The art in this series is perfect for the period. Everything is done in shades of brown, the only blacks are the inking. When there is a real colour, a vivid red for blood or a magical green glow it stands out and wants to be noticed. When we think of historical pieces, films or big budget TV shows or even portraits from the period, we are shown only the rich and powerful, those who could afford expensive cloth and more importantly, expensive dyes. Until the age in which we live, brown has to be the most common colour the human eye has ever seen. Dirt is brown, bare cloth is brown, wood is brown and all of that is captured in the art of this comic. Even the fancy writing that makes up the title page of the comic is a brown/gold wooden effect.

This comic does a ‘cold’ opening very well. I expect they feel they can do this because Sherlock Holmes is such a well known name that most people will not need a slow introduction. I have to admit this is slightly misleading as there are a couple of pages of text backstory before hand, but even still the action is in full flow by page 4. Mr Holmes does not disappoint as he collars his man, and his supposed female accomplice within the first six pages. I was disappointed early on by the lack of Mr. Holmes deductive skills, he seemed to be taken unaware, but later in the first issue he fills two full pages with his ‘showing off’ and it was thoroughly entertaining.

It is very much in the vein of the Hound of the Baskervilles as this comic centres around a semi-mythic creature, Spring Heeled Jack, a creature said to jump from the roofs in Victorian England and attack its prey on the ground with vicious claws. I do not feel I am giving too much away to say that the supernatural explanation is not the one which Holmes favours. His investigations lead him from Inspector to Vicar, museum to morgue and the bodies keep piling up, slashed to the bone across their backs.

I have read through so awful dross purely because I liked the art, and yet I cannot stomach what is supposedly the best of the current Marvel titles because I utterly hate the artwork. This story is full of the trappings of a true Sherlock Holmes novel in that it is full of coincidences and of examples of Holmes retrospective brilliance, where he returns to a crime scene only to ‘claim’ that something he had apparently missed had been done so intentionally to throw others off the trail. I have not read all the Sherlock Holmes novels and if the foreword had not told me this was an original story, I would have thought it had flowed from Conan Doyle’s pen; I cannot think of higher praise for a book like this. ( )

A demon beast terrorizes 19th century Liverpool in this exciting graphic novel from Leah Moore and John Reppion. Holmes is in Liverpool winding down another case when he is hurled into the demonic mystery of this previously untold tale! Winged monsters, deadly street gangs and greedy speculators people the world of Victorian Liverpool and the ghastly, mysterious murders that Holmes and Watson must solve, whether they have the cooperation of the local constabulary or not! This is a great read and a worthy addition to the Holmes canon. ( )