LOUIS RIEL 369
fi rst installment was published, appearing in a lavish, three-volume, slipcased edition
published by Top Shelf in 2006. It was followed by a single-volume edition released in
July 2009, again by Top Shelf. While Moore and Gebbie began this work as artistic col-
laborators, through the process of its creation they began a romantic relationship which
ultimately led to their engagement in 2005 and marriage in 2007.
Moore was originally driven to try and create a work of erotica which would satisfy a
reader on both an intellectual and sexual level. He struggled initially as his original ideas
failed to live up to his expectations, feeling that his initial concepts veered towards the
merely smutty rather than the artistically sublime. Gebbie suggested that they focus on
three female heroines from fi ction: Alice (Alice in Wonderland), Dorothy (Th e Wizard
of Oz) and Wendy (Peter Pan). Th is suggestion proved to be the catalyst Moore needed
to create the narrative that would become Lost Girls.
Moore and Gebbie settled on the period 1913 to 1914 as the time in which to set
the work, which allowed them to use all three characters at a point where they all could
conceivably have been alive. It also aff orded them the means to focus on the sexual lives
of three women in diff erent stages of adulthood: Lady Fairchild is Alice from Alice in
Wonderland, now an elderly lady; Dorothy Gale is Dorothy from Th e Wizard of Oz,
now in her 20s; Wendy Potter is Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, now married and in
her 30s.
While residing in the Hotel Himmelgarten in Austria, the three protagonists discuss
their past sexual histories. Wendy recounts sexual encounters in a park with a homeless
Peter Pan and the Lost Boys; Dorothy recounts having sex with three farm workers, and
Alice recounts her sexual experiences as a pupil in a girls’ school. In narrating these recol-
lections, Moore and Gebbie utilize elements of the original texts and present sexually
charged, realistic versions of them. Sex continues to dominate the text, as all three char-
acters, and the hotel staff , indulge in many diverse sexual acts and orgiastic pleasures.
Moore has also tried to pre-empt negative criticism of Lost Girls by reasoning that if
he describes the work using the word pornography, as opposed to erotica, he steals the
power away from detractors who would accuse him of producing pornography, with the
word being used by them in a derogatory sense. Lost Girls is a work that transgresses
conventional modes of sexual morality, and it has caused signifi cant controversy since
its publication. It contains images of children in a sexual context, which has proven
to be morally and legally questionable in a number of countries, leading to sporadic
international publication and limited stocks in cautious book and comics retailers. In
addition, the UK saw a delay in publishing the book due to copyright issues over the
depiction of characters from Peter Pan by the copyright holders of the play version, the
Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which specializes in caring for sick children.
Th is dispute was resolved and the work appeared the following year, in 2007.
Andrew Edwards
LOUIS RIEL. Chester Brown’s Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography was fi rst pub-
lished as a series of individual booklets by Drawn & Quarterly, from 1999 to 2003,
