Meanwhile... Pt. 1

[Rob Allen]

I know next to nothing about Melinda Gebbie, other than the fact that she drew Alan Moore's Lost Girls (which I'm pretty sure I would have no interest whatsoever in touching with a 10-foot pole)

Why not? I thought it was really interesting.

[Chicago Expat]

The move is precipitated by my soon-to-begin master's program in Library & Information Sciences which, if I remember correctly, puts me in the same boat as a number of other regulars here.

Congrats.

My wife graduated a couple years ago from the MLIS program at U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She really enjoyed it, thinks she might go back one day and get her phd.

[dan bailey]

Why not? I thought it was really interesting.

The borderline-child-porn vibe that many have described is ... off-putting.

[benday-dot]

The borderline-child-porn vibe that many have described is ... off-putting.

I hear you well Dan, but Lost Girls is actually damn good. I stayed away from it for awhile as well, but I'd been hearing good things about it, and I didn't want to be in the position of fearing a book, so I thought I'd give it a try. If any fear became disgust that would be something else, but it turns out it was a pretty remarkable and unique project. Porn yes, but nothing like the usual trite and pedestrian smut.

This mini-review I posted elsewhere and some time ago still lingers in the ether, so I here it is again, to save me further effort at elaboration.

With Lost Girls Alan Moore has given us both a literate and ecstatic pornography. At its heart this book seeks to shatter the old story of history and civilization by putting down an alternative to the prevailing narrative of progress, strife, politics, cynicism, decadence, patriarchy and the broken world of adults. Moore sets up an erotic milieu in pre-war Europe, and pulls off a strangely innocent and liberated work in the shadow of the horrible conflagration to come. An arena of children engaging in sex versus madmen engaging in bloody mechanized war is rather wonderfully transformed into an exultant and virtuous world. Truly a triumph of the sexually empowered fantasy of Neverland over the bloody awfulness of Ypres and the Somme.

[Alex Smith]

Hm, as for the Y: The Last Man run, it seems the first few issues are fine, and the rest are VF to NM. It's a shame it's the first few that are in fine condition.

[berk]

The borderline-child-porn vibe that many have described is ... off-putting.

I felt much the same way when I first heard about it and still haven't read it yet, but I've become convinced that it deserves a chance from various reviews and reports I've seen in the intervening years.

Strangely, it was an excerpt I saw from an assessment by a Canada Customs official - a censor! - that first made me reconsider my dismissive attitude. Just had a quick look around the web for the original and couldn't find it, but here's a press release from Top Shelf quoting a bit of it:

Top Shelf Productions is pleased to announce that the Canada Border Services Agency (Canada Customs) has formally cleared Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie’s LOST GIRLS for importation into Canada.

In a thoughtful letter from the agency, dated 27 October 2006, the CBSA stated that the “depictions and descriptions are integral to the development of an intricate, imaginative, and artfully rendered storyline,” and that “the portrayal of sex is necessary to a wider artistic and literary purpose.” They concluded with “Its importation into Canada is therefore allowed.”

So, based on that and on Moore's extremely impressive track record, I will give this a read at some point, in spite of my continued misgivings. It's mainly the expense that's prevented me from getting to it before now.

I also have to say that I was hugely impressed by the anonymous censor's conscientiousness.

[Jolly Mon]

I hear you well Dan, but Lost Girls is actually damn good. I stayed away from it for awhile as well, but I'd been hearing good things about it, and I didn't want to be in the position of fearing a book, so I thought I'd give it a try. If any fear became disgust that would be something else, but it turns out it was a pretty remarkable and unique project. Porn yes, but nothing like the usual trite and pedestrian smut.

This mini-review I posted elsewhere and some time ago still lingers in the ether, so I here it is again, to save me further effort at elaboration.

Personally, I'll take your word for it that it's "remarkable and unique" porn. I have no fear of it, or any other piece of printed material, but "children engaging in sex", fictional characters or otherwise, is not something I'm interested in.

[adam_warlock_2099]

The more shocking, the more grotesque, the more sexual (and all things shocking, offensive, controversial and unorthodox with in sexual), the more blatant, for the sake of, just because I can, rape, incest, and "why not" are invading every aspect of entertainment.

Why?

Because it sells.

[Cei-U!]

The borderline-child-porn vibe that many have described is ... off-putting.

Personally, I'll take your word for it that it's "remarkable and unique" porn. I have no fear of it, or any other piece of printed material, but "children engaging in sex", fictional characters or otherwise, is not something I'm interested in.

I'm with you two. I don't begrudge anyone else their right to read and enjoy it but it's not even remotely my thing. Frankly, the very concept makes me want to puke.

Cei-U!
I summon the Pepto!

[The Confessor]

The more shocking, the more grotesque, the more sexual (and all things shocking, offensive, controversial and unorthodox with in sexual), the more blatant, for the sake of, just because I can, rape, incest, and "why not" are invading every aspect of entertainment.

Why?

Because it sells.

While I think you're right for perhaps 99% of the industry, I don't think you can tar Alan Moore with that same brush with regards to Lost Girls. The book goes a lot, lot deeper than mere titilation for the purposes of shifting a few thousand extra copies.

[Phil Maurice]

The borderline-child-porn vibe that many have described is ... off-putting.

You know I love ya Dan, but I'm having trouble reconciling your discomfort with "Lost Girls," a work that involves no actual children and thus no victims, with your glib attitude toward Manson (in another thread), a vile criminal who produced actual victims.*

If you want to express disgust that Moore has corrupted and sexualized these beloved childhood characters, I think that is legitimate criticism. But to simply dismiss the work because of a perceived "vibe" seems beneath you. Yes, even you.

I don't wish to be contentious; I know you to be a thoughtful poster who will rapidly school me. I'm just curious why Manson rates a "meh" while "Lost Girls" requires that a line be drawn.

*If cross-pollinating threads violates the rules, I'll stop. I didn't know how else to approach this.

[benday-dot]

While I think you're right for perhaps 99% of the industry, I don't think you can tar Alan Moore with that same brush with regards to Lost Girls. The book goes a lot, lot deeper than mere titilation for the purposes of shifting a few thousand extra copies.

Exactly. It's the tiredest cliche that we can't judge a book by its "cover", but it couldn't be truer than with Lost Girls.

It is a book that insinuates the most unacceptable of societies perversions, but if one were to actually read it another story and other meanings are to be found.

Sex is a universal subject. War is also universal subject. Moore radically divides the two universals and then brings them together in this visual tapestry of young people exploring their sexual lives through fantasy, just as murderous adults rip the world apart in cruel and mechanized bloody ritual.

Its a trenchant and alarming juxtaposition he creates. Remember, as Phil reminds us, it is fiction. And fiction has the power to shatter our expectations. As William Blake says, "the eye altering, alters all", and this work of the imagination may yet alter all the things assumed.

In the end it is no hard thing to say we loathe exhibitions of child sexuality, but to read Lost Girls is to find a story that is not so easy to dismiss as those things we first loathe by rote.

[adam_warlock_2099]

While I think you're right for perhaps 99% of the industry, I don't think you can tar Alan Moore with that same brush with regards to Lost Girls. The book goes a lot, lot deeper than mere titilation for the purposes of shifting a few thousand extra copies.

I should have been more pointed and not so general in my comment. I have a friend that is very different in his likes of comics than I am. I have only read a few issues of Lost Girls. He also a fan of The Boys, Sandman, and Preacher. Many, if not all, (I have not looked at Sandman) have the level of violence and sex just for the sake or it. I have read 3 volumes of Preacher, and as much as the story is compelling and interesting, it turns to where it does so that a violent and graphic story CAN be told. Or at least that what it seems to me. The Boys gave me the same impression from a few issues as Lost Girls did, though more violent that sexual.

It's not my cup of tea and I should have been so general in my comment as when I read it in your post, I seemed judgmental, and I did not mean to. What one person reads is not mine to say.

[dan bailey]

You know I love ya Dan, but I'm having trouble reconciling your discomfort with "Lost Girls," a work that involves no actual children and thus no victims, with your glib attitude toward Manson (in another thread), a vile criminal who produced actual victims.*

If you want to express disgust that Moore has corrupted and sexualized these beloved childhood characters, I think that is legitimate criticism. But to simply dismiss the work because of a perceived "vibe" seems beneath you. Yes, even you.

I don't wish to be contentious; I know you to be a thoughtful poster who will rapidly school me. I'm just curious why Manson rates a "meh" while "Lost Girls" requires that a line be drawn.

Rest assured, no glibness was intended in the Manson thread, though certainly I can see where you'd get that impression. For one thing, making reference to obscure punk bands & songs of my acquaintance is one of my schticks, as I'm sure you're aware; for another, I certainly don't own the record in question (a friend happened to add the EP it's from to a tape of Texas punk for me more than a quarter-century ago).

Nor do I have any interest in seeing the depraved, subliterate Manson or his "Family" glorified or in reading any comics treating same in any sort of sympathetic &/or sensationalistic light.

Too, it's not as if (AFAIK ... I'm unable, of course, to read the original post in the other thread, but I certainly doubt that such a thing was said) anyone was urging anyone to read any such Manson comic, so I certainly didn't feel compelled to get on my high horse & share my sentiments with regard to the guy or his crimes or such comics.

In the end, the thoughtful comments of the redoubtable benday aside, I just don't have any reason to find what I gather to be the subject matter of Lost Girls appealing. That's not a comment on benday, Rob or anyone else, I hasten to add. I mean, some of my best friends not only have no interest in horror movies in general & zombie movies in particular, they find the very thought of them downright repulsive, but I like to think my unflagging near-obsession with such films doesn't make them think any less of my sensibilities. (I could, of course, be living in a fool's paradise ...)

[The Confessor]

It is a book that insinuates the most unacceptable of societies perversions, but if one were to actually read it another story and other meanings are to be found.

Sex is a universal subject. War is also universal subject. Moore radically divides the two universals and then brings them together in this visual tapestry of young people exploring their sexual lives through fantasy, just as murderous adults rip the world apart in cruel and mechanized bloody ritual.

Its a trenchant and alarming juxtaposition he creates. Remember, as Phil reminds us, it is fiction. And fiction has the power to shatter our expectations. As William Blake says, "the eye altering, alters all", and this work of the imagination may yet alter all the things assumed.

This response of yours and another earlier one in this same thread lead me to conclude that you are (perhaps one of the few), who truly "got" Lost Girls and understood what Moore was attempting to do. Unfortunately, I firmly believe that you're in the minority there because I am sure that most comic book readers that approached the book hadn't a clue what they had before them.

Just to destroy your faith in humanity a touch, I want to tell you that the guy who runs my LCS was shifting loads of copies of Lost Girls by selling it as "porn", plain and simple. I've actually stood in his shop while he's hyped it to potential customers as a book featuring "Wendy from Peter Pan, Dorothy Gale from The Wizard Of Oz and Alice In Wonderland lezzing it up!" This was followed by the inevitable and predictible "phwoarrr! Gimme some o' that" responses from his customers. I just stood in the back of the shop shaking my head in disbelief.

Now, I know that by Moore's own admission, the book is supposed to be pornography, but let's face it...it's thinking man's pornography. This, to me, is part of the problem with Lost Girls; Moore has created a book with complex themes that I believe probably goes way over the heads of most comic book fans. I mean, take my local comic shop guy for example, he's not an ignorant person but he was selling it like he'd sell a copy of Penthouse because that was all he saw in the story. Anything else just totally went over his head. He's fine when Batman's punching the Joker in the face, but give him anything more subtle or cerebral and he's way out of his depth. In the world of comic book readers, I don't think he's alone.

God that sounds so snobby, but hopefully you'll catch my drift. I think I'm just trying to say that the controversy and mis-understanding around the Lost Girls is not so surprising when you consider where and to whom it was being sold. It's even less surprising when you consider it's subject matter and what the general public's attitude towards comic books is.

I should have been more pointed and not so general in my comment. I have a friend that is very different in his likes of comics than I am. I have only read a few issues of Lost Girls. He also a fan of The Boys, Sandman, and Preacher. Many, if not all, (I have not looked at Sandman) have the level of violence and sex just for the sake or it. I have read 3 volumes of Preacher, and as much as the story is compelling and interesting, it turns to where it does so that a violent and graphic story CAN be told. Or at least that what it seems to me.

I've not read Boys at all and only read an issue of Sandman but I'm totally with you as far as Preacher is concerned. I read the first TPB and largely dismissed it because it just seemed to me that Garth Ennis was trying a little too hard to be "oh, so edgy". I realise that it's a hugely popular series but to me it seemed a book stuffed full of bad language and oooohhh...shocking adult themes, just for the sake it.