Some chapters from the first of this three volume collection have already seen print but this complete release from Top Shelf Productions is fanning flames across the entertainment world. It's being dubbed "an unabashedly pornographic work" by mainstream reviewers, who are reacting like a rookie batter that's been thrown a nasty curve ball by the hailed creator of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

First columnist of comics, Rich Johnston, has written a passionate review in this week's Lying in the Gutters. One of his more moving articles to date, actually. The profound effect LOST GIRLS had on him shines through, majestically. That's what makes him of the finest commentators in the industry. If you want to know what this project is about, I strongly recommend to go there and read it.

I haven't yet seen the reviewers' copies that Top Shelf sent out, (the last such package I received was from DC 15 years ago) which puts me at a disadvantage to talk about it right now. What I did see though, is an excellent interview with Alan Moore, conducted by Kurt Amacker at Bits of News. Here, Alan sets the stage for the severe reactions he expects from the conservative religious front for using childhood idols within explicitly sexual material involving at times, consensual child sex, incest and even beastiality. This being Alan Moore, however, he drives his point home by giving us a jarring depiction of the world which the conservative front would have us believe to be of a higher moral value. Alan first talks about the background of the story and discusses what drove him to do this project and his views of human sexuality:

To some degree, no matter when we have our first sexual experience - whether it is as somebody very young or somebody in later life - to a certain degree, that sexual experience is one of the main marker posts with which we define the end of childhood and beginning of maturity. To some degree, everybody going into their first sexual experience is, in a certain sense, immature. In a certain sense, they are still children. When they come out of that sexual experience - and like I said, this can be at the age of 13 or 35 or whatever - when they come out, they may not be mature adults, but they're certainly not the children that they went into the experience as. Sexuality is one of the ways in which we define what a mature adult is, you know? We look at things like puberty and adolescence and these are the stages in life that mean we have changed from one thing to another.

When we enter into that new world, it is exactly that - it is a new world. It is a world in which all the things we learned during childhood no longer apply. People are all acting differently. People have different motives. There is a different kind of logic that applies to the sexual world than to the world of childhood. It's very much like the logic of the Red Queen in ALICE IN WONDERLAND. It kind of sounds like it makes sense, but it's completely unfamiliar to any way that you've ever thought before. All of our first sexual landscapes - they do become wonderlands - wonderful and often scary and disorienting places.

Good insight. Sigmund Frued would've learnt something from you, Mr. Moore. At least to help put his own obsessions in perspective. The interview then moves onto the socio-political environment LOST GIRLS emerges in today:

I know Alan isn't naive and understands that Cheney and Blair didn't really mastermind the Iraqi war. No political leaders can escape the grip of the economic heads whose bidding they do today. Alan's right in that the bottom line here is the money. World economic leaders are pushing to subjugate the Arab world into Western consumerism- and the Arabs just aren't buying it. That's what's really behind the rise of international terrorism and Islamic Jihad. Doesn't excuse it, but it's important to understand this if we're to have any hope of curtailing the bloodshed.

Alan goes on to explain the more taboo sex scenes in the project, such as incest and sex with children:

What we wanted to do was make the point - as we have one of the characters make the point for us during one of the scenes - that these are not children. These are drawings of children.

They are depictions. Yes, I can't produce the birth certificates of these young-looking people to prove that they are, in fact, midgets at the age of 18, or whatever. You're showing images of fictional children having consensual sex. This could be seen as wrong, whereas I, for the past couple of years, have been turning on my television and seeing pictures of actual, non-fictional children with their arms blown off. But, this is okay, because this is collateral damage. And, after all, they have only blown the arms off the children, killed all of their relatives, and left them with no un-blackened skin below the waist.

It's not like they've touched them sexually or anything. Frankly, when you're confronted with that kind of vision on the six o'clock news, it makes all of these arguments about what it is permissible to depict in fiction completely laughable - almost an insult to our mutual humanity. If we can get so upset about lines on paper, but cannot somehow get upset about real flesh, real blood, real viscera, then what are we? So yes, I suppose that you could see those sections as deliberately provocative. I felt that I wanted to make a point there.

Point well made. Though I look forward to the rabble-rousing this project promises, the above excerpts drive the point home with the firm eloquence of a 10 ton hammer. Rich Johnston sums up what we can look forward to, later this summer, with the debut of LOST GIRLS.

As to the ordering venues, Rich continues:

If you want the signed numbered edition, you have to use the [Top Shelf] website. If you want the standard volume, check first with your retailer whether they are willing to stock it. If so, go for it. It is unlikely that all retailers will. Some, because it's not by Marvel and DC, others because it portrays repeated sexual acts, some illegal, graphically, some because they won't be able to get copies through their geographic distributor fearing seizure by Customs.

Yet it is probably Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore's greatest achievement in the comics field.

Hook or by crook, remember.

Couldn't agree more. LOST GIRLS is coming home and deserves a big welcome. Here's the link to pre-order the deluxe hardcover collection at Top Shelf Productions. If nothing else, talk it up about what you've read here and lend Alan Moore a hand in this commendable effort to incite passion and concern for the more disturbing issues our troubled world faces.

Get the word out. Hook or by crook!

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