Customer Reviews
Way out of your comfort zone. - By: Black Mask, 22 Sep 2008 
Moore & Gebbie have presented us with a gift & a challenge. First off, this is a beautifully presented artefact. The three volumesin their slip-case look & feel wonderful. Melinda Gebbie's art is enchanting, almost dreamlike. She presents the images suggested by Moore with real beauty & honesty. Moore,in turn, asks more of his artistic collaborator than many would be able or comfortable to provide. Just about every kind of human-on-human sexual activity is here. It's erotic, yes. It's pornographic, yes. It's graphic, yes. However, because of its beauty & intelligence, none of the situations or images are utterly repellent. Moore & Gebbie force us to ask very difficult questions of ourselves. We see & read & understand these things on these pages, & we realise that we must make moral choices. We recognise that we do make moral choices. We reflect on why we make those moral choices. We're prodded to think about our own sexuality, to think about when that sexuality awakened, to wonder at when & what & why we lusted over the things we desire. As a parent this can be occasionally uncomfortable, but it's absolutely compelling.
The retrospective retellings of the girls' tales is fascinating & astonishingly inventive. History, imagination, psychotherapy, art, myth, magic & a million other things collidein these volumes. There are messages & truths locked deep inside these pages that further rereadings may uncover. My first impression is that Moore & Gebbie point a finger of blame for a lost innocence & the experience we, concomitantly, never have the pleasure of achieving. It identifies the cheapening, commodification & vulgarisation of the erotic. Of sex. Of the simple innocent funin f*cking. It's a dirty business, now. And ubiquitous. Furtive, sleazy & sick. This book isn't about paedophilia, or homosexuality, or masturbation. It's about (among many other things) how desire is born, what it means to lust, about sexual release, the part imagination playsin our desires... The culprits may be Modernism, mechanized war, industrialism...
This is the most startling & provocative thing I've read since Lord Horror. We should be grateful that people like Moore & Gebbie & Top Shelf are producing stuff like this, because precious few others are.
Simply stunning. - By: Ms. J. J. Furmston, 28 Jul 2008 
In some ways this book is a dark delve into repressed & sometimes disturbing memories,in others it's a celebration of raw sexuality. The Dialogue is superb as each character is clearly recognisable as one of the three famous young girls. Alicein particular is very well realised. (It's great to see an older woman drawn so seductively)
I don't feel it is neccesary to decide if this is Pornography or Art, it falls into both categories.
I gave this 4 stars because I feel it may satisfy more Women than Men with it's softly drawn styles.
Sexual content involving children. - By: C. P. Jones, 04 Feb 2008 
Lost Girls has come under fire from critics who have argued that the book displays controversial sexual content involving children - before you buy this book I think the reader should be aware of this & make a judgement as to whether they really wish to read such things (I was unaware of this).
Yes, the writing is very clever as each of the girls 'speak'in a different dialect. Also, the art reflects the original stories of Alice (asin 'Wonderland'), Dorothy (from 'Wizard of Oz') & Wendy (from Peter Pan). I had a hard time understanding why someone would wish to pollute & denigrate children's classics by having older versions of these characters describe their first sexual experiences (of which Dorothy's involves her father...although this bit I have only gleaned from Wikipedia as I binned this book before finishing it). Apparently, Moore has said that he is trying to move sexual literature away from the "disreputable, seamy, under-the-counter genre with absolutely no standards: [the pornography industry]". I don't think he has achieved this & I think Moore is falling into the disreputable & seamy category himself...albeit 'over-the-counter'. Ultimately, please be the judge for yourself - I was quite shocked by the book & wanted to make sure anyone buying this is well aware of its content.
Amazon states that this graphic novel displays "...ecstatic writing & artin a sublime union that only the medium of comics can achieve". In a way this is true but only so far that the art carries the story - I would like to see Moore write an actual novel & see if his words alone can convey the message he says he is trying to convey. Moore has no love for the comic book/graphic novel genre, only a cold & calculated mixing of ingredients the writer knows his fans like.
Below Par Moore - By: A. A. Dainty, 23 Oct 2007 
After Eagerly awaiting Moore's latest oddessy I have to say that I was somewhat dissapointed by Lost Girls, this feeling may not have been so if Moore had concluded following Book One:
In the first Book of Lost Girls all of Moore's writing techniques are evident, subtle nods to the era, other works & juxtapositions of two different events happening concurrently, added to this there is the very smart premise that the fantasy stories of Wendy, Dorothy & Alice are formed through the repression of their first sexual experiences. I would therefore give the first book 4stars.
Unfortunately I cannot say the same for the following 2 books, book 2 being the one of least merit (2 Stars), Moore continues to sexualise the fantasy stories of Neverland, Oz & Wonderland for no other reason than he can. This is also probably the most graphic of the three books, so may be seen as 100% erotica which has been bookended by the set up & justification.
The final book of Lost Girls then justifies the series (as another reviewer has mentioned) by stating that the eventsin the series should cause no offence as they are ficticious & are purely intended to entertain. This justification along with the resolutions to the Lost Girls stories raises this book above book 2 to 3stars.
As Lost Girls is still an overtly Alan Moore collection (as described above) I fans may still enjoy the collection, however I personally feel that this is way below the quality of Watchmen & League of Extrodinary Gentlemen etc.
Art or pornography - By: Robert J. Prosser, 22 Sep 2006 Alan Moore's long awaited & unabashed pornographic epic finally arrives. Is it worth the wait? Yes & no. The quality of the art is undeniably supreb with Melinda Gebbie demonstrating a range of styles & the quality & craft of Moore's writing is of a high level. However, I'm not convinced of some of the points he's making, such as, if incidents are fictional then there is no harmin them. Art or pornography? I'm still undecided.
