This is a seminal Neil Gaiman story that fuses Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos.
It is also a re-telling, or pastiche, of one of the Sherlock Holmes’ stories, “A Study in Scarlet.” ( )

A very fine adaptation of Neil Gaiman's now-classic inverted Sherlock Holmes/Cthulu story. The art suits the story very well and manages not to give the audience too much information too early, which is good (and a harder trick to pull off than keeping it entirely in prose). It's a bit of a one-trick pony, but the alternate take on famous scenes from A Study in Scarlet, as well as the terrifying depiction of Queen Victoria, really stick in the mind.

This starts similarly to the original A Study in Scarlet, but with some Lovecraftian details even in the beginning. For example, this time the victim's blood is green. You'd think that would be one of the baffling parts of the investigation, but not here. It's definitely an alternate universe take on Sherlock Holmes.

I checked this out from my library after running some circulation reports and realizing that no one had checked this out yet. I decided I might as well be the first person.

A Study in Scarlet is one of my least favorite of the original Sherlock Holmes stories. Granted, I haven't read all or even most of them, so that's not really saying much. This graphic novel took the very basics of the original story and then went in a completely different direction. I can't say too much without spoiling things, but I enjoyed the result. I was reminded of Gaiman's Murder Mysteries, which also had more folded into it than the premise might lead one to expect.

Extras:

Includes some early character designs and sketches.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

This graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman's short story was pretty disappointing to me. The text is very faithful to the original, with only a few omissions to smooth the reading experience, and these are compensated in every case by the illustrations.

On its own terms, the art is passable, but I didn't find it compelling. It was markedly inferior to my own visual imaginings when I read the text-only version. More importantly, it collapsed important ambiguities in the original telling, and sometimes in ways that were unhelpful to the cleverly disorienting effects of the tale. An important instance is the portrait of Queen Victoria on the coins in the panels at the bottom of the final page of part 2, "The Room."

Reading this version is probably better than not reading the story at all. But the text-only version provides a superior experience, especially for those with the relevant background in Holmesiana and Yog-Sothothery. And that version is freely available online.

Neil Gaiman and Rafael Alburquerque’s A Study in Emerald adapts Gaiman’s 2003 short story of the same name that brings Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories into H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The story focuses on a detective and his assistant, recently returned from Afghanistan, who investigate the death of one of the crowned princes of Europe. The royals in truth are the Great Old Ones, who conquered humanity 700 years prior and now rule a changed world. As events unfold, it appears that a secret group means to oppose them. The result is a complex story incorporating the best elements of Doyle and Lovecraft while telling something new. At times, Gaiman’s story recalls Anthony Horowitz’s Moriarty and Alburquerque’s artwork perfectly captures the tone of the story. A Study in Emerald will appeal to fans of Gaiman, Doyle, and Lovecraft. ( )