Sherlock Frankenstein and the Legion of Evil

“Sherlock Frankenstein” is a great name.  It’s an unlikely mash-up of two of the most famous characters in fiction that grabs your attention right away with its promise of weirdness and horror tempered by rationality.  He’s also a character who fits perfectly within the superhero pastiche of the “Black Hammer” world, of which this is a spin-off miniseries to. While adding “and the Legion of Evil” to his name only makes this miniseries sound that much more promising, it’s ultimately a misnomer.  As was the case with another Dark Horse miniseries I reviewed a couple weeks ago the real star here is someone who isn’t even mentioned in the title.

That would be Lucy Hammer, the daughter of the superhero known as Black Hammer.  She was very young when her father disappeared with the rest of the “Black Hammer” cast in the fight against the Anti-God.  Yet Lucy never gave up hope that her father was still out there somewhere and she still wants to solve that mystery as an adult.  After a former superhero gives Lucy her first major lead, the rookie journalist then works on getting her second by tracking down her father’s rogues gallery.  First on the list: Sherlock Frankenstein himself.

Working in this miniseries’ favor is how it fleshes out Lucy’s character as readers of the regular “Black Hammer” series know that she’s become a very important part of it.  We also get more fun riffs on established superhero conventions, as is the series stock-in-trade, with Cthu-Lou — a plumber possessed by a Lovecraftian entity — being the most memorable of the bunch.  Yet while the miniseries expands the world of the series, Sherlock Frankenstein is only a bit player in this story with his name at the top of it. Though writer Jeff Lemire is clearly having fun with all this, and the art from David Rubin is as amazing as you’d expect, I was left wishing I’d got an actual “Sherlock Frankenstein” miniseries.  One that details his longtime criminal history with its major shifts and dug into his romance with Golden Gail. These are the kind of things I was expecting to read about in a “Sherlock Frankenstein” miniseries, let alone one that also name-checks his “Legion of Evil,” and it’s immensely disappointing to realize that we’ll likely never find out more about them now.