mean, I have…unngh…a son myself, and I’d never dream…unngh…never dream of…’
‘But of course you would not, dear Madam,’ interrupts the hotelier. ‘Your child is real.’ This book is in part a defence of sexual fantasy, in whatever forms it comes. Perhaps some people might find that disingenuous, but I thought for the most part it was a rare blast of common sense.
Moore also makes the most of the historical context. As well as Stravinsky, we have references to Freud (whose ideas are important to the book), and the imminent war is also significant. At the end of volume three, Moore shows us the trenches, and the stupidity of vilifying sex as compared to violence is left hanging with devastating effect.
Particularly notable is the absence, or at any rate the dismissal, of the guilt which is such a conspicuous aspect of American treatments of sexuality these days. Wendy’s story is particularly satisfying from this point of view. She has guilty fantasies about being kidnapped and raped by a strange claw-handed man who preys on local children (the ‘Captain Hook’ figure). When he finally confronts her in reality, she’s initially terrified. But the downfall of Hook in the original story is here transformed into a kind of triumphant moment of self-acceptance on the part of his intended victim, as she stops running and turns on him:
‘There was a moment when I suddenly saw everything, myself, the whole terrible situation, with perfect clarity. I could think about what I liked. That didn’t mean I wanted it to really happen to me. That didn’t mean that anyone could force it on me.’
The worries, the excitement, the moral questioning, the confrontation with guilt: all of these things are experienced as much by you when you read Lost Girls as by the characters you’re reading about. The Soltenberg quote I opened with has the following subtext: if you find porn sexy you ought to be ashamed of yourself. This is also the subtext of everything else anyone ever says about it. Isn’t it nice for a change to read something whose message is “fuck guilt”?
And if the subject matter bothers you, just remember: it’s only a story. ‘Fact and fiction,’ reflects M. Rougeur, as he’s being acrobatically fellated: ‘only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them.’
Lost Girls is certainly an effort to say something truthful about women – as well as about men,
Show More
adolescence, fantasy, freedom and common sense – but it takes you a fair while to get over the sheer chutzpah of using porn to do it. Is it brave? Is it justified?Is it…is it sexy?
The premise is an interesting, almost Stoppardian, one. Three girls from classic children’s stories – Wendy from Peter Pan, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and Alice, of Wonderland fame – meet by chance as grown women, in a Vienna hotel in 1914. As they tell each other their stories, their childhood adventures are re-imagined as sexual coming-of-age tales, which all three of them find they still have to come to terms with in some way.
Uncharitably, you could say this is a relatively flimsy excuse for three volumes of hardcore sex. Or you could find yourself wanting to cheer about the fact that someone’s taking pornography and trying to do something interesting with it. And if this does have artistic merit (which it does by the way – in spades), does that make it somehow not-porn? Moore and Gebbie seem to have tried to stop anyone thinking of this as anything less: this can’t be classified reassuringly as ‘erotica’. They aren’t just dipping their toes in here, playing with some of the conventions. This is out-and-out porn. It’s like they’ve rolled their sleeves up, and taken on every stereotype they could think of.
We have boy-girl sex, boy-boy sex, girl-girl(-girl-girl-girl!) sex; sex with children, sex with parents and siblings, sex with animals; consensual sex and rape; sex oral, anal and vaginal; sex with toys. Sex in vast, pullulating groups. Sex alone.
How much any of this turns you on will depend on where your tastes lie, but anyway turning you on isn’t necessarily a high priority of Lost Girls. Working out what the priority is exactly is one of the many pleasures to be had here. The systematic way all of these set-ups are worked through in the book makes it seem almost parodic at times; but some serious effort is also being made to work out what artistic effect can be drawn out of a famously un-artistic genre.
Visually, it looks stunning. Gebbie has gone to town in the most incredible way with the period, creating sexy Matisse take-offs, Victorian erotica imitations, parodies of Schiele and Beardsley, and erotic references to the original illustrations associated with these characters. All of this works well with Moore’s approach to the material, which is to reinterpret the fairy tales as parables for adolescent sexuality. So the Lost Boys from Peter Pan represent a rich girl’s view of the unbridled lust of the working classes; the wonderful wizard of Oz (who of course turned out to be a foolish old man) here becomes an examination of how a daughter outgrows her psychological attraction to her father.
The wish to make all this fucking somehow more meaningful sometimes leads to some fairly ridiculous prose. Here’s Alice describing an encounter during the famous first night of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring:
I lanced my tongue in Mrs. Potter’s anus, up and fast between the tropic lips into her beast-peach hole. Crowned hot with bronze, American girl heat rubbed shameless as a cat against my thigh. The smash of wet cymbals inside me as the maid surrendered to the sacrifice. I’m weeping.
It’s like a letter to Penthouse written by Sir Walter Scott. And the sex itself, however beautifully drawn, can get a bit fatiguing after three volumes of it.
But that aside, you have to give Lost Girls full marks for ambition. Time and again it deliberately throws up challenges to you as a reader, prompting you to question every response you have to the material. Wendy, for instance, worries about the incest which characterises a book they’re reading: isn’t it wrong to be turned on by stuff which is legally and morally reprehensible?
‘It’s an…unngh…exciting story, but the children, doing things with…ungh…with their own Mother! I mean, I have…unngh…a son myself, and I’d never dream…unngh…never dream of…’
‘But of course you would not, dear Madam,’ interrupts the hotelier. ‘Your child is real.’ This book is in part a defence of sexual fantasy, in whatever forms it comes. Perhaps some people might find that disingenuous, but I thought for the most part it was a rare blast of common sense.
Moore also makes the most of the historical context. As well as Stravinsky, we have references to Freud (whose ideas are important to the book), and the imminent war is also significant. At the end of volume three, Moore shows us the trenches, and the stupidity of vilifying sex as compared to violence is left hanging with devastating effect.
Particularly notable is the absence, or at any rate the dismissal, of the guilt which is such a conspicuous aspect of American treatments of sexuality these days. Wendy’s story is particularly satisfying from this point of view. She has guilty fantasies about being kidnapped and raped by a strange claw-handed man who preys on local children (the ‘Captain Hook’ figure). When he finally confronts her in reality, she’s initially terrified. But the downfall of Hook in the original story is here transformed into a kind of triumphant moment of self-acceptance on the part of his intended victim, as she stops running and turns on him:
‘There was a moment when I suddenly saw everything, myself, the whole terrible situation, with perfect clarity. I could think about what I liked. That didn’t mean I wanted it to really happen to me. That didn’t mean that anyone could force it on me.’
The worries, the excitement, the moral questioning, the confrontation with guilt: all of these things are experienced as much by you when you read Lost Girls as by the characters you’re reading about. The Soltenberg quote I opened with has the following subtext: if you find porn sexy you ought to be ashamed of yourself. This is also the subtext of everything else anyone ever says about it. Isn’t it nice for a change to read something whose message is “fuck guilt”?
And if the subject matter bothers you, just remember: it’s only a story. ‘Fact and fiction,’ reflects M. Rougeur, as he’s being acrobatically fellated: ‘only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them.’
Show Less
LibraryThing member ChicGeekGirl21
Lost Girls is a pornographic re-telling of some classic children's stories (Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan to be specific) by graphic novel mastermind Alan Moore. Moore's creativity is prevalent in the book--he uses the tropes of fairy tales and psychology to create a story of
My favorite of the 3 books was the second one. The stories the women tell in this book were far more sensual than the all-out depravity of the third book (the depravity didn't offend me, per se, but it did make me cringe). Dorothy, for example, has her first sexual experiences with a farm hand who bales hay (a man of the straw, you might say...) and is sexy, but kinda dumb (no brain...get it?). Dorothy gently lets him know that she can't be with him anymore before she describes traveling down a metaphorical road of sexual discovery. Likewise, Alice's stories involve exploring sex with other girls at her boarding school. I liked the emphasis on female sexuality and sexual awakening--and how not all the sex acts involved traditional heterosexual intercourse. Despite the Sadean sexual insanity of the third book, Moore has respect for sexuality as part of one's identity--something to explore and own, rather than to be ashamed about and repress. For these reasons, the book was enjoyable, fun, and somewhat thought-provoking. But not for the faint of heart, obviously.
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coming of age and sexual discovery. The result is entertaining, clever, and eventually tiresome. Lost Girls is divided into 3 books. The first book sets the tone, introducing the characters (Dorothy, Alice, and Wendy) and the setting (a decadent hotel in Vienna, Austria just days before the start of WWI--in fact, the characters reference the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand multiple times). These three women get to know each other--both in the Biblical sense, and also by telling stories from their childhoods. The second book focuses on the beginnings of these stories, which are relatively innocent; the third book focuses on the "climax" of the stories, which tend to be pretty extreme (incest, rape, BDSM).My favorite of the 3 books was the second one. The stories the women tell in this book were far more sensual than the all-out depravity of the third book (the depravity didn't offend me, per se, but it did make me cringe). Dorothy, for example, has her first sexual experiences with a farm hand who bales hay (a man of the straw, you might say...) and is sexy, but kinda dumb (no brain...get it?). Dorothy gently lets him know that she can't be with him anymore before she describes traveling down a metaphorical road of sexual discovery. Likewise, Alice's stories involve exploring sex with other girls at her boarding school. I liked the emphasis on female sexuality and sexual awakening--and how not all the sex acts involved traditional heterosexual intercourse. Despite the Sadean sexual insanity of the third book, Moore has respect for sexuality as part of one's identity--something to explore and own, rather than to be ashamed about and repress. For these reasons, the book was enjoyable, fun, and somewhat thought-provoking. But not for the faint of heart, obviously.
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LibraryThing member RobProsser
Lushly produced and lavishly illustrated filth from Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie which is so good it was almost worth the sixteen year it took to make. Shocking and outrageous, touching and sensitive.
LibraryThing member Arctic-Stranger
First, I recommend reading the reviews below. I will not repeat a lot of what is said there, most of which is excellent.
Although there is a ton of sex in this series of books, they are not about sex, in the same way that Moby Dick is not about whaling.
Moore and Gebbie essentially assault you with
I heartily recommend reading volume III in one sitting. It makes the ending that much more poignant.
Although there is a ton of sex in this series of books, they are not about sex, in the same way that Moby Dick is not about whaling.
Moore and Gebbie essentially assault you with
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sex, surround you with sex, fill you with sex, and get you all worked up about sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. But that is a ploy. I heartily recommend reading volume III in one sitting. It makes the ending that much more poignant.
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LibraryThing member jscape2000
Hard to read this in the #metoo age. The obvious traumas these women endure and barrel through leaves me shaking my head. How did Gebbie and Moore not build a bigger world? I think of books like Wicked and the Fables series, that have re-imagined familiar stories, and when I compare them to Lost
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Girls, I find they have so much more depth. At the end of the stories, the world moves on, war comes, but the women do not seem to have gained from their time together. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheoClarke
The erotic charge of this astonishing exploration of the sexuality of childhood fantasies seen through adult eyes is immense but it becomes relentless by the final volume and I felt as though I was being battered by an almost didactic epistemology. Perhaps I should have read it in smaller portions.
LibraryThing member SomewhatBent
Lost Girls Hardcover Edition (2009, 240 pp)
by Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie
**NSFW**
Ever wonder what happened after the fairy tales?
Alice is back through the looking glass, Dorothy has returned from Oz and Wendy is home from Neverland. They find themselves together in an Austrian hotel in 1913. They
The (VERY) adult adventures of three are illustrated in styles particular to each character; Alice’s through her journal entries and ‘looking glass’ view, Dorothy’s with the wide-open perspective of Kansas farmland, Wendy’s through the tall narrow windows of Victorian England.
Alan Moore (of The Watchman and V for Vendetta) and Melinda Gebbie spent 16 years in the production of Lost Girls, originally published in three graphic novel editions, now available in a single hardbound volume. The artwork is elegant, the production value extremely high and the tales engaging. There is some controversy around the volume because of the accounts of the girls’ underage sexual experiences. If that is a concern – even though it has been ruled not to be child pornography – this is not a book for you.
by Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie
**NSFW**
Ever wonder what happened after the fairy tales?
Alice is back through the looking glass, Dorothy has returned from Oz and Wendy is home from Neverland. They find themselves together in an Austrian hotel in 1913. They
Show More
get acquainted, as long-term holiday residents often do, and discover that they have interests in common. As they relate the tales of their past they create shared experiences in the present.The (VERY) adult adventures of three are illustrated in styles particular to each character; Alice’s through her journal entries and ‘looking glass’ view, Dorothy’s with the wide-open perspective of Kansas farmland, Wendy’s through the tall narrow windows of Victorian England.
Alan Moore (of The Watchman and V for Vendetta) and Melinda Gebbie spent 16 years in the production of Lost Girls, originally published in three graphic novel editions, now available in a single hardbound volume. The artwork is elegant, the production value extremely high and the tales engaging. There is some controversy around the volume because of the accounts of the girls’ underage sexual experiences. If that is a concern – even though it has been ruled not to be child pornography – this is not a book for you.
Show Less
LibraryThing member rivkat
Alice (in Wonderland), Dorothy Gale, and Wendy Darling, all grown up now, meet in a European hotel and start recounting their sexual histories. All the fantasy elements of the old stories are translated into sex, often sexual abuse, with fantasy both aiding and muting the effects of the abuse. The
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authors seem to want to say something about the relationship between desire, fantasy, and reality, along with sex as an alternative expression of the death wish, but I found it terribly flattening: all of the characters were the same as they dissolved into endless polymorphous perversity, including at the end the one specifically lesbian character declaring that she was going to try men because it didn’t really matter. There was a lot of mirror imagery and doubling as one fantasy slid into another or into the “reality” of the story. Images that looked nonsexual were revealed to be people fucking; casual conversations masked or ignored the sexual activities going on all around. I’m not surprised that the publisher apparently thought hard about obscenity: there’s a lot of underage sex depicted, including crossgenerational incest with young children; the worst of which is sort of disavowed by being in a book-within-the-book, about which the characters comment that it’s just fantasy, but that’s not terribly convincing in context. I don’t want to pay for shipping on PaperbackSwap to get rid of these large and heavy volumes, but if you’re in the DC area and think you might have a different opinion of the books, I’ll happily give them to you. Show Less
LibraryThing member nramos
This series was all erotica, with no scenario left untouched. The artwork tended to be slightly confusing and too soft at times, as did the story-within-a-story approach. An interesting premise, however.
LibraryThing member psybre
Five stars for the idea, the imagination, the creativity, the publishing. Four stars for the illustrations; four stars for erudition and readability. Three and a half stars for the story itself.
Truly a unique labor of love that by its art transcends the genre, providing a substantial, and at times
Truly a unique labor of love that by its art transcends the genre, providing a substantial, and at times
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overwhelming, argument for fantasy, pornography, and sex itself. Show Less
LibraryThing member elmyra
As if we didn't know that Alan Moore was a very strange man...
Lost Girls doesn't always make for comfortable reading, but a lot of it is very... enjoyable. The rest is thought-provoking. The art is gorgeous.
I should probably add that I haven't read any of the three works it's based on. I probably
Lost Girls doesn't always make for comfortable reading, but a lot of it is very... enjoyable. The rest is thought-provoking. The art is gorgeous.
I should probably add that I haven't read any of the three works it's based on. I probably
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should... Show Less
LibraryThing member rita009
This book is about three women named Wendy, Dorothy and Alice. They are very different. One is jaded and old; one is trapped in a frigid adulthood and the last is a spunky but innocent young American girl. This book provides versions of different stories associated with each of them. This book is a
I really didn't enjoy this book very much because it was hard to follow. Honestly with this book, I am not sure how I would incorporate it into a classroom.
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very pornographic comic book and should be read or introduced to students who are more mature. Maybe students in high school or even on a college level. I really didn't enjoy this book very much because it was hard to follow. Honestly with this book, I am not sure how I would incorporate it into a classroom.
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LibraryThing member questbird
An interesting attempt to tell a story with pornography. Three women -- re-imaginings of Alice (of Wonderland), Dorothy (of Oz) and Wendy (of Never Land) meet in a licentious Austrian hotel on the eve of the First World War and share stories (and more) of their sexual secrets and awakenings in
I found the constant frottage and sexual activity between the protaganists a bit annoying after a while. It seemed that every imaginable scenario described (and there were a lot) by one of the women was incredibly titillating to the others. This background of incessant sexual play seemed unlikely and detracted from the story for me.
Some of the episodes were just silly. There was a scene with Wendy and her boring husband, who have no sex life. Although they are merely conversing distantly, their shadows appear to be engaged in sexual activity -- but only through Austin Powers-like coincidences of lighting and movement. It just didn't work.
Gebbie and Moore have chosen to portray mostly consensual sexual acts (with Alice sometimes the exception) and generally ascribe little moral judgment to those acts. Rape, torture and bondage are mostly excluded. In fact it is through sex that the women are able to re-integrate their lost childhoods. Of the three, Alice is the most damaged, a child abuse victim who embraces a life of lascivious addiction and becomes (at times) an abuser herself.
What I did really enjoy was Melinda Gebbie's simulation of various artists of the time, especially in the 'White Book', the lurid and blatantly pornographic tome which was in every room of Monsieur Rogeur's hotel.
Overall, a very interesting experiment. Not really pornography even though it tried quite hard. Hard to classify quite what it was instead though.
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their various 'never lands'.I found the constant frottage and sexual activity between the protaganists a bit annoying after a while. It seemed that every imaginable scenario described (and there were a lot) by one of the women was incredibly titillating to the others. This background of incessant sexual play seemed unlikely and detracted from the story for me.
Some of the episodes were just silly. There was a scene with Wendy and her boring husband, who have no sex life. Although they are merely conversing distantly, their shadows appear to be engaged in sexual activity -- but only through Austin Powers-like coincidences of lighting and movement. It just didn't work.
Gebbie and Moore have chosen to portray mostly consensual sexual acts (with Alice sometimes the exception) and generally ascribe little moral judgment to those acts. Rape, torture and bondage are mostly excluded. In fact it is through sex that the women are able to re-integrate their lost childhoods. Of the three, Alice is the most damaged, a child abuse victim who embraces a life of lascivious addiction and becomes (at times) an abuser herself.
What I did really enjoy was Melinda Gebbie's simulation of various artists of the time, especially in the 'White Book', the lurid and blatantly pornographic tome which was in every room of Monsieur Rogeur's hotel.
Overall, a very interesting experiment. Not really pornography even though it tried quite hard. Hard to classify quite what it was instead though.
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LibraryThing member jvalka
This starts off modestly enough, but builds in intensity until the sexuality in book three becomes perverse: incest, bestiality, child molestation. It stops being sexy and becomes horrifying, which leads into the slaughter of World War 1, effectively demonstrating Alan Moore's assertion that war is
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a "failure of the imagination" and a form of sexualized violence. I can't deny that certain parts of this got me excited (the non-stop lesbianism in particular), but I'm not sure how often I'll be re-reading this as a whole. Show Less
LibraryThing member -Eva-
Well, it is porn. It just is. But, there is a literary and artistic value in the books and as a strong supporter of the First Amendment, I really appreciate what Moore and Gebbie are attempting. They are successful in their task, but the result is not quite as intriguing as I would have wished.
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Moore has proven himself as a true visionary (with, for example, V for Vendetta), but these books may not be completely up to par in my mind. Maybe he just worked on them for too long (15 years or so...). I'm not a huge fan of Gebbie's style either, so that didn't help. Still an important book that I will keep in my library for a long time! Show Less
LibraryThing member sageness
Very Alan Moore, with his telltale kinks. flaws, and foibles. some of the art is gorgeous. some of the content is deeply disturbing. The writing itself, well, it's Moore.
LibraryThing member satyridae
Porn and fun in equal measures here. Moore reinterprets the stories of Alice (from Wonderland), Dorothy (from Oz) and Wendy (from Neverland) as the fevered dreams of adolescent girls. But first he brings the three together in the last halcyon days before WWI, drops them in a hotel together, and has
I think that if you prefer your girlish icons unsullied, you'd best stay as far away from this as possible. On the other hand, if Shel Silverstein's song "Polly in a porny with a pony" makes you giggle madly, you might want to pick this up.
Includes most every taboo sexual act you can think of, and some you can't.
My quibble is with the drawings- the women aren't consistently shaped, nor are their faces the same from panel to panel. Odd little lumps grow out of their sides and then disappear, proportions seem... off somehow. Perhaps it's intentional, to add to the dreamlike feeling. I don't read a lot of graphic-novel porn, so I don't know what the conventions are.
I thought it was fun, and the ending managed to be poignant and lovely, and that surprised me too.
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them fall in serious lust with one another. The re-imaginings of the original stories are very clever, very salacious, and seriously twisted. The add-on bits with no reference to the originals are not as interesting.I think that if you prefer your girlish icons unsullied, you'd best stay as far away from this as possible. On the other hand, if Shel Silverstein's song "Polly in a porny with a pony" makes you giggle madly, you might want to pick this up.
Includes most every taboo sexual act you can think of, and some you can't.
My quibble is with the drawings- the women aren't consistently shaped, nor are their faces the same from panel to panel. Odd little lumps grow out of their sides and then disappear, proportions seem... off somehow. Perhaps it's intentional, to add to the dreamlike feeling. I don't read a lot of graphic-novel porn, so I don't know what the conventions are.
I thought it was fun, and the ending managed to be poignant and lovely, and that surprised me too.
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LibraryThing member brakketh
An interesting read.
LibraryThing member piccoline
Not for the youngsters. Good. Interesting. Of literary merit. Sexy and provocative. But very, very adult. NC-17. Just FYI.
LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
Gebbie is an accomplished artist, but I didn't like the art here. Moroever, I found the dialogue unbelievable, the characters poorly constructed, the plot nonexistant and the pr0n distinctly unsexy. It's not to my taste, but I'm sure there are people out there who've never heard of fairytale
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erotica before who will be titilated. Show Less
LibraryThing member villemezbrown
I started reading Lost Girls back in the early 1990s when it was serialized in the Taboo anthology, and have revisited the collected version a few times now, with the new expanded edition and it's "32 pages of Gallery Art" showing up at the library being excuse enough this time as Gebbie's art is a
Far from Moore's best work, it is still probably the most literary Tijuana bible ever created. He pulls out plenty of clever storytelling tricks as he draws you down a rabbit hole of erotica with Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale and Wendy Darling, passing through a Wonderland of pornography, only to land you in a Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch of the darkest and most taboo sexual fantasies.
For adults only, and probably not for most of them either. I recommend Andy Weir's new Cheshire Crossing for a more palatable take on a meeting of the same three heroines.
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big draw for the book.Far from Moore's best work, it is still probably the most literary Tijuana bible ever created. He pulls out plenty of clever storytelling tricks as he draws you down a rabbit hole of erotica with Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale and Wendy Darling, passing through a Wonderland of pornography, only to land you in a Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch of the darkest and most taboo sexual fantasies.
For adults only, and probably not for most of them either. I recommend Andy Weir's new Cheshire Crossing for a more palatable take on a meeting of the same three heroines.
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LibraryThing member LibroLindsay
The interpretation that the catalysts for Wendy Darling's, Dorothy Gale's, and Alice's adventures were results of some form of sexual experience is kinda interesting.
The interpretation that the catalysts for Wendy Darling's, Dorothy Gale's, and Alice's adventures were results of some form of sexual
Huh.
The interpretation that the catalysts for Wendy Darling's, Dorothy Gale's, and Alice's adventures were results of some form of sexual
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experience is kinda lame.Huh.
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LibraryThing member saroz
I hated this. I hated, hated, hated, hated this. I hated it with a pure hate I haven't felt toward a book in many, many years.
I think I'm angry because I've spent a fair amount of time defending Alan Moore and his obsessions over the past two decades. "He's a bit weird, but he's cool," I'd say.
I'm also angry because I'm no stranger to grown-up examinations of these same works, and while I don't love them all, some of them are quite interesting and have meaningful observations to make. Some of them are just weird and fun: I'll defend A Barnstormer in Oz 'til my dying day, for instance, because it's clearly a thought experiment (What if Oz were a real place where magic was just advanced science? What if the story was dumbed down because no one would believe the real thing?) taken to a logical, if occasionally slightly ridiculous conclusion. There is nothing like that in Lost Girls. I can't even defend it as having a perspective if I wanted to; there's no perspective to give.
I had expected something rather more like Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which - aside from being a genre fiction easter egg lollapalooza - treats the classic characters involved as living, breathing, sometimes uncomfortably troubling people, all of whom have their own motivations. Mina Harker is forever changed by her experience with Dracula, and it makes her into a morally upright leader. Dr. Jekyll can never escape the bestial pull of his "other half," and it causes him to do truly inhuman things. James Bond can barely disguise his true nature as a nasty, misogynistic thug. And so on. Despite the entire three-volume book being centered around them, there are no such insights in Lost Girls on Alice, Dorothy, or Wendy.
In fact, all three have been rendered down to flat, two-dimensional characters: Alice the articulate, aristocratic widow, Wendy a quiet and submissive wife, and Dorothy an "Aw shucks!" farm girl stereotype. Yes, it's very clever-clever that Moore's found a way to reframe their stories as sexual experiences - Alice's first sexual experience is an assault by an older man named "Bunny," Dorothy has her first self-induced orgasm as the tornado hits the house, etc. - but that doesn't tell me anything about my favorite books from childhood. It just feels like a particularly raunchy party trick, one that is repeated again and again and is already boring by the end of Book One.
I have read elsewhere that Moore and his wife, Melinda Gebbie - who created the art in the book, which is certainly very colorful if loosely styled - worked on Lost Girls for almost twenty years, and their goal was not to inspire conversation about the stories they adapted but about the nature of pornography itself. And that's...fine, I guess? I just don't see the point of involving Alice, Dorothy, and Wendy, except that it makes a great elevator pitch: "...They're all in a hotel together and they're all getting it on!" Perhaps those interested in pornography as an art form will find meaning in it, but to me, this feels like little more than an over-expensive vanity project. It was a waste of my time and especially of my money.
I think I'm angry because I've spent a fair amount of time defending Alan Moore and his obsessions over the past two decades. "He's a bit weird, but he's cool," I'd say.
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"Yeah, he likes to throw shocking curveballs but there is always some really interesting deconstruction going on." Well, there's no interesting deconstruction here. It's just a lot of sex: every kind of sex imaginable, basically, and on nearly every page. It's not erotica; it's pornography. And it's pretending that it's "saying" something about three of the most beloved children's stories within memory: Lewis Carroll's Alice books; J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy (aka Peter Pan); and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I'm also angry because I'm no stranger to grown-up examinations of these same works, and while I don't love them all, some of them are quite interesting and have meaningful observations to make. Some of them are just weird and fun: I'll defend A Barnstormer in Oz 'til my dying day, for instance, because it's clearly a thought experiment (What if Oz were a real place where magic was just advanced science? What if the story was dumbed down because no one would believe the real thing?) taken to a logical, if occasionally slightly ridiculous conclusion. There is nothing like that in Lost Girls. I can't even defend it as having a perspective if I wanted to; there's no perspective to give.
I had expected something rather more like Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which - aside from being a genre fiction easter egg lollapalooza - treats the classic characters involved as living, breathing, sometimes uncomfortably troubling people, all of whom have their own motivations. Mina Harker is forever changed by her experience with Dracula, and it makes her into a morally upright leader. Dr. Jekyll can never escape the bestial pull of his "other half," and it causes him to do truly inhuman things. James Bond can barely disguise his true nature as a nasty, misogynistic thug. And so on. Despite the entire three-volume book being centered around them, there are no such insights in Lost Girls on Alice, Dorothy, or Wendy.
In fact, all three have been rendered down to flat, two-dimensional characters: Alice the articulate, aristocratic widow, Wendy a quiet and submissive wife, and Dorothy an "Aw shucks!" farm girl stereotype. Yes, it's very clever-clever that Moore's found a way to reframe their stories as sexual experiences - Alice's first sexual experience is an assault by an older man named "Bunny," Dorothy has her first self-induced orgasm as the tornado hits the house, etc. - but that doesn't tell me anything about my favorite books from childhood. It just feels like a particularly raunchy party trick, one that is repeated again and again and is already boring by the end of Book One.
I have read elsewhere that Moore and his wife, Melinda Gebbie - who created the art in the book, which is certainly very colorful if loosely styled - worked on Lost Girls for almost twenty years, and their goal was not to inspire conversation about the stories they adapted but about the nature of pornography itself. And that's...fine, I guess? I just don't see the point of involving Alice, Dorothy, and Wendy, except that it makes a great elevator pitch: "...They're all in a hotel together and they're all getting it on!" Perhaps those interested in pornography as an art form will find meaning in it, but to me, this feels like little more than an over-expensive vanity project. It was a waste of my time and especially of my money.
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LibraryThing member librarybrandy
I'm all about sex-positive writings for women. I'm all in favor of giving porn to women, that it's not all male-fantasy male-centric images. In that regard, I enjoyed Lost Girls, though the art--particularly the coloring--didn't really do it for me. I like what Moore is doing with gender roles and
Where the book lost me, though, was its lack of a plot through the first book, the lack of a coherent ending, and the insistence that the only way to get comfortable with one's sexuality is All Orgy All The Time. As a storytelling experiment (giving another side to these established characters), it's been done so many times before, albeit never in such filthy ways.
It's hard to review this book in any context other than good porn vs crappy porn, good messages vs bad. I agree with many of the points he's making, however clumsily he's making them, but he leaves little room for non-fetishized, positive sexuality, and the "Lost Girls" of the title seem more an excuse to insert one more fetish (beloved childhood characters) than a necessary element to the story.
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female empowerment--it's okay to be a woman and like sex--and I can even see his ham-fisted points about how fantasy is perfectly okay. He has some good messages in here, even if he's not subtle about expressing them.Where the book lost me, though, was its lack of a plot through the first book, the lack of a coherent ending, and the insistence that the only way to get comfortable with one's sexuality is All Orgy All The Time. As a storytelling experiment (giving another side to these established characters), it's been done so many times before, albeit never in such filthy ways.
It's hard to review this book in any context other than good porn vs crappy porn, good messages vs bad. I agree with many of the points he's making, however clumsily he's making them, but he leaves little room for non-fetishized, positive sexuality, and the "Lost Girls" of the title seem more an excuse to insert one more fetish (beloved childhood characters) than a necessary element to the story.
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LibraryThing member francescadefreitas
Very beautiful. The artwork and the stories-within-the-story grabbed me immediately. The accents of both Dorothy and Alice irritated me a little bit at the start, but I soon stopped noticing. I did find the eroticism a little overbearing (even cluttered) towards the end, but I suppose the war is a
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huge, er, climax to build towards. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Village Voice Favorite Books (2006)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2006
Physical description
320 p.; 30 cm
ISBN
1603090444 / 9781603090445