« A Little Bit Wrong, a Little Bit Right | Home | Monday Meme: When They Were Your Age »
NotM: Lost Girls-Visual Storytelling
By Corvus | December 7, 2007
I should start out by saying that I love the art of Lost Girls. It is lush, diffuse, warm, rich, enchanting and even, despite its explicitly sensual imagery, a bit naive. Yet, at the same time it does not glamorize or romanticize its subjects overly much… until you slip into the magically obscuring mist of memory, that is. None of the characters in this book are perfect physical specimens. They are often lumpy as they sprawl naked, they make ugly faces as they masturbate and they are often ungainly as they intertwine their bodies. But make no mistake about it, because of the loving style in which they were drawn, they are always beautiful.
It would be fair to say that emotionally, Melinda Gebbie’s gorgeous use of color and form resonated with me. It moved me, whispered in my ear, teased my hair, ran its fingers up my thighs and, upon occasion, punched me quite hard in the sternum so that I couldn’t breath. It’s quite clear that her intention for, “color to be an actual part of the storytelling device,” worked and worked very well.*
As each women recounts her childhood sexual experiences, her memories are brought to the page with a consistent style. Dorothy’s past is lush and rounded, Wendy’s is framed with bold strokes and flat washes of color. Alice’s hover somewhere in between, gentle lines define her memories which hover somewhere between paper-cut out depth and full reality. the book is also punctuated with excerpts from The White Book, which is… well, a character within the graphic novel. These bold interjections are fantastic and interlace with the central narrative quite well.
It is my (perhaps overly) analytical nature which stalled my writing about the art for so long. While I can easily define the boundaries around art styles for the White Book interjections and for the recounting of memory, the art which carries the events of the present eludes precise description. You see, to borrow from Gebbie’s own words, the art style undulates throughout the books. Often times it fluctuates mid-page seemingly without direct purpose, motivation or intended effect. It in no way effected my enjoyment of the books but it does make it squirm out of the grasp of rational conversation.
…and perhaps that’s the strength of the art.
In order to even get a start on this post, I read several interviews with Gebb… You know, it feels stuffy and artificial to continue referring to her by her last name, don’t you think? We’re discussing an intimate work of art which reflects things about her that we don’t learn about many of our closest friends.** I hope she doesn’t mind overly much, but I feel that calling her Melinda does her far greater credit than standing on formality.
Anyway, in order to even get a start on this post, I found several interviews with Melinda in order to learn about her technique, her art philosophy, her approach. I wasn’t surprised to find that this is really the first color work she’s done for comics. Like me, she tends towards the bold illustrative lines of black and white ink-work. Unlike me, she was able to use layers upon layers of color pencils, crayon, pastels, markers and possibly even more media to render lavish and beautiful art without punching anyone during the process (as far as I know). I read that she feels she got much better as the books continued, that the books were extraordinarily difficult to draw, etc, etc, etc.
But rather than latch upon these things as the reason behind characters transitioning from lush painterly figures to flat illustration from one panel to the next, I realized it’s completely irrelevant. With the painting of Lost Girls, Melinda took a journey through her self expression, both as an artist and a sexual being. Within Lost Girls, three women take a journey, both into their past and into new realms of sexuality and, more importantly, intimacy. With the reading of Lost Girls, the audience is taking a journey, both through the dreamlike sensual world and through their own visceral responses to it.
*From an interview in The Comics Journal.
**At least, men don’t tend to open up and discuss such things with each other. I am given to understand from Ms.Z that women are far more capable of such shared intimacy amongst themselves.
Tagged:graphic-novels, lost-girls, melinda-gebbie, NotM. | No Comments »
Comments are closed.