For a 264-page slash fiction comic epic, Lost Girls really holds its own. The premise is surprisingly simple, given that Alan Moore — creator of From Hell, The Watchmen, and V for Vendetta — has made his name with such dense scripts. Wendy of Neverland, Dorothy of Oz, and Alice of Wonderland meet by chance in an Austrian hotel, on the eve of World War I. Now adults, they bond over anecdotes from their childhoods — and screw each other's brains out. Their original stories are reinterpreted through the lens of pubescent sexuality and fantasy: Captain Hook becomes a pedophile; the Scarecrow, a willing farm boy; and the mad tea party, a lesbian orgy. Moore's storytelling is excellent, as always, but Melinda Gebbie's art is the glue that holds Lost Girls together. Gebbie, an alumna of the seminal Wimmen's Comix , establishes a distinct style for each character's story. She combines the aesthetics of picture books with the conventions of Victorian pornography, creating a dreamy world of soft colors and sexual perversion.

Of course, sex in comics is not exactly new. The Tijuana Bibles of the early 19th century easily match Lost Girls in raunchiness. It's the scope of the book that's astonishing. The three girls, with a mind-boggling host of characters to help them, engage in almost every sexual act that can be conceived of. The libidinous frenzy reaches fever pitch as the entire hotel is involved in elaborate orgies fueled by stories of child prostitution and incest. The obvious de Sade parallel is not lost on Moore and Gebbie, but while Lost Girls makes reference to the Marquis, thankfully it's more an homage to an iconic libertine than a descent into coprophagia.

Ten years in the making, Lost Girls is far more than just an X-rated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen . Moore insists that it's pornography, but that proves a difficult label. While its drawings do titillate, Lost Girls comes off as ornate erotica, as much due to its affected narrative and visual style as its needlessly expensive packaging. In the end, with all the shock value stripped away, the novel is a huge, flawed, but ultimately brilliant meditation on the trauma and joy of sexual awakening.

-Andy Warner