Lost Girls

[Rob_Merritt]

I did several searches for "Lost Girls" and nothing came up. I'm surprised no one is talking about it here.

For the past 16 years (repeat: 16 years) Alan Moore has been working on a pornographic graphic novel called Lost Girls, featuring the grown up sexual adventures of Alice from Wonderland, Dorothy from Oz and Wendy from Neverland.
Picked up my copy today. It was 70 bucks. I have a life time rule of never ever paying for porn. I also almost never buy expensive hard back comic books. However this is something from Alan Moore. Arguably the greatest comic writer alive today. I may not like everything he has done up till this point but I could see its quality. The reviews even stated this was his more significant work since Watchmen. I had to buy it. The kids and my wife went to bed slight after 8 and I sat down and read the whole thing this evening. Would I be offended? Would I be challanged?

(no spoilers here if you haven't read it and still wish to)

In short... Alan Moore spent 16 years working on fanfic porn. Bad, poorly drawn, full of puns, fanfic porn.

I realize there is a message there and a point he is trying to get across. Maybe if a little thing like the internet hadn't been created, this work may of affected me somehow. I wasn't offended or shocked by anything in Lost Girls. Perhaps I've just been exposed to too much porn. I may of taken it more serious if it feature original characters instead of characters from classic children stores. I was rolling my eyes more often than not. I rather wanted to be challanged. I wanted more emotion. I wanted something that made me feel this wasn't the work of some loney 15 year old boy on summer break. The only surprise I had was that Deanna Troi getting gang bang by Scotty and Captain Sisco wasn't in it. Maybe it was, I did read through the third book rather quickly.

Also, the art is horrible. It didn't look great from the few preview images (which were probably the best in the book FYI so I guess thats why they were used) but blown up on quality paper, the vast majority of art just looks horrible. I draw better than this! I suck and I draw better than this. Its so bad at times, I would expect to see lines of the note book paper it was drawn on and maybe its torn perforated edge. Then out of no where there will be a single panel that looks decent and that will be that. The artist is Moore's wife. The story goes they used making the book as foreplay and thats why it took so long. Well if my wife drew the stuff that is in that book, I would be laughing too hard to get an erection. If that story is true, Moore probably should have kept Lost Girls a secret.

 

[Kool-Aid]

Glad I didn't get it. The only review I've read of it was on the Brian K Vaughn boards. BKV was pushing this book so hard I alomst bought it today, but didn't because I wanted to see a more in depth review.

 

[Phaedrus45]

Yeah, I got it yesterday, too...and thought what I've read so far is utter crap. I'm glad you posted a review, and I wasn't so far off in what I was thinking. Here is my review:

Alan Moore's Lost Girls Hardcover Collection: Ok, now I knew this book was going to be graphic....but, even I was totally shocked when I pulled out Vol. 1 of the three book series, and the first thing I saw was the back cover with a rendition of two ladies assisting a third on a very large *****, all very nude and very, very graphic. After that initial shock, I figured, "well, Alan Moore has done some great work, and we'll see how this goes." Let me just say, this is not vintage Alan Moore. This is more like "Alan Moore's Junior High Comic." So far, there is no real story that I've read. I'm almost done with Book 1, and am very unimpressed. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's total crap.

I've been trying to pinpoint what makes this book so bad, and I think one major factor is that Alan Moore is a man, and he's writing about these sexual fairy tale women from how a horny, adolecent boy would picture them. It's like a story from Penthouse Forum, where a lady writes into the magazine; but, as a reader, you just know it's been probably written by some man who thought this is the way women must behave. The reader doesn't come away with an insight on who these three main female characters really are....just, that they are filled with so much sexual energy that they will screw practically anyone. I'm really hoping this book gets better, but for now, my review stands at 4/10.

 

[The Question]

You know, everything you just described as being wrong with the book sounds very very right to me.



All joking asside, Alan admited up front that this is pornography.

 

[Phaedrus45]

Pornography doesn't bother me in the least (although, I do admit to how far they did go), but it should have some resemblance to a story, and the characters should be more than two dimensional versions that some adolecent school boy would dream up. And, it really does scream of a man's (or, more precisely, a juvenile's) interpretation of how sex is for women. But, I'm hoping when I get a chance to read the other two volumes that it might get a bit better.

 

[Rob_Merritt]

You know, everything you just described as being wrong with the book sounds very very right to me.



All joking asside, Alan admited up front that this is pornography.

I knew it was "porn" but it isn't good porn. Hell It isn't even good enough to be considered bad porn.

 

[Olivier]

Thanks for the reviews & especially the explanations.
I was wondering about that expensive collection; I guess I need not bother with it now.

 

[Kevin Roegele]

You've got to admit, the most respected comicbook writer of the last twenty-five years coming out with a (as you say) terrible, pornographic waste of time is very amusing. From a certain point of view.