Review by Andy Williams
Lost Girls, a play on the Lost Boys of J. M. Barrie’s fiction, recontextualises the famous adventures of classic literary heroines as tales of sexual awakening, exploration and, in some cases, degradation. Three women of different ages – Alice from Alice In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass, Wendy from Peter Pan and Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz – meet in an Austrian hotel on the eve of the First World War.
Lady Alice Fairchild is in her sixties and from the English upper classes. Shipped abroad by her family to avoid scandal, her fantasies of Wonderland mask a history of sexual exploitation: the White Rabbit a family friend who takes advantage of her; the Red Queen a school mistress who runs drug fueled lesbian sex parties; the Caterpillar an opium supplier and so on. The dream-like world on the other side of the mirror is seen by Alice as an escape from childhood and a gateway to the sensual, but dangerous world of adulthood.
Wendy Potter (nee Darling) is a middle class woman in her thirties, trapped in a loveless marriage to an older man. As a girl she meets a homeless boy in the park, Peter, who initiates Wendy and her brothers into a world of sexual exploits with his sister Annabel and other destitute (lost) boys. A sinister gentleman with a deformed hand, recast as the evil Captain Hook, has twisted urges that threaten Wendy and Peter’s idyllic Neverland.
Dorothy Gale is a farm girl from Kansas in her early twenties with a healthy sexual appetite. Imagining her encounters as otherworldly, she engages in trysts with a trio of farmhands – her Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man. On a trip to New York, her Father seems like a Wizard, but a glimpse behind the curtain reveals it to be something far less wholesome instead.
Writer Alan Moore is a master at reinventing classic characters, be they comic or literary, and pulls together an authentic scenario, contemporaneous to the protagonists’ history and the impending war. Extrapolating their stories into the world of erotica, he leaves no stone unturned. Catering for all tastes, shoe fetishism, strap-ons, homoerotism, incest, paedophilia, lesbianism, bestiality, rape fantasies and more play a part in the many spicy tableaux. Although the “foreplay” of earlier chapters comes across as heavy-handed, like clumsy teenage fumblings in the dark, the story finds its groove once our Lost Girls meet, interact and begin to share their anecdotes. Eventually all the denizens of the hotel seem to be caught up in the orgone-charged atmosphere, with no sex act forbidden.
Melinda Gebbie’s artwork is delicate and sensual, mainly coloured pencils and pastels, far from the usual gynaecological displays copied from tatty porn mags as seen in many “adult” comics. The characters have realistic body types and realistic urges as Gebbie channels the Art Nouveau stylings of Alphonse Mucha and Egon Schiele, among others. Moore, never one to shy away from an homage, evokes the period well, successfully emulating the literary motifs of writers such as Edward Lear and Oscar Wilde.
Despite claiming the work was pornography, Moore couldn’t quite bring himself to deliver a non-stop shagathon, adding many layers and subtexts to both the narrative and the characters. Choosing a suitably sympathetic artist for the project, he ensures this has a broader appeal beyond the dirty mac brigade to the open-minded connoisseur of high-end graphic erotica.
