Ruse 1

I’ve had to get good at not judging a comic by its cover (I assume Willie Dixon would approve of the extension): the third-rate John Buscema knock-off here, delivered by the always imagination-free Butch Guice, would be enough to put many readers off, I would think. It looks like it belongs on some Marvel ’70s horror mag where Buscema couldn’t be bothered coming up with anything good.

Trouble is, in this case the insides read like a third-rate ’70s Marvel fad cash-in, although not the horror kind suggested by the zombie-like hand on the cover. This is a Sherlock Holmes knock-off, except with a female Watson, who somehow manages to chase and leap on a carriage while wearing full Victorian dress.

It starts cutely enough, with a decapitated body with multiple stab wounds and the hero (Simon Archard) announcing that it was suicide. Trouble is, it deteriorates from there: for no apparent reason other than clues that the victim (who was an archduke going bankrupt) had been to some sort of dog vs rat fight, Archard goes to one of these and blunders into a really obvious trap, set for him even though there was no reason to imagine he’d go there, then he makes it worse. I dare say there will be some explanation for this idiocy, but the prevailing impression of this first issue is that despite a cleverly Holmesian bit of deduction at the start, he is indeed a fool. The woman’s role is a cipher so far – she is there to smooth his interactions with others, it seems.

It’s completely formulaic in most ways – Archard may as well be called Holmes, the aristocracy and Londonish setting are standard, and the switch to lowlife is also predictable. The art is actually not so different in tone from the cover: Pierfederici has some facility with colour (light, fabric and pattern are all very good), but not enough grasp of human anatomy; not the first artist I’ve seen lately who needs plenty more practice drawing heads from various angles, in particular.

I guess if you want a Holmes-style comic, this is that, but this is not a good comic in any way, a poor one in a few and a stale one in every way. Mark Waid may not be the greatest writer in comics, but he is generally rather better and fresher than this.