[MarkWarner]

So last week's book was a MAJOR hit! I don't think there was as dissenting voice in the room. Let's hope the trend continues with this week's choice. Whenever I see this book and its companion book I do wonder if Charlton had permission to make these. I somehow doubt it, hence the small run.

Anyway this has to be worth a look at!
   
Sherlock Holmes #1 can be found at https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=38980, and the story we are concentrating on is the first one "Final Curtain".

[SuperScrounge]

The Final Curtain - Not bad. Odd that Watson wasn't in it. I figured out the how by page 3, but the story didn't seem to bother explaining why the killer did it. One flaw in the story. There is a difference in the smell of Bitter Almonds and regular Almonds.

Love Thy Neighbor - Frothingham? Where's Watson? Okay, although most farmers I know of would have plucked the petunias when it was obvious they weren't the planted crops.

Tough Guy - Not bad, but quite a change from the more intellectual mystery stories before it.

The Star Of The East - The mystery was... well... non-existant. The only way the villain could have been more obvious would be wearing a neon sign flashing "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!"

Smashing The Spook Racket - Never heard of Dr. Neff before. Sounds interesting. Nice little mystery, too.

The oddest thing about the Holmes stories in this issue is "Where the heck is Watson?" Holmes companion in 2 of the stories were Watson in all, but name.

[narfstar]

Ehhh OK story. Nothing special and easy to figure out the how. The art was nothing special but serviceable. Pretty sure Bill Molno was involved in the art. Pretty sure it is not Molno pencil and ink. I do not know if Molno inked others or not so I think it is Molno pencil with an unknown inker.

[Mazzucchelli]

The problem in having a great book in one week is that the next week

[SuperScrounge]

You may argue that Sherlock Holmes whole concept has been revisited since the 19th century in many medias and sometimes with considerable success , but there

[Captain Audio]

The oddest thing about the Holmes stories in this issue is "Where the heck is Watson?" Holmes companion in 2 of the stories were Watson in all, but name.

They may have used Watson substitutes because all the mainstream Sherlock Holmes stories were recorded in Dr watson's journals and were adventures he was directly involved in. If Watson had been present for the adventures in the comic book we's expect these to have been first recorded in Watson's journals.

The stories were in the Okay but nothing special class, though not bad for the era.

Modern day attempts are often more sophisticated. "The Italian Secretary" by Caleb Carr is a pretty good read.

If you want a LOL parody find the film "Without a Clue" With Micheal Caine as a washed up actor hired by Dr Watson to play the part of a non existent Holmes. Dr Watson being the actual first consulting detective but no one would take him seriously so he invented Holmes as a front man.

[paw broon]

This was just o.k.  Actually, I'd revise that to say everything is mediocre.  The story is, at least, short and to the point and it makes sense - apart from the misplaced word balloon on our page 7.  There are a couple of times when faces look different. The transfer of Holmes and his costume to another time and place does seem incongruous, despite having watched some episodes of an old American tv series and those Rathbone movies.  Had this been a punter's first exposure to Holmes, without having read the original stories, would he have come back for more?  I wonder.
I went on to read the next story about the petunias and it was so crass I didn't finish the comic.
This comic could have had any detective's name on the cover and almost any detective inside and, apart from the time and place, it could have had Blake, Dixon Hawke or any of the British "pulp" 'tecs, or Ellery Queen, Kerry Drake etc., because there is no real connection to Holmes here, nor any of the others I mentioned - it's all very generic.  I love the original stories and some of the later visions of the character, and the relatively recent use of Holmes as the hero in Victorian Undead and the sequel, vs Dracula, are excellent entertainment and normally I dislike zombie and vampire stuff.

[MarkWarner]

I'll be honest, I am very suspicious about this book. I know that the copyright has not been renewed and that the book is in the public domain, but I can't help feeling that it should never have been produced in the first place. I'd wager that this is an unauthorized Holmes. But as it now looks highly likely the Holmes character is actually considered public domain, this crime (if there was one) may well have hit its statute of limitations:)

I read the first story! I think I was right. Where is Watson? It was rubbish.

The next story "Love They Neighbour" was a slightly better one, which is not saying very much. But where is Watson??

Two page text story had promise, but word by word then letter by letter it failed me. All I ask from this book is something, just one thing, which is not bad! Unfortunately, Sherlock Holmes and the Star of the East was..

So we are in last chance saloon with "Smashing the Spook Racket". It was the best of the VERY poor bunch.

Verdict: An epic fail, do not go anywhere near this book. I didn't mention specifics above, but basically I cannot see that this book has one redeeming feature. It is plain bad! I now publicly apologize for inflicting this "thing" on fellow reading club members.

[bowers]

 Well, I didn't think it was that bad for a cut-rate Holmes knockoff. I greatly enjoy reading Charlton comics, but I usually don't have really high expectations for them. Surprisingly, one can find some real gems amongst the usual second-grade offerings from this notoriously "thrifty" publisher.
This adaptation was no better or worse than other Golden/Silver age Holmes comics from other companies. The three Classic Illustrated issues did present "real" Holmes tales but the art was rather poor. The Dell Four-Colors had better art but their original scripts were really no better than the Charlton ones. I wonder if any of these publishers had permission to use the character.
A fairly average issue, I'd give it a C-. Cheers, Bowers

[Captain Audio]

International copyright protection by treaty is a fairly recent thing.
Copyright protection in the U S was somewhat different than the standards of the UK.
Can't say whether these comics would have infringed or not when they were printed.
The character of Holmes first saw print in 1887.
Use of the character may not have been covered while use of the original stories might still have been covered.

Also when an author assigned copyright to a publisher the publisher was required to establish the copyright legally. If the publisher failed to do so or went out of business then the story might fall into public domain.
Some Jack London and Ambrose Bierce stories fell into public domain after magazines that bought the stories went out of business.

[SuperScrounge]

I remember reading about the problems Gilbert & Sullivan had getting Copyright protection in the US.

US law wasn't under the authority of British copyrights so they couldn't stop unauthorized productions.

They tried copyrighting their operettas in the US, but were told they couldn't because they already had British copyrights.

The next operetta they tried copyrighting in the US & Britain at the same time. No go.

After that they tried getting a US copyright first. Nope!

So I imagine that Sherlock Holmes would have had similar copyright problems back in the day.

IIRC the first author to use Holmes without permission was Mark Twain.

[crashryan]

Many years ago, in the pre-Internet days, I conceived the notion of becoming The Charlton Expert. I amassed a huge collection (most at 5 cents a copy) figuring that while everyone else was studying Marvel and DC I'd create the definitive Charlton index. I finally gave up. Sure, there were scattered gems like Severin, Williamson, and the Spanish artists, But to read most Charltons was to be pounded by wave after wave of mind-numbing stories and dreary art.

The collection is long gone (I probably made 75 bucks off it.) But as I read Sherlock Holmes all the ennui of bygone days came flooding back. It's not that the book is absolutely wretched; it's just so BORING! Since I'm the last to comment most of my points have already been made. So once over lightly.

The art on all the Holmes stories resembles Bill Molno, but it's not quite bad enough. Could it be Ray Osrin? Vince Alascia definitely inked two of them, maybe all three. Dull as ditchwater. Generic characters, generic backgrounds, generic layouts. Mazzucchelli is exactly right. Holmes is wearing his cloak and hat so kids will know he's Sherlock Holmes. II think it was a wise decision. Neither the plots nor the settings suggest the Holmes universe. Without the costume Holmes would be just another generic detective.

We've read the stories a hundred times before. The one unusual bit appears is in "Love Thy Neighbor," when Holmes suggests, very vaguely, that the Petunias were fertilized by Marston's decomposing body.

Now to the only halfway-decent feature, Dr. Neff. This came from the inventory of stuff Charlton bought from defunct publishers, in this case Street & Smith. I've never seen the original comics, so I don't know if these are reprints or unpublished material. Other Dr. Neff stories--including this one--appeared in Charlton's Racket Squad comic. Note the name of Inspector O'Malley clumsily lettered into the splash page and the final panel. It turns out Bill Neff was a stage magician. He performed midnight "spook shows" at movie theaters between 1945 and 1952. I found some biographical material on magic history sites, including an amusing memoir by one of Neff's assistants, who stood in the balcony with a fishing rod flying fake skeletons over the audience's heads. Unfortunately Neff succumbed to alcohol and drug addiction and died in 1967.

All that remains is the Mystery of the Missing Watson. Most kids would have known Holmes through the movies, and they would have expected to see Watson. Here's my suggestion. As others have pointed out, American copyright law was different from English law. Technically the Holmes stories were out of copyright here while they were still protected in the UK. But even while Holmes was in copyright, people would occasionally put out Holmes-related material either assuming he was PD or not caring. From what I've seen it wasn't until the 1960s that the Doyle Estate realized they had a cash cow on their hands and started prosecuting violators. 

But why would Charlton bother putting out a Holmes comic in the first place? Because the previous year a Sherlock Holmes TV series was put into syndication. Charlton wanted to ride its coattails and make a few bucks.  Still they may have had reservations. Maybe they were afraid the TV people would come after them. Charlton set their comic in modern times (the TV show took place in the 1890s) and dumped Watson, figuring that if they had to, they could argue that their comic was nothing like the show. There seem only to have been three issues; I suspect Charlton dropped the title for slow sales long before any copyright hounds came baying on their trail.

It's a theory, anyway.