Time for a lengthy, but none the less fast and frightfully fun, Sherlock Holmes-ish inspired tale of blood sucking terror from the October 1973 issue of House of Secrets #112.
Time for a lengthy, but none the less fast and frightfully fun, Sherlock Holmes-ish inspired tale of blood sucking terror from the October 1973 issue of House of Secrets #112.
This feels like one of those fads where zombies and other monsters are inserted into classic literature, such as "Pride, Prejudice and Zombies" or "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" which pits a famous president against vampires. This one also feels kind of rushed, granted, I know that Christine's story was all a ruse to get Roderick to come to her home so that she and her family could murder him. So the rushed storytelling once Roderick arrives at the home to investigate makes sense. I was half waiting for Christine's horse to show up alive, to further unravel her story to Roderick.
ReplyDeleteIt's Herlock Solmes and the Case of the Pretty Close But Overly Clever Copyright Infringement!
ReplyDeleteI think the pacing is kind of weird, it gives a lot of pages to Christine's made up story and then pulls the vampire reveal and attack in just a couple, really, the meat of the story is the Holmes rip off, but very little is given to deductive reasoning on this.
That said, what DC's post-code horror output lacks in story it always hit it out of the park with art. Page 2, last panel, the vampires on page 8, panel 3 are menacing, and panel 4 on the last page is great. DCs horror artist really drew the living demonic hell out of everything they were given.
It's also clever how Christine taunts him about his ego. Although I suppose plenty of "mainstream" Holmes stories have someone doing that?
ReplyDeleteThis comic reminded me of a few other Sherlock knock off tales dealing with the supernatural (one dealt with a vampire, another a werewolf) for all I know I read them here many months or years ago.
ReplyDeleteOne detail that bothered me, why were the vampires so upset that Doyle downplayed the supernatural? If no one were to believe in vampires, it would make the task of the undead so much easier to find victims and have the police search for a serial killer or the like. The fewer believers, the less risk of heartburn.
Didn't someone publish a Holmes novel where he matches wits with Dracula?
As a side note, there are tales of a sorcerer Sherlock named Lord Darcy, this was decades before Harry Potter. Its worth a look for those who like tales from an alternative universe or alternative history.
This is the Holmes parody we never knew we needed. I always thought Holmes an insufferable character who needed taking down a few pegs (even his creator Conan Doyle grew to loathe him), so I'm still chortling.
ReplyDeleteHmm. See I wouldn't call this any kind of knock-off or rip-off; it's just satire. Sure, satire is often humorous while this one plays it mostly straight, but you can nonetheless tell this is satire by the way it aggressively embraces and magnifies the popular concept of Sherlock Holmes stories. Where a truly derivative piece might try to distract the reader from unoriginal story elements, this one blithely hops from cliche to cliche, never straying from the path. I love it. It's like a MAD Magazine feature with a plot instead of jokes. I wanna see more.
ReplyDeleteLove to see more Luis Dominguez too, frankly. I'm really digging the art here--pages two and nine are real doozies, but there's standout work on every page. The older I get, the more I see an do on my own, the finickier my tastes, the less regard I have for much of the seventies horror art I loved as a younger man. But I think this guy is great. Loving the cover, too.
Luis Dominguez is a great artist. He's my personal favorite of the Gold Key mystery artists (or however they labeled the supernatural anthologies over there), though I think they had plenty of other good artists as well. Talking about other Gold Key artists, I also quite like the work of Jack Sparling, who also did work for DC. Looking at both of their work for both companies is an interesting contrast. Their layouts for DC are much more fevered and in-your-face while their layouts at Gold Key are much more remote and detached. Could I describe Gold Key as Dracula via Masterpiece Theater and DC as Count Yorga? Nothing wrong with either in my opinion.
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