September
6 Guest Review: “Lost Girls”

Much has been made of “Lost Girls’” sexual content, and while there is barely a page that doesn’t feature an explicit sex act — including the highly thorny areas of incest, underage sex and pedophilia — Moore’s agenda is far more than mere controversy-baiting titillation. “Lost Girls” is rife with consequence: Alice, for all her intelligence, articulation and voracious sexual appetite, embodies the sad legacy of what clearly amounts to systematic abuse, and her story is profoundly moving. Similarly, Wendy and Dorothy indulge the primal, exhilarating allure of discovering sex and, to their great cost, see how very easily it can be perverted.

Yet, much of the sex in the book is joyous, abandoned, realistically rendered and (mostly) free of malevolence and guilt, highlighting the fact that this is primarily a story of women boldly reclaiming their lost sexual identities. The backdrop of the burgeoning conflict that would devastate Europe further allows Moore to posit the entirely reasonable question: What is more pornographic? People engaged in healthy sexual union or young men lying dead needlessly on the battlefield?

A further example of Moore’s excellent taste in collaborators, Gebbie’s vital role in this enterprise cannot be overstated, not least as a female counterbalance to Moore. Her richly colorful art, mostly done via layered crayon, provides the book with the delicate look of a traditional children’s tale and serves to somewhat lessen the story’s more troublesome aspects.

Intermittently, there are also pastiches of infamous period pornographers, whose detailed art Gebbie evokes to marvelous effect. Throughout, Gebbie generates no shortage of striking imagery, a prime example being Wendy’s confrontation with “The Captain.” Recast by Moore as a pederast with a deformed hand who stalks the nearby woodland, it’s a thrilling episode of feminine sexual power unleashed, culminating visually in a startling full-page combination of the demise of Captain Hook as envisaged by J.M Barrie and the mythological symbol of vagina dentata.

Bearing no shortage of material to potentially shock or offend the conservative or faint-hearted, “Lost Girls” is undoubtedly a dicey (and pricey) proposition – even for Moore’s mainstream fan base. Negotiated with an open mind and an understanding of Moore and Gebbie’s goals, it is an unforgettable and ultimately richly rewarding one. Moore, his mastery of the comics form showing no signs of decline, has created a book that deserves to be ranked alongside the likes of his masterworks “Watchmen” and “From Hell.” Like those books, he has once again created a comic the like of which has not been seen before – and it’s truly been worth the wait. Grade: A