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Lost Girls CollectedSnagging.org In association with Amazon.co.ukOnline Shop | Property Guides | Kitchen & Home | Garden Tools | Power Tools | Consumer Electronics Get the Snagging Checklist Here!  
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Binding: Hardcover ComicDewey Decimal Number: 741 EAN: 9781891830747 Edition: New title Format: Import ISBN: 1891830740 Label: Top Shelf Manufacturer: Top Shelf Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 264 Publication Date: January 31, 2008 Publisher: Top Shelf Studio: Top Shelf Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Way out of your comfort zone.Moore and Gebbie have presented us with a gift and a challenge. First off, this is a beautifully presented artefact. The three volumes in their slip-case look and feel wonderful. Melinda Gebbie's art is enchanting, almost dreamlike. She presents the images suggested by Moore with real beauty and 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 and intelligence, none of the situations or images are utterly repellent. Moore and Gebbie force us to ask very difficult questions of ourselves. We see and read and understand these things on these pages, and 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 and what and 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 and astonishingly inventive. History, imagination, psychotherapy, art, myth, magic and a million other things collide in these volumes. There are messages and truths locked deep inside these pages that further rereadings may uncover. My first impression is that Moore and Gebbie point a finger of blame for a lost innocence and the experience we, concomitantly, never have the pleasure of achieving. It identifies the cheapening, commodification and vulgarisation of the erotic. Of sex. Of the simple innocent fun in f*cking. It's a dirty business, now. And ubiquitous. Furtive, sleazy and 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 plays in our desires... The culprits may be Modernism, mechanized war, industrialism... This is the most startling and provocative thing I've read since Lord Horror. We should be grateful that people like Moore and Gebbie and Top Shelf are producing stuff like this, because precious few others are. Rating:  - Simply stunning.In some ways this book is a dark delve into repressed and 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. Alice in 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. Rating:  - Sexual content involving children.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 and 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 (as in 'Wonderland'), Dorothy (from 'Wizard of Oz') and Wendy (from Peter Pan). I had a hard time understanding why someone would wish to pollute and 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 and I think Moore is falling into the disreputable and seamy category himself...albeit 'over-the-counter'. Ultimately, please be the judge for yourself - I was quite shocked by the book and wanted to make sure anyone buying this is well aware of its content. Amazon states that this graphic novel displays "...ecstatic writing and art in 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 and 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 and calculated mixing of ingredients the writer knows his fans like. Rating:  - Below Par MooreAfter 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 and juxtapositions of two different events happening concurrently, added to this there is the very smart premise that the fantasy stories of Wendy, Dorothy and 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 and 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 and justification. The final book of Lost Girls then justifies the series (as another reviewer has mentioned) by stating that the events in the series should cause no offence as they are ficticious and 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 and League of Extrodinary Gentlemen etc. Rating: - Art or pornographyAlan Moore's long awaited and unabashed pornographic epic finally arrives. Is it worth the wait? Yes and no. The quality of the art is undeniably supreb with Melinda Gebbie demonstrating a range of styles and the quality and 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 harm in them. Art or pornography? I'm still undecided.  Try searching the Internet for "Lost Girls Collected" or Ebay for "Lost Girls Collected". You might also be interested in the following great products:
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