Lost Girls
Encyclopedia
Lost Girls is a graphic novel
depicting the sexually explicit adventures of three important female fictional characters of the late 19th and early 20th century: Alice
from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
, Dorothy Gale
from The Wizard of Oz
and Wendy Darling
from Peter Pan
. They meet as adults in 1913 and describe and share some of their erotic adventures with each other. The story is written by Alan Moore
and drawn by Melinda Gebbie
.
from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(now a grey-haired old woman named "Lady Fairchild"), Dorothy
from The Wizard of Oz
(now in her 20s) and Wendy
from Peter Pan
(now named "Wendy Potter", in her 30s, and married to a man named Harold Potter who is 20 years older) are visiting an expensive mountain resort hotel in Austria on the eve of World War I
(1913–1914). The hotel, named "Hotel Himmelgarten", is run by a man named Monsieur Rougeur. At the hotel, Dorothy meets a man named Captain Rolf Bauer.
The women meet by chance and begin to exchange erotic stories from their pasts. The stories are based on the childhood fantasy worlds of the three women:
In addition to the three women's erotic flashbacks, the graphic novel depicts sexual encounters between the women and other guests and staff of the hotel. The erotic adventures are set against the backdrop of unsettling cultural and historic events of the period, such as the debut of Igor Stravinsky
's The Rite of Spring
and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
. The graphic novel ends with Alice's mirror being destroyed by German soldiers who burn down the Hotel.
. In US and Canada, many retailers have stated that they will not stock the book out of fear of possible obscenity prosecution, though some said they might make the book available to their customers via special order and simply not stock it.
Moore states that the storm of criticism which he and Gebbie expected did not materialize, which he attributes in part to his design of Lost Girls as a "benign" form of pornography (he cites "people like Angela Carter
who, in her book The Sadeian Women
... admitted... the possibility [of] a form of pornography that was benign, that was imaginative, was beautiful, and which didn’t have the problems that she saw in a lot of other pornography" as inspirations for the work). He has also said that his own description of Lost Girls as "pornography" has "wrong-footed a lot of... people." Moore speculates that "if we’d have come out and said, 'well, this is a work of art,' they would have probably all said, 'no it's not, it's pornography.' So because we're saying, 'this is pornography,' they're saying, 'no it's not, it's art,' and people don't realise quite what they've said."
In the UK, graphic artists and publishers fear that the book could be illegal to possess under the Coroners and Justice Act
, which criminalises any sexual image depicting a "child", defined as anyone appearing under the age of 18.
—which was given the copyright
to Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
in 1929—asserted that Moore would need their permission to publish the book in the UK and Europe. Moore indicated that he would not be seeking their licence, claiming that he had not expected his work to be "banned" and that the hospital only holds the rights to performances of the original play, not to the individual characters. On 11 October 2006, Top Shelf signed an agreement with GOSH that did not concede copyright infringement, but delayed publication of Lost Girls in the UK until after the copyright lapsed at the end of 2007.
The individual sections dealing with the three titular "girls" all have distinct visual layouts and themes used for their chapters. Alice's sections feature ovals reminiscent of her looking-glass
; Wendy's are shrouded in tall, dark rectangles reminiscent of the shadowy Victorian-architecture of her time, and Dorothy has wide panels in imitation of the flat landscape of Kansas
and prominently featured silver shoes.
Moore attempts to tailor the dialogue to each character's previous experiences and stories. Dorothy Gale, raised on a farm, speaks in a casual Midwestern American dialect. Wendy's speeches are heavy with timidity and clumsiness as a result of the repressive nature of her middle-class upbringing. Alice, having briefly been made queen (in Through The Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There), is more authoritarian in her upper-class English speech patterns and formal manner. Lewis Carroll
's nonsense-words also make allusory appearances in Alice's dialogue, including phrases such as "to jab" and "bandersnatch" as well as more overt references to her adventures in phrases like "the reflection is the real thing" and "I made pretence".
Each of the three Lost Girls volumes opens with a quotation from the three "original" authors (Lewis Carroll
, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum
). Parts of these citations are used as titles for each book:
Equally, the titles of each chapter naturally point towards the three "original" authors' books: "The Mirror", "Silver Shoes", "Missing Shadows", "A Vice From a Caterpillar", "Which Dreamed It?", "The Cowardly Lion", "You Won't Forget to Wave?", "Queens Together", "Snicker Snack", etc.
Each volume has ten chapters, and each chapter contains eight pages. This format initially derived from its original serialized publication in Stephen R. Bissette
's anthology Taboo
, but it also reflects Carroll's multi-layered usage of mathematical allusions and links as there are 8 squares in the length of a chess board (a prominent feature of Through The Looking-Glass, and the key to becoming a queen in both game and book) as well as his poem The Hunting Of The Snark being An Agony In Eight Fits.
The regular chapters are interspersed with pornographic pastiche
s of works by artists and authors of the period, presented as chapters in Monsieur Rougeur's White Book, a collection of illustrated pornographic stories. Each chapter is in the style of different authors and artists of the period: these include presentations in the styles of Colette
and Aubrey Beardsley
, Guillaume Apollinaire
and Alfons Mucha
, Oscar Wilde
and Egon Schiele
, and Pierre Louÿs
and Franz von Bayros
.
Although the central characters and various supporting characters are based directly on pre-existing fictional characters, Harold Potter is not a reference to Harry Potter
, having been named years before J. K. Rowling's first book was published.
", a genre whose literary and artistic quality he and Gebbie hope to raise:
placing the protagonists of unconnected stories in a shared universe is a standard trope of superhero
comics, a genre that Moore has written in extensively. Philip José Farmer
's works featuring the Wold Newton family
is a previous example of taking established classic characters and retroactively placing them in continuity
with each other. The British writer Kim Newman
has also done this in his period vampire novels. While working on Lost Girls, Moore also used this concept as the basis for his series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
.
's 120 Days of Sodom
, and Thomas Mann
's The Magic Mountain
. "120 Days of Sodom" involves a pattern of the characters' sexual activities becoming less and less inhibited. "The Magic Mountain" sees a young German man staying in a mountain hotel/sanatorium for seven years just prior to World War I. This novel, like Lost Girls, sees that war as a major turning point in world history.
with Taboo #5. Kitchen Sink Press
's Tundra
imprint later reprinted the Taboo chapters as two separate volumes, containing all of the previously-published chapters. A ten-issue series was scheduled at one point, but Moore and Gebbie instead decided to take the time to finish it, then offer it to various companies as a finished product. Eventually Top Shelf
was selected as the publisher, and at one point the finished product was meant to be released in late 2003 or early 2004. Top Shelf later planned to debut it in the United States at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, but due to graphic design taking longer than anticipated, it was released at the July 2006
convention instead. In the U.K. the book was published on 1 January 2008, and launched by Moore and Gebbie at a book launch in London on 2 January.
The original three-volume slipcase edition of Lost Girls was replaced in summer 2009 by a single-volume edition.
Over the course of the book's sixteen-year production, Moore and Gebbie entered into a romantic relationship, and in 2005 they announced their engagement
to be married
. "I'd recommend to anybody working on their relationship that they should try embarking on a 16-year elaborate pornography together," joked Moore. "I think they'll find it works wonders."
Moore originally planned to write in his usual style, producing a lengthy script from which Gebbie would work, but after some initial attempts they decided "to collaborate much more closely. So, she would construct the pages of artwork from my incoherent thumbnail sketches and then I would put the dialogue in afterwards."
Lost Girls was published on online magazine on The First Post
in 2008.
contains an exclusive bonus interview with Gebbie, elaborately detailing the origin of the book and the collaboration with Moore.
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
depicting the sexually explicit adventures of three important female fictional characters of the late 19th and early 20th century: Alice
Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
Alice is a fictional character in the literary classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There. She is a young girl from Victorian-era Britain.-Development:...
from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
, Dorothy Gale
Dorothy Gale
Dorothy Gale is the protagonist of many of the Oz novels by American author L. Frank Baum, and the best friend of Oz's ruler Princess Ozma. Dorothy first appears in Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels...
from The Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of...
and Wendy Darling
Wendy Darling
Wendy Moira Angela Darling is a fictional character, the female protagonist of Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie, and in most adaptations in other media. Her exact age is not specified in the original play or novel by Barrie, though she is implied to be 12 or 13 years old or younger, as she is "just...
from Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
. They meet as adults in 1913 and describe and share some of their erotic adventures with each other. The story is written by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and drawn by Melinda Gebbie
Melinda Gebbie
Melinda Gebbie is an American comics artist and writer, probably best known for Lost Girls, the three-volume graphic novel she produced in collaboration with writer Alan Moore, published by Top Shelf.-Biography:...
.
Plot summary
AliceAlice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
Alice is a fictional character in the literary classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There. She is a young girl from Victorian-era Britain.-Development:...
from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
(now a grey-haired old woman named "Lady Fairchild"), Dorothy
Dorothy Gale
Dorothy Gale is the protagonist of many of the Oz novels by American author L. Frank Baum, and the best friend of Oz's ruler Princess Ozma. Dorothy first appears in Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels...
from The Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of...
(now in her 20s) and Wendy
Wendy Darling
Wendy Moira Angela Darling is a fictional character, the female protagonist of Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie, and in most adaptations in other media. Her exact age is not specified in the original play or novel by Barrie, though she is implied to be 12 or 13 years old or younger, as she is "just...
from Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
(now named "Wendy Potter", in her 30s, and married to a man named Harold Potter who is 20 years older) are visiting an expensive mountain resort hotel in Austria on the eve of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(1913–1914). The hotel, named "Hotel Himmelgarten", is run by a man named Monsieur Rougeur. At the hotel, Dorothy meets a man named Captain Rolf Bauer.
The women meet by chance and begin to exchange erotic stories from their pasts. The stories are based on the childhood fantasy worlds of the three women:
- Wendy, John, and Michael Durling. Wendy's sexual escapades begin in meeting a homeless teenage boy named PeterPeter PanPeter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
and his sister Annabel in Kensington GardensKensington GardensKensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, is one of the Royal Parks of London, lying immediately to the west of Hyde Park. It is shared between the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The park covers an area of 111 hectares .The open spaces...
. Peter follows the three siblings home that night and teaches them sexual games. Wendy and her brothers begin meeting Peter and his group of homeless boys in the park for sex regularly. These encounters are watched privately by a pedophile called The CaptainCaptain HookCaptain James Hook is the main antagonist of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and its various adaptations. The character is a villainous pirate captain of the Jolly Roger brig, and lord of the pirate village/harbour in Neverland, where he is widely feared. Most...
, a co-worker of Wendy's father. The Captain later hires Peter as a male prostitute and brutally rapes Annabel. He attempts to attack Wendy, but she challenges him, saying that he molests children because he is afraid of aging himself. He breaks down in tears, and Wendy is able to flee. She only sees Peter once more, soliciting himself in a train station. She marries the much older Harold Potter because she is not attracted to him, and would not have to think about enjoying sex ever again.
- Dorothy Gale. It was while trapped in her house during a cyclone that she began masturbating and experienced her first orgasmOrgasmOrgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
at the age of sixteen. She has sexual encounters with three farm handFarmA farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...
s whom she refers to as The Straw Man, The Cowardly Lion and The Tin Man. Throughout most of her stories, she refers to her "Aunt" and "Uncle", however, Wendy and Alice later bring her to confess that they are, in fact, her Father and Step-Mother. Her affairs are discovered by her step-mother. Her father takes her to New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
under the pretense of seeking psychological help. Dorothy and her father have sex regularly until they return home. She begins to feel guilt and remorse for destroying her father's marriage. Not long after, she leaves to travel the world.
- Alice Fairchild. At fourteen, she is coerced into sex with her father's friend. During this, she stares into a mirror and imagines she is having sex with herself. At an all-girls boarding school, Alice convinces many of her schoolmates to sleep with her. She develops a strong attraction to her P.E. teacher, Ms. Regent. As Ms. Regent is leaving her teaching position, she shares a passionate good-bye kiss with Alice on her last day, and offers her a job as a Personal Assistant. Alice leaves school to work for Ms. Regent, who is now married to a wealthy man named Mr. Redman. Alice becomes her employer's sexual play thing, and Mrs. Redman begins hosting extravagant, drug-fueled lesbian sex parties. Alice becomes addicted to opium, and watches a young girl named Lily, among many others, abused just as she was. One night while Mr. and Mrs. Redman are treating many friends to dinner, Lily crawls under the table under the instruction of Mrs. Redman and performs cunnilingusCunnilingusCunnilingus is an oral sex act performed on a female. It involves the use by a sex partner of the mouth, lips and tongue to stimulate the female's clitoris, vulva, or vagina...
on Alice. This sends Alice over the edge, as she ragingly exposes her employer's secrets. Mrs. Redman vehemently denies Alice's claims, and she is dragged out (and molested) by two waiters. Alice is subsequently declared insane, and is put into mental hospital. The hospital staff systematically rape her, and upon release Alice continues having sexSexIn biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
with many women and using drugs. Her family disowns her, and she moves to Africa to run a diamond mine they owned.
In addition to the three women's erotic flashbacks, the graphic novel depicts sexual encounters between the women and other guests and staff of the hotel. The erotic adventures are set against the backdrop of unsettling cultural and historic events of the period, such as the debut of Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...
and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
Franz Ferdinand was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia, and from 1889 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia...
. The graphic novel ends with Alice's mirror being destroyed by German soldiers who burn down the Hotel.
Literary significance and reception
Moore is one of the most critically acclaimed writers in the field of comic books, and the release of this work received widespread coverage in the industry media. Despite the price of US$75, the book's first two print runs of 10,000 each sold out at the distributor level on the day of their release, with the U.S. sales at the end of 2007 reaching 35,000 copies.Controversy about child sexuality
Lost Girls has come under fire from critics who have argued that the book's sexual content involving children might open up stores that carry the book and people who buy the book to be charged with possession and/or trafficking in child pornographyChild pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...
. In US and Canada, many retailers have stated that they will not stock the book out of fear of possible obscenity prosecution, though some said they might make the book available to their customers via special order and simply not stock it.
Moore states that the storm of criticism which he and Gebbie expected did not materialize, which he attributes in part to his design of Lost Girls as a "benign" form of pornography (he cites "people like Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
who, in her book The Sadeian Women
The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography
The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography is a 1978 non-fiction book by Angela Carter. Given that many feminists, notably Andrea Dworkin, truly loathe de Sade, a feminist re-appraisal of his work might seem a strange thing; but that's just what this book is...
... admitted... the possibility [of] a form of pornography that was benign, that was imaginative, was beautiful, and which didn’t have the problems that she saw in a lot of other pornography" as inspirations for the work). He has also said that his own description of Lost Girls as "pornography" has "wrong-footed a lot of... people." Moore speculates that "if we’d have come out and said, 'well, this is a work of art,' they would have probably all said, 'no it's not, it's pornography.' So because we're saying, 'this is pornography,' they're saying, 'no it's not, it's art,' and people don't realise quite what they've said."
In the UK, graphic artists and publishers fear that the book could be illegal to possess under the Coroners and Justice Act
Coroners and Justice Act 2009
-External links:*, as amended from the National Archives.*, as originally enacted from the National Archives.* to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009....
, which criminalises any sexual image depicting a "child", defined as anyone appearing under the age of 18.
Disputed copyright status
On 23 June 2006, officials for Great Ormond Street HospitalGreat Ormond Street Hospital
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children is a children's hospital located in London, United Kingdom...
—which was given the copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
to Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
in 1929—asserted that Moore would need their permission to publish the book in the UK and Europe. Moore indicated that he would not be seeking their licence, claiming that he had not expected his work to be "banned" and that the hospital only holds the rights to performances of the original play, not to the individual characters. On 11 October 2006, Top Shelf signed an agreement with GOSH that did not concede copyright infringement, but delayed publication of Lost Girls in the UK until after the copyright lapsed at the end of 2007.
Allusions and references
The title of the work is a play on the name for Peter Pan's followers, the Lost Boys.The individual sections dealing with the three titular "girls" all have distinct visual layouts and themes used for their chapters. Alice's sections feature ovals reminiscent of her looking-glass
Mirror
A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...
; Wendy's are shrouded in tall, dark rectangles reminiscent of the shadowy Victorian-architecture of her time, and Dorothy has wide panels in imitation of the flat landscape of Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
and prominently featured silver shoes.
Moore attempts to tailor the dialogue to each character's previous experiences and stories. Dorothy Gale, raised on a farm, speaks in a casual Midwestern American dialect. Wendy's speeches are heavy with timidity and clumsiness as a result of the repressive nature of her middle-class upbringing. Alice, having briefly been made queen (in Through The Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There), is more authoritarian in her upper-class English speech patterns and formal manner. Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
's nonsense-words also make allusory appearances in Alice's dialogue, including phrases such as "to jab" and "bandersnatch" as well as more overt references to her adventures in phrases like "the reflection is the real thing" and "I made pretence".
Each of the three Lost Girls volumes opens with a quotation from the three "original" authors (Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
). Parts of these citations are used as titles for each book:
- First volume: Older Children ("We are but older children, dear, who fret to find our bedtime near," Carroll.)
- Second volume: Neverlands ("Of course, the Neverlands vary a good deal," Barrie.)
- Third volume: The Great And Terrible ("I am Oz, the great and terrible. Who are you and why do you seek me?," Baum.)
Equally, the titles of each chapter naturally point towards the three "original" authors' books: "The Mirror", "Silver Shoes", "Missing Shadows", "A Vice From a Caterpillar", "Which Dreamed It?", "The Cowardly Lion", "You Won't Forget to Wave?", "Queens Together", "Snicker Snack", etc.
Each volume has ten chapters, and each chapter contains eight pages. This format initially derived from its original serialized publication in Stephen R. Bissette
Stephen R. Bissette
Stephen R. Bissette is an American comics artist, editor, and publisher with a focus on the horror genre. He is best known for working with writer Alan Moore and inker John Totleben on the DC comic Swamp Thing in the 1980s....
's anthology Taboo
Taboo (comic)
Taboo was a comics anthology edited by Steve Bissette that was designed to feature edgier and more adult comics than could be published through mainstream publishers. The series began as a horror anthology, but soon branched out into other genres as well...
, but it also reflects Carroll's multi-layered usage of mathematical allusions and links as there are 8 squares in the length of a chess board (a prominent feature of Through The Looking-Glass, and the key to becoming a queen in both game and book) as well as his poem The Hunting Of The Snark being An Agony In Eight Fits.
The regular chapters are interspersed with pornographic pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
s of works by artists and authors of the period, presented as chapters in Monsieur Rougeur's White Book, a collection of illustrated pornographic stories. Each chapter is in the style of different authors and artists of the period: these include presentations in the styles of Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
and Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
, Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
and Alfons Mucha
Alfons Mucha
Alfons Maria Mucha , known in English as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist, known best for his distinct style. He produced many paintings, illustrations, advertisements, postcards, and designs.-Early years:...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
and Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...
, and Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who "expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection."-Life:...
and Franz von Bayros
Franz von Bayros
Franz von Bayros was an Austrian commercial artist, illustrator, and painter best known for his controversial "Tales at the Dressing Table" portfolio. Von Bayros belonged to the Decadent movement in art, often relying on erotic themes and phantasmagoric imagery.Von Bayros was born in Zagreb, in...
.
Although the central characters and various supporting characters are based directly on pre-existing fictional characters, Harold Potter is not a reference to Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
, having been named years before J. K. Rowling's first book was published.
Sex
Moore describes the work as "pornographyPornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
", a genre whose literary and artistic quality he and Gebbie hope to raise:
Shared universe
A fictional crossoverFictional crossover
A fictional crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete fictional characters, settings, or universes into the context of a single story. They can arise from legal agreements between the relevant copyright holders, or because of unauthorized efforts by fans, or even amid common...
placing the protagonists of unconnected stories in a shared universe is a standard trope of superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
comics, a genre that Moore has written in extensively. Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories....
's works featuring the Wold Newton family
Wold Newton family
The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer...
is a previous example of taking established classic characters and retroactively placing them in continuity
Continuity (fiction)
In fiction, continuity is consistency of the characteristics of persons, plot, objects, places and events seen by the reader or viewer over some period of time...
with each other. The British writer Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
has also done this in his period vampire novels. While working on Lost Girls, Moore also used this concept as the basis for his series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, publication of which began in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries...
.
Shelter from the storm
The plot device of a group of people being sequestered together in a hotel or similar place telling stories or committing otherwise decadent acts while the outside world is falling apart or in chaos is an old one in Western storytelling, dating back to Boccaccio's "The Decameron". Moore draws heavily on themes and tropes from such books as the Marquis de SadeMarquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
's 120 Days of Sodom
120 Days of Sodom
The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinism is a novel by the French writer and nobleman Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, written in 1785...
, and Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
's The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature....
. "120 Days of Sodom" involves a pattern of the characters' sexual activities becoming less and less inhibited. "The Magic Mountain" sees a young German man staying in a mountain hotel/sanatorium for seven years just prior to World War I. This novel, like Lost Girls, sees that war as a major turning point in world history.
Publication history
The first six chapters of Lost Girls were initially published in the Taboo anthology magazine, beginning in 19911991 in comics
-January:* Checkmate is canceled by DC Comics with issue #33.* El Diablo vol. 2 is canceled by DC with issue #16.* Count Duckula is canceled by the Marvel Comics imprint Star Comics with issue #15....
with Taboo #5. Kitchen Sink Press
Kitchen Sink Press
Kitchen Sink Press was a comic book publishing company founded by Denis Kitchen in 1970. Kitchen owned and operated Kitchen Sink Press until 1999. Kitchen Sink Press was a pioneering publisher of underground comics, and was also responsible for numerous republications of classic comic strips in...
's Tundra
Tundra Publishing
Tundra Publishing was a Northampton, Massachusetts-based comic book publisher founded by Kevin Eastman in 1990.-Overview:Tundra was meant to provide a venue for high-quality work by talented cartoonists and illustrators. Its publications were noted in the trade for their high production values,...
imprint later reprinted the Taboo chapters as two separate volumes, containing all of the previously-published chapters. A ten-issue series was scheduled at one point, but Moore and Gebbie instead decided to take the time to finish it, then offer it to various companies as a finished product. Eventually Top Shelf
Top Shelf Productions
Top Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. The company is based in Marietta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and New York City, New York....
was selected as the publisher, and at one point the finished product was meant to be released in late 2003 or early 2004. Top Shelf later planned to debut it in the United States at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, but due to graphic design taking longer than anticipated, it was released at the July 2006
2006 in comics
-January:*January 1, 2006: Newsweek offer a look back at 2005 through editorial cartoons. *January 2, 2006: The Cincinnati Enquirer cartoonist Jim Borgman starts a blog to detail his creative process...
convention instead. In the U.K. the book was published on 1 January 2008, and launched by Moore and Gebbie at a book launch in London on 2 January.
The original three-volume slipcase edition of Lost Girls was replaced in summer 2009 by a single-volume edition.
- Lost Girls (by Alan MooreAlan MooreAlan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and Melinda GebbieMelinda GebbieMelinda Gebbie is an American comics artist and writer, probably best known for Lost Girls, the three-volume graphic novel she produced in collaboration with writer Alan Moore, published by Top Shelf.-Biography:...
, Top ShelfTop Shelf ProductionsTop Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. The company is based in Marietta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and New York City, New York....
, 26 August 2006 ISBN 1-891830-74-0) - Lost Girls Single-Volume Edition by Alan MooreAlan MooreAlan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and Melinda GebbieMelinda GebbieMelinda Gebbie is an American comics artist and writer, probably best known for Lost Girls, the three-volume graphic novel she produced in collaboration with writer Alan Moore, published by Top Shelf.-Biography:...
, Top ShelfTop Shelf ProductionsTop Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. The company is based in Marietta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and New York City, New York....
, August 2009 ISBN 978-1-60309-044-5)
Over the course of the book's sixteen-year production, Moore and Gebbie entered into a romantic relationship, and in 2005 they announced their engagement
Engagement
An engagement or betrothal is a promise to marry, and also the period of time between proposal and marriage which may be lengthy or trivial. During this period, a couple is said to be betrothed, affianced, engaged to be married, or simply engaged...
to be married
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
. "I'd recommend to anybody working on their relationship that they should try embarking on a 16-year elaborate pornography together," joked Moore. "I think they'll find it works wonders."
Moore originally planned to write in his usual style, producing a lengthy script from which Gebbie would work, but after some initial attempts they decided "to collaborate much more closely. So, she would construct the pages of artwork from my incoherent thumbnail sketches and then I would put the dialogue in afterwards."
Lost Girls was published on online magazine on The First Post
The First Post
The First Post is a British daily online news magazine based in London. It was launched in August 2005. It publishes news, current affairs, lifestyle, opinion, arts and sports pages, and it features an online games arcade and a cinema featuring short films, virals, trailers and eyewitness news...
in 2008.
Interviews
The DVD of the documentary feature film The Mindscape of Alan MooreThe Mindscape of Alan Moore
The Mindscape of Alan Moore is a 2003 feature documentary which chronicles the life and work of Alan Moore, author of several acclaimed graphic novels, including From Hell, Watchmen and V for Vendetta....
contains an exclusive bonus interview with Gebbie, elaborately detailing the origin of the book and the collaboration with Moore.
External links
- Top Shelf page for Lost Girls
- Alan Moore's 'Literary' Pornography, Publishers WeeklyPublishers WeeklyPublishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, 1 May 2006
Reviews
- Neil Gaiman, 19 June 2006
- Aintitcool.com, 10 August 2006
- Alan Moore's Girls Gone Wilde, Village Voice, 15 August 2006
- Variety.com, 6 September 2006
Interviews
- The Virtues of Vice: The Alan Moore Interview, Part One and Part Two, Cinescape, April, 2006
- Find the Lost Girls with Alan Moore
- The Onion, 2 August 2006
- Lost Girl Found - Part 1 and Part 2, interview with Melinda Gebbie, 8 August 2006
- Panel Discussions: A talk with Lost Girls artist Melinda Gebbie, Village Voice, 15 August 2006
- Susie Bright Journal, 26 August 2008
- Gauging Lost Girls Reaction with Chris StarosChris StarosChris Staros is the publisher of the graphic novel publisher Top Shelf Productions, as well as the president of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund . He is also the author of Yearbook Stories, 1976–1978, published by Top Shelf....
, Comic Book ResourcesComic Book ResourcesComic Book Resources, also known as CBR is a website dedicated to the coverage of comic book-related news and discussion.-History:Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1996 as a development of the Kingdom Come Message Board, a message forum that Weiland had created to discuss DC...
, September, 2006 - Playboy Interview
- Nerve.com
- Alan Moore on Lost Girls, NewsaramaNewsaramaNewsarama is an American website that publishes news, interviews and essays about the American comic book industry.-History:Newsarama began in Summer 1995 as a series of Internet forum postings on the Prodigy comic-book message boards by fan Mike Doran. In these short messages. Doran shared...
- Alan Moore interview with Lasthours.org.uk