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| Front cover of Lost Girls Book 3 |
This book collects the final 10 Lost Girls stories
Score (out of 5 Capes)
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| 4/5 Capes |
While the art and to a lesser extent the tales suffer from a stiff repetitiveness, a strong defense of the entire project raises this to a 4 Capes review.
My Review
In this, the third and final volume of the Lost Girls work by acclaimed writer Alan Moore and accomplished artist Melinda Gebbie, any remaining norms and taboos are well and thoroughly shattered. Moore also articulates a clear thesis statement about what he and Gebbie have created, why it matters and why it is wrong to punish artistic works as obscene.
All of that and more in just the first three chapters!
The collection unfolds in the now-familiar pattern: ten self-contained tales, each eight pages in length, each with a distinct focus and drawn in oft-shifting but by now familiar patterns of artistic style.
The book opens with the fracturing of the lovers' ensemble, as the growing global unrest from the end of Book 2 crashes into their happy community. In Without the Frost, the Blinding Snow, solider Rolf is called back into service while merchant representative Harold is summoned to return to England as relations with Germany deteriorate. Almost lost amidst all the sex toys, self-pleasuring and gender-agnostic coupling are some truly hilarious double-entendres and misunderstandings between Wendy and her husband.
If the shocking variety of couplings in the opening chapter were not transgressive enough, Moore raises the bar another several notches in the following chapter, A Merry Crew, Beneath the Setting Sun. With an incest-filled narrative pulled from Monsieur Rougeur's book in the upper half and a raging orgy in the hotel in the lower half, Moore pushes the narrative through the barriers of some of the last remaining taboos.
But in breaking those taboos, Moore gives voice to counter-arguments against those very taboos. In the voice of hotelier and artist Monsieur Rougeur, Moore draws a distinction between reality and fiction, between action and thought, reality and imagination. "Fiction and fact: only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them," says the hotelier. If we can and must draw such distinctions in our daily lives, why should erotica be treated differently?
The taboo themes of incest and sexual assault through power imbalance continue in You Won't Forget to Wave? Our three heroines extract some lurid autobiographical details from Monsieur Rougeur, through a consensual assault of their own. Then, having said his piece, Rougeur follows the lead of the other men and slips away from the hotel and into the growing shadows and darkness enclosing them.
As if the incest and buggery and all the other terrain Moore has led us through to this point were not enough, in The Poppyfield Dorothy recounts another part of her story with some mild bestiality mixed in. Whatever your kink, Moore seems intent on touching it, and Gebbie gladly provides some imagery. Most important, for Dorothy's development as a character, her adoptive aunt catches her playing her games with the hired hands and punishes her with some over-the-knee spanking.
Hooked is the next entry in Wendy's tawdry reminisces, as she recounts her growing awakening and variety of spicy encounters. After witnessing the man with the hooked, crippled hand pay Peter for his services and attentions, she explores the new thrills of bondage, helpless to the attentions and demands of Peter and his sister Annabel. Her fantasies grow wilder, convinced that everyone around her is as sex-obsessed as she is.
The artistry of Gebbie's work has been slipping more and more throughout this third book, and in this chapter it finally becomes too hard to ignore. The separation in Wendy's personal divided layout, the coloured set against the the silhouetted, jumps back and forth between memory and reality.
The titular caterpillar in Alice's next tale, A Vice from a Caterpillar, does restore some hope of the provocative and subversive cleverness of Gebbie's images. With themes and characters from her Looking Glass and Wonderland roots, Alice takes us through new levels of depravity, recounting the not-always-consensual extremes to which her mistress subjected her. They risked and dared much for their obsession with these carnal pleasures!
Swallowed turns the narrative back to Wendy. The result is the strongest story of this collection, a standout among its peers. So much is going on in this one, and Moore deftly intertwines threads from the Peter Pan tales, the preceding chapters of Lost Girls, critical reflection on symbolism, even a nod of self-analysis about this whole erotic project. It's the end of Wendy's childhood tale, a final confrontation with the hook-handed man, a break with Peter, and a conscious choice to grow up and suppress her sexual passions and desires. Gebbie's illustrations continue to lean more toward the lurid and canned but she finds her power on more than a few pages, chief among them the full-page poster spread of a pants-down Hook being devoured by a suggestively-shaped crocodile.
We reach the end of Dorothy's reminisces in The Man Behind the Curtain. Her Daddy issues are laid bare in a series of encounters on a trip to New York. Every panel ratchets up the ever-increasing depravity and growing risk of exposure. This would have been the most shocking and taboo-breaking chapter had it come in volume 1 or 2, but by this point, after everything else we have seen, it is far less so. Gebbie makes good use of the larger panels that Dorothy's standard layout provides, although there is still a rote-ness at this point to her depictions of the young woman's shocking experiences.
Alice's Evidence brings to a conclusion the reminiscences of the third and final of our threesome of ladies. While the three engage in some role-playing and dominating of Alice, she manages to narrate the end of her turbulent childhood and its sexual awakening. Even as she and her matron draw others into their circle, the wheels are set in motion for their ultimate destruction. I love the way Moore weaves in the gibberish nonsense of the Lewis Carrol Alice tales as part of her psychotic breakdown.
With the 30th and final chapter, The Mirror: Reprise and Crescendo (Who Dreamed It?), Moore and Gebbie's grand opus to the erotic comes to an end. The final chapter is told from the perspective of the mirror, matching the very first chapter back in Book 1. While playtime has ended and the three must flee the advancing German army, they all express their affection for one another, and for the ways in which their newest sexual awakening has reshaped and restored their hope, their joy in the face of the coming darkness.
It is a fitting conclusion, even if the hope and joy is buried within the melancholy over the destruction all around them. Moore and Gebbie have covered an immense amount of ground, broken every imaginable taboo, unpacked and reinterpreted some deep symbolism from the Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz and Alice stories.
For all the controversies it caused, and with Book 3 occasionally suffering from overly stiff and repetitive events and art, this set is a tour de force.
4 Capes out of 5 for this final book.
What I loved
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| M. Rougeur fades out of the story |
This final volume of Moore and Gebbie's enchanting and controversial Lost Girls stories has a melancholy tone throughout. Even as the characters pleasure themselves and one another, one senses the end approaching, that all good things must pass eventually.
This melancholy appears in all ten stories. Among the strongest is M. Rougeur's farewell. After enabling the sexual awakenings in the first Books, he ultimately bids farewell to his hotel and its erotic clients and sees himself out.
It is a moving and beautiful end to his story arc.
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| The mirror's final fate |
The very first Lost Girls story was told entirely through the looking-glass, reflected in an ornately carved mirror. Gebbie defined and followed distinct layouts and artistic themes and patterns based on the character at the centre of each tale, before book-ending the entire collection with a return to that ornate mirror.
The final story is again told through reflection, as the three women - Alice, Wendy and Dorothy - bid one another a bittersweet Adieu. To their great shock, Alice leaves the mirror behind without any real emotional attachment or regret.
And none too soon. The next day, the military occupiers arrive at the hotel and shatter the mirror as quickly and completely as they shattered the peace and tranquility of the former residents and their whole society.
It makes for an ending filled with the care, attention to detail and artistic touches that elevate so much of the rest of the Lost Girls series.
What I didn't love
When compared to the first two, Book 3 is a swirling blend of amazing artistry and rote repetition. At the same time that the couplings and situations become increasingly fantastical, shattering any remaining societal taboos it can find, the relationships between the characters feel set in stone and their interactions disappointingly repetitive.
The panel I chose above, with Wendy seeming to bid farewell to her husband, is one of the few I can safely share in a PG review of this Mature book, as the nudity and sexual encounters saturate nearly every page and panel.
We have reached peak erotica and passed the other side, where the words of affection, aggression, interaction no longer entice or excite. They too often fall into a more-of-the-same cycle. These characters, who were so richly developed in Books 1 and 2 are now at risk of becoming boring and predictable.
Perhaps that is why the stories try so hard to shock with their portrayals of taboo and old-fashioned depravity.
Related Reviews
Lost Girls Book One - Older Children
Lost Girls Book Two - Neverland
Quick Reference Details
Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Melinda Gebbie
Published By: Top Shelf
Published When: Aug 26, 2006
Parental Rating: Mature (X)
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