Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Holmes And Kolchak - Cry For Thunder!


Cry for Thunder is an oddball teaming of The Night Stalker's Karl Kolchak and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. They never meet of course, since they are separated by a century of time, but the story they work on separately does link up. 

This is a Kolchak story though for the most part with the Sherlock Holmes bits, properly narrated by his worthy companion Dr. Watson through a document Kolchak uncovers occupy about a third of the total narrative. The story begins in the American wild west where two cowboys encounter a mysterious shadow and then there is the enigmatic photograph of said cowboys with a giant bird which seems to be a very dangerous item to know about or handle.

Sadly this isn't much of a mystery and Kolchak's handling of it seem fairly chaotic and unfocused as he plumbs the depths of Native American mysticism and pursues a properly cretinous villain. I did though have a hard time keeping his motivations in focus as he ambles about the story doing Kolchakian things. Likewise Holmes seems muted somehow in his sections of the tale.

This is a prose adaptation of a comic book story written by Moonstone's publisher Joe Gentile, a hale fellow well met. I have not read the comics, nor do I much care to, but I did eagerly look forward to this prose handling of two of my favorite characters and I sadly have to say that the result is a decided ho-hum. I was disappointed.




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