Graphic novelist Alan Moore may be most famous for “V for Vendetta” and “Watchmen” but neither offers the sex appeal of his racy graphic novel, “Lost Girls.” He takes a down and dirty approach to some of children’s literature’s most beloved characters and in a way that catapults him from the depths of naughty fan fiction into the world of published art.
The graphic novel tells the tale of three middle-aged women meeting at an European hotel. Each woman, Wendy, Dorothy and Alice, confides in the others about the strange nature of their sexual awakenings as children. Each had made up a fantasy-land that helped them confront their complex emotional states.
As a child, Wendy met a boy named Peter in the park and he and his other homeless friends expose her to the wonders of sex. She later confronts a man with a crippled hand that appears very hook-like, whose actions both turn her on and scare her.
Dorothy’s story is that of a sex-fueled girl from Kansas. Her sexual awakening begins when she is caught in a tornado and begins to masturbate (it makes more sense in context). After the tornado has settled, she takes it upon herself to have sex with every man who works on her farm.
Alice’s story is the most believable of all. When she is still a child a twitchy family friend called Bunny sexually assaults Alice. During the act, she imagines herself looking in a mirror watching another version of herself. This detachment from reality is surprisingly naturalistic, and nicely ties into the fairy tale we all know so well. As you may have guessed, these are not wholly original characters. Moore has taken these children’s stories that are all so universally known and suggests a sexual explanation for the obvious metaphors about growing up. How do the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Lost Boys, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow fit in? The answer is simple: in sexy, sexy ways.
Gaining wide publicity not only for issues with copyright infringement but also with the wide variety of paraphilias-from zoophilia to katoptronophilia (paraphilia for mirrors)-“Lost Girls” is worth reading if only for the controversial elements.
But it offers a lot more than that. Each woman must deal with evolving sexuality and their past, which all have kept secret until they meet each other.
The most controversial aspect of “Lost Girls” is the depiction of minors having sex. Legally, the decision was made that if no children were harmed or used in the production, then it cannot be child pornography. Oddly, Moore addresses this concern head on in chapter 22 when characters read a book that illustrates incestuous sex. One character exclaims, “And then children: how outrageous! How old can they be?” The response is, “Eleven? Twelve? It is quite monstrous except that they are fictions, as old as the page they appear upon, no less, no more. Fact and fiction: only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them.”
Moore confronts the issue of depicting children in sexual situations directly by having his characters moralize the very issue he knows will face his own book on release. He goes on to take a little meta-fictional jab at the issue by having the same character make this confession in the next panel. “And since Helena, who I just f***ed, is only thirteen, I am very guilty.” Moore uses humor to address and then dismiss what is a very serious concern.
Overall, the issue of illustrated child pornography is inexorably linked with this graphic novel. More attention should be given to the way Moore weaves together well-known fairy tales with the ‘real life events’ which caused the girls to make up the stories. The girls’ first sexual experiences were in many ways scarring and so they transformed them into elaborate stories.
“Lost Girls” offers one of the best graphic novel authors working in the genre of erotica withut sacrificing his tendencies towards metaphor and allusion.