Philip Cornell is a writer, illustrator and caricaturist and has been a devotee of Sherlock Holmes since he read ‘The Speckled Band’ at the age of ten in a Readers’ Digest Young People’s Annual. Half a century later his enthusiasm for the Sherlock Holmes Canon is undiminished and he is a long-time member of The Sydney Passengers, the local Australian Sherlock Holmes Society, an organisation for which he has produced dozens of scholarly articles on the Holmes Canon for The Passengers’ Log quarterly journal. He also wrote and drew a set of trading cards in comic-book form wherein Lee Falks’s famous hero the Phantom encountered an evil British army colonel and his mathematics professor employer: The Empty Cave. A similarly Victorian-set story was Mr Cornell’s collaboration with Christopher Sequeira and Dave Elsey on the Sherlock Holmes: Dark Detective series of graphic novels, and both his art and a short prose tale of his appeared in Sherlock Holmes: The Australian Casebook. However, his greatest claim to Holmesian fame may be the fact that the council responsible for the town square in Meiringen, Switzerland, commissioned him to produce all new colour art depicting events from ‘The Final Problem’ for permanent display on signs in the park!
Julie Ditrich is a writer, editor and comics creator, as well as the Founder and CEO of Comics Mastermind™, a professional development service for evolving comics creators. Julie has a BA in Professional Writing (University of Canberra), and has worked in mainstream publishing as a bookseller, publicist, marketing manager, editor and author. Julie contributed to the Oblagon comics anthology for Kaleidoscope, was co-writer on ElfQuest: WaveDancers for Warp Graphics, was cowriter on the Dart miniseries for Image Comics, a writer on the Supanova Tides of Hope anthology, and wrote the script for the epic fantasy Elf~Fin: Hyfus & Tilaweed comic book for Black Mermaid Productions, and she contributed a script to the Australia anthology for Comicoz.
Julie was the co-founder of the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Comics / Graphic Novels Portfolio, and jointly hold the role between 2007 and 2012. In 2018 Julie joined the judging panel of the Ledger Awards, which acknowledge excellence in Australian comic art and publishing. Forthcoming work includes a new superhero character—Djiniri—published in SuperAustralians for Black House Comics, a story in Cthulhu Deep Down Under 3 for IFWG Publishing, and Julie will also be the first Australian woman writer on The Phantom published by Frew Publications with the release of The Adventure of the Dragon’s Leg.
Julie Ditrich—Acknowledgement: I am eternally grateful to Professor John Hilton, Consultant in Forensic Medicine, for helping me research the historical medical aspects of this story. John’s openness and patience in answering my probing questions with such authority and with his own unique stamp of creativity were absolutely second to none.
Ron Fortier is a veteran comic book creator, best known for writing the Green Hornet and Terminator: Burning Earth, with Alex Ross, for Now Comics back in the 90s. Today, he keeps busy writing and editing new pulp anthologies and novels via his Airship 27 Productions (http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/airship27hangar.html). He won the Pulp Factory Award for Best Pulp Short Story of 2011 for “Vengeance Is Mine” which appeared in The Avenger—Justice Inc. from Moonstone Books and again in 2012 for “The Ghoul,” which appeared in Monster Aces.
He continues to write his own graphic novels and series, such as Mr Jigsaw Man of a Thousand Parts via Redbud Studio. (http://www.robmdavis.com/RedbudStudio/index.html) and you can keep updated with his latest projects by visiting his personal website at: www.airship27.com
Nancy Holder is a versatile writer who has written over eighty novels and more than 200 short stories, essays, and articles; has been on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Los Angeles Times bestseller lists; has received five Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association (HWA); and is well known for writing fiction and episode guidebooks for TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Smallville, Sabrina the Teen Age Witch, Beauty and the Beast, Saving Grace, Wishbone, and for novelizing movies including Wonder Woman, Crimson Peak, and the recent Ghostbusters. Her series, The Wicked Saga, co-written with Debbie Viguié, was optioned by DreamWorks. She is the writer on Kymera Press’s comic book, Mary Shelley Presents, in which Mary Shelley and the Creature showcase works written by women writers from 1780 to 1920; and she’s written and edited pulp collections and comic books for Moonstone Books, featuring the Domino Lady, The Avenger, The Phantom, Zorro, and other characters.
She also teaches seminars and workshops on writing comics and graphic novels for the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing offered through the University of Southern Maine, and she is an avid Holmesian, having written for the Baker Street Journal, as well as short stories for anthologies such as The Further Crossovers of Sherlock Holmes, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, and Gaslight Gothic: Strange Tales of Sherlock Holmes. She has also written two games for the Storium™ storytelling gaming system: The Unsolved Cases of Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Holder’s World of Dracula.
She is on the Board of Trustees for the HWA. Ms Holder lives in Washington State. Find her at www.nancyholder.com and @nancyholder.
Leslie S. Klinger is the New York Times-best-selling editor of the Edgar®-winning New Annotated Sherlock Holmes as well as numerous other annotated books, anthologies, and articles on Holmes, Dracula, Lovecraft, Frankenstein, mysteries, horror, and the Victorian age, including the Anthony®-winning anthology In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, co-edited with Laurie R. King. His latest books are Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, also nominated for an Edgar®, and For the Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon, also co-edited by Laurie R. King. In 2019 he will publish New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham and Annotated American Gods with Neil Gaiman. www.lesliesklinger.com
Rafe McGregor is the author of over two hundred short stories, novellas, magazine articles, and journal papers. His work includes crime fiction, weird tales, military history, and academic philosophy. As regular readers of The Strand Magazine will realise, his contribution to this anthology owes as much to L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace (‘Followed’, December 1900) as it does to Conan Doyle (‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, February 1892).
Brad Mengel works in Australia’s criminal justice system. Before that he was trolley boy, a barman, an office manager and a teacher. A lifelong reader and pulp fan it was natural that he would turn to writing. His book Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction: An Encyclopedia from Able Team to Z-Comm (McFarland, 2009) was the first book to examine vigilante fiction of the 70’s and 80’s. He has also contributed stories to Tales of The Shadowmen#3 & #7, Pro Se Presents Nov 2012, Charles Boeckman Presents Johnny Nickle, Pulp Obscura: Senorita Scorpion, Blood & Tacos #4, Domino Lady Vol 2, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol 12 and Poker Pulp. His first novel Australis Incognito is coming soon from Pro Se Productions.
Will Murray has been writing about popular culture since 1973, principally on the subjects of comic books, pulp magazine heroes, and film. As a fiction writer, he’s the author of over seventy novels featuring characters as diverse as Nick Fury and Remo Williams. With the late Steve Ditko, he created Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics. Murray has written numerous short stories, many on Lovecraftian themes.
For this collection, he returns to two culturally significant characters he previously explored, H. P. Lovecraft’s Dr. Herbert West (‘Tombstone Tribunal’ for the Herbert West Reanimated round robin tale) and Sherlock Holmes, whom Murray previously teamed up with Colonel Richard Henry Savage in ‘The Adventure of the Imaginary Nihilist’ for Sherlock Holmes: The Crossover Casebook.
Currently, he writes the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage for Altus Press. His acclaimed Doc Savage novel, Skull Island, pits the pioneer superhero against the legendary King Kong. This was followed by King Kong vs. Tarzan. Tarzan, Conquer of Mars, a crossover with John Carter of Mars, is forthcoming. www.adventuresinbronze.com is his website.
Dennis “Denny” O’Neil is a comic book writer and editor, principally for Marvel Comics and DC Comics in the 1970s. His best-known works include Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman with Neal Adams, The Shadow with Mike Kaluta and The Question with Denys Cowan, all of which were hailed for sophisticated (for the period, in the case of his 1970’s work) stories that expanded the artistic potential of the mainstream portion of the medium. As an editor, he is principally known for editing the various Batman titles.
His 1970’s run on Batman is perhaps his most well-known endeavour, getting back to the character’s darker roots after a period dominated by the campiness of the late Golden-early Bronze Age. He particularly sought to emphasize Batman’s detective skills. This grimier and more sophisticated Dark Knight, as well as new villains such as Ra’s Al Ghul, brought Batman back from the verge of pop culture oblivion. His work would influence later incarnations of Batman, from the seminal comic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, to the movie Batman Begins in 2005.
Andrew Salmon has won several awards for his Sherlock Holmes stories and has been nominated for the Ellis, Pulp Ark, Pulp Factory and New Pulp Awards. He lives and writes in Vancouver, BC. His releases include: Queensberry Justice: The Fight Card Sherlock Holmes Omnibus containing the three Fight Card Sherlock Holmes books which introduced female Victorian bare-knuckle boxer, Eby Stokes. Sherlock Holmes Investigates: A Quintet of Singular Mysteries, The Dark Land, The Light of Men, and Ghost Squad: Rise of the Black Legion (with Ron Fortier) are also available. He has just released his first children’s book, Wandering Webber. His work has appeared in dozens of anthologies.
He is currently at work on his series of Eby Stokes Victorian spy novels as well as a myriad of other projects. To learn more about his work check out: www.amazon.com/Andrew-Salmon/e/B002NS5KR0
J. Scherpenhuizen is the author of numerous novels for children and adults, including Twilight Age Vampires, Profile of Evil and Catvengers (www.amazon.com).His short fiction has appeared in magazines and the anthologies Sherlock Holmes: The Australian Casebook and Cthulhu Deep Down Under. A mainstay of the Australian comics scene, his work includes both writing and illustrating the gritty horror graphic novel The Twilight Age (also published as Time of the Wolves); co-pencilling with Michal Dutkiewicz a number of American comic-books such as Wolverine: Doombringer and Lost in Space; and inking artist Chewie Chan’s pencils on Buckaroo Banzai 2. He’s also done a slew of work while teamed-up with Australian comics scribe Christopher Sequeira, with whom he has developed and created several properties including Mister Blood, The Glowing Man and The Catamorph.
His new superhero character, Princess, co-created with writer Jason Franks, will debut in a nationally bookstore distributed graphic novel in mid-2019. Scherpenhuizen is currently writing and drawing a 350 page hybrid literary novel-graphic novel-thesis as his doctoral project at Sydney University.
Christopher Sequeira is a writer and editor who specialises in short prose and comic-book scripts for the mystery, horror, science fiction and super-hero genres. He has also written scripts for flagship superhero comic-books, such as Justice League Adventures for DC Entertainment, and Iron Man and X-Men stories for Marvel Entertainment. His Sherlock Holmes: Dark Detective graphic novel with Dave Elsey and Philip Cornell is published by Caliber Entertainment, and an authorised revamp of Dr Fu Manchu with long-time friend and collaborator W. Chew Chan is in the works. He has edited (or co-edited with Bryce Stevens and Steve Proposch) the award-nominated anthologies Cthulhu Deep Down Under (three volumes) and Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud (both for IFWG Publishing); Sherlock Holmes: The Australian Casebook (Echo / Bonnier); and at time of writing the forthcoming H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds: Battleground Australia (Clan Destine Press), and the creator-jam-graphic novel SuperAustralians (for IFWG Publishing and Black House Comics).
I. A. Watson is the great-great grandnephew of Holmes’s great friend and chronicler Dr John Watson. And if you believe that he also has a Thor Bridge to sell you. He’s written about Holmes before—or discovered more of his famous ancestor’s manuscripts, if you prefer—in Airship 27’s Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective volumes 1-12 and counting, and in the novel Holmes and Houdini. Several of those contributions were nominated for Best Pulp Story of their year and one got the trophy.
Pegged by editors as a go-to author for iconic or long-since-published characters, I. A. Watson has been seduced into penning the Robin Hood novels King Of Sherwood, Arrow of Justice, Freedom’s Outlaw and Forbidden Legend, St George and the Dragon Volumes 1 and 2, Labours Of Hercules, Women of Myth, and half a dozen other books, plus contributions to around forty anthologies, and his first non-fiction essay volume ‘Where Stories Dwell’. Occasionally he stops writing and eats. He is considering sleep. Full publication details with links to additional material and free stories are listed at http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/iawatsonhome.html
Luke Spooner, who created this volume’s cover, is an artist and illustrator living in the South of England. He has a First Class degree in illustration from the University of Portsmouth and his current projects and commissions include illustrations and covers for books, magazines, graphic novels, books aimed at children, conceptual design and business branding.