sketchbook: the empty house part 1

Arthur Conan Doyle waited a decade before resurrected Sherlock Holmes; I could only give it a few months. Watson’s Sketchbook is BACK after a break (during which I was laying out a new graphic novel I’m really excited about…more on that someday).

It is spring of the year 1894, and Sherlock Holmes has been dead for three years.

You can read The Empty House here if you want to follow along with the canon!

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extras:

Don’t accuse me of queerwashing (or do, I don’t care) - it’s canonical that Holmes has an old woman disguise, as referenced in THE MAZARIN STONE.

Watson is dressed in mourning. Men did not wear as elaborate mourning as women in the Victorian era, but the extra wide hatband was one way to convey a deep personal loss. Who that loss is referring to is probably not something that Watson is entirely honest about, even to himself.

There's a theory from Madeleine B. Stern that Holmes's bookseller was a real life person named Alfred B. Clementson, and that he impersonates him in Empty House, so I nabbed that name. I love that there is a Sherlockian theory for absolutely every detail of the canon.