Lost Girls, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie

This controversial graphic novel examines the erotic lives of three ladies: Dorothy, Alice, and Wendy. As the women tell each other sexually explicit stories from their past, we come to recognize them as the lead characters from the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. The tales become wilder and wilder, starting with simple promiscuity and spinning into drug-fueled orgies and outright incest. Interestingly there are no consequences of any of these decadent actions; no pregnancies, no diseases, no apparent psychological trauma: clearly a fantasy.

While clearly pornography, the book is beautiful and can be appreciated on several levels. For example, a seemingly straightforward conversation between a married couple has an entirely different interpretation when the shadows they are causing are examined in the background. Elsewhere a journal entry is shared that is illustrated with both an opium-induced tryst and a depiction of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, with both sets of drawings make sense. In another place the seven deadly sins are juxtaposed with a lesbian seduction. Moore and Gebbie have clearly taken the term “graphic” in “graphic novel” to extremes here, with interesting results.

First Sentence:

Tell me a story.