Sherlock Holmes vs. Harry Houdini #1

Writers: Anthony Del Col & Conor McCreery
Artist: Carlos Furuzono
Publisher: Dynamite Comics
Released: 1st October 2014


Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini have a lot in common. Yes, I know that one of them is fictional, but the two characters in a literary sense occupy a very similar landscape. When you visualise the two personalities you get Victorian era London, spiritualism, fake mediums, daring escapes and the unravelling of mysteries.

Sherlock Holmes didn’t have much time for the supernatural. He thought it all a load of old bunk, a trick designed to part the gullible with their money. Harry Houdini was a well known, outspoken critic of the spiritual fakers and charlatans of his time, publicly denouncing them as frauds. He never claimed to be supernatural, like a lot of stage magicians of his time. He kept his secrets, but he didn’t claim to escape his chains because of magical powers. He did physical tricks, and he did them very well, and with a lot of showmanship.

Therefore the teaming up of Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini seems completely logical, as their attitudes towards the supernatural are pretty much identical. The problem however, was how do you write a ‘versus’ story when the two characters would essentially agree with each other?

Writers Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery aren’t pulling a fast one here by having a versus title, and then doing the opposite in the book. I admire that honesty. The book opens with the two personalities engaging in a versus battle, with Holmes declaring that he can deduce how Houdini performs all of his famous escapes.

Houdini takes him up on the challenge, and this book follows the two larger than life personalities as they engage in a public battle of one-upmanship live on a London stage. The book closes with a third party taking the role of the villain of the piece, a villain that will force the two personalities to team up and explore the possibility that certain elements of the paranormal are dangerously real, and not just the smoke and mirrors con trick that they had both previously assumed it to be.

This book is a lot of fun, and that’s exactly what you want from a title with two huge personalities like Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini. Houdini is written as a sceptical, big headed guy with a more down to earth wife who helps him to stay grounded. Holmes is written as a sceptical, big headed guy with Doctor Watson helping him to stay grounded. The two personalities are almost identical, so when they meet there is a fantastic dynamic going on with them trying to best each other.

The dialogue flows very well and the two characters are portrayed both on, and off stage, giving the reader a satisfying contrast between their public and private personas. This simple script technique is very reader friendly, making you feel like you are getting the real inside story on two extremely interesting personalities.

The only problem I had with the book was that Holmes himself is pencilled as a square jawed, beefy American movie star type, rather than as the hawked nosed, rake thin scholar that I usually associate with the character. That’s a minor snipe though, as the art is perfectly fine, with some lovely usage of shading and shadow, and with a nice use of dark backgrounds to create a spooky atmosphere for the book.

Sherlock Holmes vs. Harry Houdini #1 is a very well written book with two fascinating characters coming together to create a special a piece of comic book magic. It’s very well paced, starting off with a public confrontation between Holmes and Houdini; it then further develops the two characters, before concluding with a dramatic scene involving the villain of the piece. You'll love this book. It really is a lot of fun. The title might seem a bit daft, but it’s a very entertaining, well-structured comic book about two personalities that have a lot more in common than I had previously realised.

Rating: 9/10