#49 and #50

The ladies who, as children, inspired Dorothy of Oz, Alice of Wonderland, and Wendy of Neverland meet up by chance at a decadent Austrian hotel run by a libertine. Turns out these three one-time muses are rather randy, and as they continue their sexually adventuresome awakenings each tells her story. The stories are recognizable, though I must say I never imagined Captain Hook or the Straw Man or the Jabberwock in quite these scenarios.

Such a book could easily descend to purely tawdry depths and end up on a par with straight-to-DVD pornographic parody (akin to the recent titles "Not the Bradys XXX" or "Nailin' Palin'"), but Moore knows his literature and keeps things refreshingly high-brow. The production of stories, the construction of personae, and the role of sexual fantasy and repression in each is the theme, and the art work and lay-out is clever and titillating by turn. It's a serious book worth re-visiting and re-considering.

That's not to see that an imaginative soul couldn't find fap-worthy material here. I'm just saying...

#50



Kerth Gersen is on a missin to find and kill the five Demon Princes who wrecked his home world. He's dispatched one, and is hot on the trail of another when his plan back-fires and he ends up serving time in an isolated holding-cell for kidnap victims awaiting ransom. Another gorgeously entertaining short sci-fi novel.

[thanks to EC for answering my call for graphic works which are other than doom and gloom]