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[Doc]

I was just reading this pseudo-interview with Alan Moore and the final paragraph about his up and coming works made me read twice:

In the summer of 1914, at a spa in Austria, three women of varying ages meet, and talk about their sexual awakenings. Since the three women in question are Alice, Wendy and Dorothy - the protagonists of three of the most metaphor-rich children's books of literary history - their conversations stray into some weird and wonderful territory. "Why can't a pornographic graphic novel be as fine as anything in the field, and still be sexy?"

I'm not a comics person but I have a decent amount of respect for Alan Moore, I liked V for Vendetta and he is obviously well respected in the industry (although he comes off as a bit poseurish at times but whatever). Also I really enjoy stuff that is full of veiled historical and pop culture references just for the fun of it.
But I'm pretty sure I could do a quick google and find this exact story online somewhere so at what point do we justify this in the name of art? I'm sure if anyone can do this tastefully and make it something worth reading it's Alan Moore but is it worth doing in the first place? Surely just as good if not a better story could be done using original characters instead of cherished literary icons, and if you are doing it for the sake of trying to overcome that hurdle and still make it a good story, is it worth doing for that reason instead of for the story itself?

Also I have this odd feeling that although Alice and Wendy would be around at the same time Dorothy should really be about 50 years later, but  I could be wrong on that.

Anyway enough ranting out of me, just giving y'all a heads up.

Edited because I'm the dude who sucks.

[slink]

I did rather enjoy Watchmen, and... I forget what it's called at the moment and can't be bothered looking through my pile of books, but the Ripper one.
But something about him also annoys me a lot. He feels always vaguely pretentious to me, and I can't quite get past that. This sounds like it's going to suffer from exactly that.

[Ben-San]

Time for Comics Nerd to swing into action.

First off, Lost Girls started a while ago, but a series of problems with publishers means that the rest of it is still in the Yet To Come pile.

You're right that the same thing could be done with original characters if the story were just "three women meet, they have sex". However, in this case the central point uniting the three characters is the bizarre fantasy adventures (or perhaps bizarre hallucinations; it's not clear) that each of them had as a child, which has changed how each of them views the world in a way that most people can't understand. In other words, it's much more an exploration of these characters than it is a Generic Victorian Lesbian Pileup, and any original characters that could fit the needs of such a story would be so obviously ciphers for their literary equivalents as to obviate the purpose of creating them.

You're almost right about the age difference; one of them is quite a bit older than the other two, although I don't remember whether it's Wendy or Alice (a moment on Wikipedia indicates that by publishing date it's probably Alice.)

I didn't find it especially hot as porn goes, but it was certainly an interesting read. Alan Moore has a few writing habits that can sometimes get annoying, but he makes up for it by being a very good author in the comics medium.

[V-Adore]

To get back to the more general question -- I think the question of "when does it stop being smutty fanfic and start being literary critique" has a lot to do with building up cred. Even if you assume that quality of product is the same, some random goon on the Internet writing the same thing would, yes, probably just be writing weird, smutty fanfic, but at this point Moore has enough of a reputation as a writer (and particularly as a writer of thoughtful deconstruction) that coming from him it's considered to be legitimate. By building a reputation as someone skilled in general (as opposed to most of the big lights of fanfiction, many of whom don't write non-fanfiction or are incompetent at it), he can get away with a lot more and still be considered professional.

That said, it does sound intriguing. How easy is this thing to track down?

[CortJstr]

Wasn't this conversation a Calvin and Hobbes? Calvin discusses whether a comic strip, a painting of a comic strip, and/or a comic strip of a painting are "art"

[Doc]

But Calvin failed to discuss whether two paintings getting their bone on was still art.

Ben-San: I'm actually kind of glad to hear he's handling it well, I was just having a hard time seeing how he could fit 'sexual awakening' into these characters without changing them rather drastically. Wendy is easy but how do you give Alice a sexual awakening that keeps her backstory relevant? And if you don't keep the backstory relevant then why are you using that character? You'll notice I didn't include any of this in my original post because, as I said, if anyone could actually pull it off it would probably be Alan Moore.

To go along with the Moore-bashing he's probably one of the few authors that I'm sorry I learned more about the person after I read his stuff. It's purely a personal thing, and probably rather pretentious, but the whole magic thing just puts me off and once you know about it you can kind of see it in his work, I was happier when I couldn't.
Then again the LXG movie would probably be enough to make anyone go a bit odd.

On a similar note, is Watchmen worth it? I've avoided it until now because although I've heard it's really good I don't know if I want to read the book thats credited with giving then world depressive nihilistic heroes. I've never been huge on the super hero genre in the first place, but thats got more to do with the fact that the stories never end and I like a contained universe, which Watchmen has.

[Skillator]

Alan Moore could write a comic with his own shit and people would buy it and respect it.

I think what he's doing here, is running with a concept that has already worked for him. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he took literary characters and brought them into a unique (and violent) story and it was bloody awesome.

Where League was violent, this is sexy and what's wrong with a little sex?

I think it is a bit different when a talented writer comes up with a concept that might be interesting and provocative for his next story, as opposed to an obsessed kid in his basement writing stories to jerk-off to.
It's more than a fan-fic. It's a unique character examination.

[robot_roll_call]

It's more than a fan-fic. It's a unique character examination.

To jerk off to.

[Ben-San]

On a similar note, is Watchmen worth it? I've avoided it until now because although I've heard it's really good I don't know if I want to read the book thats credited with giving then world depressive nihilistic heroes. I've never been huge on the super hero genre in the first place, but thats got more to do with the fact that the stories never end and I like a contained universe, which Watchmen has.

Watchmen is very much worth it. The disastrous effect it had on the industry was that it sold very well, and then the industry decided this meant that people would buy a lot of comics if they were depressing and not that people would buy a lot of comics if they were well-written.

I think what he's doing here, is running with a concept that has already worked for him. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he took literary characters and brought them into a unique (and violent) story and it was bloody awesome.

He's done this a number of times, really. The key is that normally it's in a way people don't notice because it happens all the time. Someone writing in comic books will almost certainly spend a lot of time working with other people's characters, and sometimes reinvent them. Watchmen was originally written as an interpretation of Charlton Comics' characters years after their original adventures. Marvelman/Miracleman re-examined a Silver Age character through the lens of Greek mythology. In Tom Strong/Terra Occulta/Terrific Tales, he took this back further, to characters from the time when pulp action was first transitioning into comic books who had entered the public domain. Looking at it this way, Lost Girls and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are just extensions of usual comics practice.

To jerk off to.

This is honestly the intended level on which Lost Girls worked the least for me. It was an interesting story and one that was about sex to a large degree, but I didn't find it especially sexy. YMMV, though.

How easy is this thing to track down?

It ran serially in a magazine, and the extant chapters have been reprinted, but I believe it is currently out of print. A completed ten-issue series is intended to be debuted at the 2006 San Diego Comicon, but one should bear in mind that this was also planned for the 2005 Comicon, and before that there was a "2003-2004" intended release date. It is also possible by means of The Internet to acquire scans of the released chapters illegally.

[CortJstr]

On a similar note, is Watchmen worth it? I've avoided it until now because although I've heard it's really good I don't know if I want to read the book thats credited with giving then world depressive nihilistic heroes. I've never been huge on the super hero genre in the first place, but thats got more to do with the fact that the stories never end and I like a contained universe, which Watchmen has.

I read it a couple months ago and found it pretty interesting. It definitely got slow in parts (like the pirate sub-comic that wouldn't go away). If it makes you feel better none of the super heroes actually have any powers. Well, except Dr. Manhattan.

[V-Adore]

Yeah, the thing about Watchmen is that, while it has a lot of nihilism in it, it isn't really a story about nihilism. A lot of later derivative works have functioned only as "see how much these superheroes' lives totally suck?", but Watchmen really doesn't stop at that level. It's an actual adventure, world-at-peril story, and while there's a lot of angst along with that, actual superheroing gets done.

Also, the "thermodynamic miracles" monologue is easily worth the price of admission alone.