Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook #1

Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook #1

written by: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Raymond Obstfeld
art by: Joshua Cassara


Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook opens with a class of school boys touring the British Musuem in 1874 London, the musuem is destroyed by a mysterious device of unknown origin. We then get Mycroft Holmes in school being, well Mycroft arogant and agressively smart. He gets expelled, then sleeps with his proffessors wife, and then is kidnapped. Also his kid brother Sherlock shows up.

I'm going to start with the stuff I didn't like in this book. First of all the main character is throughly unlikeable. Mycroft Holmes has never really been protrayed as a likeable person. Interesting maybe but I find it hard to root for someone so pompus. I suppose that's not really a critizism of this book, but of the character in general. As for the book at hand, I'm not a fan of having nudity in a book for the sake of having nudity. I'm not a prude or anything it's just it didn't add anything to the plot and was done for a joke that I didn't find funny. The nudity and some of the humour felt pandering and for me it would have been better without it.

Now the positives. The story was actually pretty good. It moved along nicely and the little plot twists were well done. It was cool the way they worked in Sherlock and his relationship with his brother. The two have a very antagonistic relationship and it's high lighted in there exchanges. I can't let this review pass without mentioning the reason I wanted to read this, as it was co-written by basketball legend Kareem Abul-Jabbar so today I learned that Abdul-Jabbar is a writer.

The art was all right, nothing stellar but good enough to convey the story. I'm not a fan of the colouring, it looks to pale in my digital copy, and really does a disservice to the line art. Everyone is olive skinned and it looks odd to me.

Overall it was an okay story. If it wasn't for the name on the front of the book I probably wouldn't have read it, and I have to wonder if that's the point of having him listed as a writer on the book. It's an average book, nothing to run down to the shop to buy on Wednesday, but if you happen to pick it up it's a pretty good read.