Lost Girls Three-Volume Slipcase Limited Subscription Edition

Warning, strong adult content.

Script by Alan Moore, art by Melinda Gebbie and lettering by Todd Klein. All material is ©Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie.

back of the slipcase

slipcase top (and bottom)

This book is one of my favorite piece. It comes with three volumes enclosed in an illustrated slipcase (ISBN: 1-891830-74-0, 8.5 x 12.8 inches, 21.5 x 32.5 cm for the "absolute" size slipcase, 260 pages). In 2006, to finance the first printing of the complete Lost Girls, Top Shelf had launched a subscription limited to the first 500 customers. Instead of $75 cover price, I had to pay $150 for the set, but it came with a signed lithography (mine is #452).

Although the content of this edition is the same as the regular box set edition, each of the three books comes with a certification seal (see further in this article), and on the back of the slipcase, one's can see it's a numbered edition (picture above). 

Common overall features of these three books will be described at length for the first one.

Indeed, let's begin with Book 1: Older Children

Each hardcover clothbound volume has its own fully illustrated dust jacket, where the porn back cover mirrors the more well-behaved front cover.

The inner book comes with a canvas hardcover (back cover is plain white), and the same background endpapers that only change in color from book 1 to book 3. There is a picture below for size comparison with the original issue #1 of Lost Girls, out of only two produced, published in 1995 by Kitchen Sink (after a prepublication in Taboo comic anthology). Another picture shows the great quality binding (this edition was printed in Hong Kong).

The velum like paper used in this set is very thick and soft on touch. The numerous opening pages are ideal  to prepare the reader to a voluptuous journey.

Lost Girls in its final form is divided in three books, each book featuring ten chapters of exactly eight pages each. For each chapter the setting is different and singular in term of panel construction. Homage to famous artists/painter/writers of that era (pre First World War) are often used. Book 1 reprints the two Kitchen Sink issues. In the ten years that separate the two edition, the art has been reworked for the better in terms of colors, caption and lettering (see the two corresponding pictures above).

left hand side: Top Shelf edition, right hand side: Kitchen Sink issue #1

left hand side: Top Shelf edition, right hand side: Kitchen Sink issue #2

Oz Dorothy's flashback theme

Peter Pan Wendy's characteristic flashback theme

Alice's characteristic flashback theme

the certification seal for book 1

Before going further here are pictures of the 1995 Kitchen Sink comics that display some material not reprinted in the present Top Shelf 2006 edition. In particular, issue #1 proposes a 5 pages sketchbook section (there is no extra section in issue #2).

front cover

back cover of the Top Shelf edition is the opening page of the comic

book 1 Older Children opening page not reused in this edition

another echoing illustration not reused in the Top Shelf edition

end page for issue #1

front cover exclusive to this comic

second of cover mirroring the front cover illustration

after Wendy, notice the key hole them reused for Alice

back cover for issue "2

Now we can move to Book 2: Neverlands

After the mauve color theme, we move to the pink one.

The pornographic tone goes crescendo from book 1 to 3. In my personal opinion, I am grateful that Moore & Gebbie haven't made a simple erotic work, but have gone way beyond that. Flashbacks scenes for our three heroines kept an overall characteristic panel theme from book to book.

the certification seal for book 2

And finally, here is Book 3:

Green color theme it is.

With this third book only one word comes to mind, apotheosis.

the certification seal for book 2