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Adler
Adler: Volume 1
For Sherlock, there was only ever one woman - now Irene Adler is on a mission to take down Moriarty! It's the League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen, as Adler teams up with a host of famous female faces from science, history and literature to defeat the greatest criminal mastermind of all time!
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First published March 30, 2021
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About the author
Lavie Tidhar
390 books736 followersLavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.
Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.
Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.
Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.
He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).
Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.
His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.
Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).
Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).
He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.
He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).
Tidhar lives with his wife in London.
Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.
Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.
Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.
He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).
Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.
His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.
Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).
Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).
He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.
He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).
Tidhar lives with his wife in London.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
April 10, 2020
"She fights like a woman."
A kind of fantasy adventure comic that emerges--I think--out of the BBC Sherlock series where, in one episode, Irene Adler emerges as the one woman Sherlock admires, a possible ally/nemesis. The homage to the tv series seems right in that Irene notices details very much as the Benedict Cumberbatch verson of Sherlock does, dizzingly fast. Her goal here is to master Moriarty, who is the Mastermind of all criminal exploits in London, including the work of Jack the Ripper.
So Moriarty has an Evil Team, why not Irene, who assembles Jane Eyre, Madam Curie, and a growing band of strong-willed, able, smart, strong women who can do anything. We add in more women fighters as we go, the Queen of Beggars, the Queen of Harlots, no judgments. And why Irene? Who knows, but I see there are dozens of books written by many admirers of a fictional woman who appears as a smart swindler dominatrix in a short story Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 150 years ago.
In this one Irene is an actress, appearing in an opera attended by Moriarty. Is he in fact garrotted during the performance by ace assassin Camilla? Is it in fact Moriarty? This is volume one, that I now see came out 5 years ago, with no second volume, so we may never know how this all works out. Silly fun that also give a nod to Alan Moore's far more erudite League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Read it free on Hoopla.
A kind of fantasy adventure comic that emerges--I think--out of the BBC Sherlock series where, in one episode, Irene Adler emerges as the one woman Sherlock admires, a possible ally/nemesis. The homage to the tv series seems right in that Irene notices details very much as the Benedict Cumberbatch verson of Sherlock does, dizzingly fast. Her goal here is to master Moriarty, who is the Mastermind of all criminal exploits in London, including the work of Jack the Ripper.
So Moriarty has an Evil Team, why not Irene, who assembles Jane Eyre, Madam Curie, and a growing band of strong-willed, able, smart, strong women who can do anything. We add in more women fighters as we go, the Queen of Beggars, the Queen of Harlots, no judgments. And why Irene? Who knows, but I see there are dozens of books written by many admirers of a fictional woman who appears as a smart swindler dominatrix in a short story Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 150 years ago.
In this one Irene is an actress, appearing in an opera attended by Moriarty. Is he in fact garrotted during the performance by ace assassin Camilla? Is it in fact Moriarty? This is volume one, that I now see came out 5 years ago, with no second volume, so we may never know how this all works out. Silly fun that also give a nod to Alan Moore's far more erudite League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Read it free on Hoopla.
April 20, 2021
The Sherlock Holmes character Irene Adler assembles her own team of female Irregulars including Jane Eyre, Madame Curie. Starts off very interesting, but introducing this female Amazonian queen and her army of Amazons running around London unnoticed was a bit much. I did enjoy Paul McCaffrey's art quite a bit. Overall, the book is a all female version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
April 25, 2021
Time to play public domain bingo!
As the back cover notes, this is the "League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen," with the mission of highlighting female Victorian Age literary and historical figures. The author delivers dozens of Easter Eggs from the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and Jane Eyre, as well as novels like The Prisoner of Zenda, She, and Great Expectations. Unfortunately, most members of the cast do little more than raise a hand and call out, "Here!" as if answering a role call.
Terrific art is wasted on a story with a plot so thin the writer spends much of the book throwing in many action scenes and much character posturing just so he can avoid it. Personalities are pretty much limited to "I'm a butt kickin' hero," and "I'm a villain, nyar-nyar-nyar."
Bad, ludicrous writing.
But hey, is that Mycroft Holmes? "Bingo!"
As the back cover notes, this is the "League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen," with the mission of highlighting female Victorian Age literary and historical figures. The author delivers dozens of Easter Eggs from the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and Jane Eyre, as well as novels like The Prisoner of Zenda, She, and Great Expectations. Unfortunately, most members of the cast do little more than raise a hand and call out, "Here!" as if answering a role call.
Terrific art is wasted on a story with a plot so thin the writer spends much of the book throwing in many action scenes and much character posturing just so he can avoid it. Personalities are pretty much limited to "I'm a butt kickin' hero," and "I'm a villain, nyar-nyar-nyar."
Bad, ludicrous writing.
But hey, is that Mycroft Holmes? "Bingo!"
April 7, 2021
Adler is billed as ‘the League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen’, seeing the Sherlock Holmes character Irene Adler teaming up with other characters from Victorian literature, such as Jane Eyre, and Miss Havisham, as well as some historical figures, to stop an Amazon queen who’s planning to turn Marie Curie’s research into a weapon of mass destruction.
As soon as I heard this description I was very excited for this book. Not only do I have a soft spot for literature of this period, but I absolutely adore Sherlock Holmes fiction, so seeing Irene Adler leading a team of strong female characters seemed to be written for me. Unfortunately, the book seemed to be unable to live up to any of this promise, and was hampered by some very off-putting issues.
First of all, Irene herself is, I think, completely wrong here in every way. The Irene that was present in the original story (and it was only the one she was in) was a capable woman, one who not only outsmarted Holmes, but altered his views on women and taught him to not underestimate them. Over the decades since her appearance her use in various pastiches or re-imaginings has cast her as Sherlock’s greatest love (there was no love story between them), an adventurer to rival Holmes, and even a Kung Fu dominatrix. The Irene presented here is just Sherlock Holmes.
The first time we meet Irene is when she’s introduced to Jane Eyre, our other lead protagonist. Jane has just returned from the Boer War where she served as a nurse, and is looking for lodgings. Through a mutual acquaintance, Miss Havisham, she’s introduced to Irene. Irene immediately deduces that Jane was a medic in the war, is overly rude to her, and then the two of them move into a flat together where Irene mulls away her time practising her music, wearing a dressing gown, and getting into mystery adventures. It’s a complete copy of the Holmes and Watson dynamic, which if not bad enough in itself, is made even worse by the acknowledgement that Holmes and Watson exist in the world too. It feels like a lazy attempt to show how she’s like Sherlock by just making her exactly the same, which doesn’t actually give her any character of her own and leads to her feeling like a bad rip-off.
This was only in the first issue, and I was hoping that it would get better from there, but it didn’t. The main antagonist for the book is Queen Ayesha, a woman whose kingdom in South America was destroyed by the British Empire, so she’s come to London to exact her revenge. Whilst this is fine motivation, her character, much like Irene’s, has a lot wrong with it. First up is the way she’s dressed. The book dresses Ayesha, and all her warriors, in next to nothing. Their clothing seems to be nipple covers and loin cloths, with the occasional cape thrown in. Their designs, much like Irene and her allies, seem designed purely to titillate and arouse, drawn for a male gaze where seeing a woman’s breasts almost falling out is paramount above practicality or comfort.
Unfortunately, the issues with the Amazons don’t end there. Despite coming from South America, every single one of them is the palest white, with bright blonde hair. Any design that feels like it could be true to people from that region of the world seems to have been thrown out in favour of what can only be described as Norwegian super-models playing dress-up. I can’t think of a single reason why these aren’t women of colour, why they don’t represent the peoples of South America. It’s incredibly jarring, and kind of insulting.
Despite copying the origins of Sherlock Holmes, dressing its female characters like dominatrixes, and having some serious issue with race and colourism, the book tries to tell a compelling story, and is interesting in parts; but these moments are few and far between. Instead, readers have to contend with action scenes that feel ridiculously over-the-top or incredibly dull, and not even the inclusion of some of the most notable characters in literature can help them.
I don’t know how the book failed as much as it did, how it took such a good idea and did it so wrong, but I would like to hazard a theory. The book is about female characters, it’s about women doing amazing things and being just as competent as men; yet it appears that not a single person on the creative team is a woman. From the writer, to the artist, and even the letterer, they’re all men. I’m not saying that men can’t write good women, but why was this project not given to a female writer, someone who could point out the cliched dialogue and the sexist designs? I’m not saying it would have solved all the issues with the book, but I can’t help but think it would have at least stopped it being painful to read.
As soon as I heard this description I was very excited for this book. Not only do I have a soft spot for literature of this period, but I absolutely adore Sherlock Holmes fiction, so seeing Irene Adler leading a team of strong female characters seemed to be written for me. Unfortunately, the book seemed to be unable to live up to any of this promise, and was hampered by some very off-putting issues.
First of all, Irene herself is, I think, completely wrong here in every way. The Irene that was present in the original story (and it was only the one she was in) was a capable woman, one who not only outsmarted Holmes, but altered his views on women and taught him to not underestimate them. Over the decades since her appearance her use in various pastiches or re-imaginings has cast her as Sherlock’s greatest love (there was no love story between them), an adventurer to rival Holmes, and even a Kung Fu dominatrix. The Irene presented here is just Sherlock Holmes.
The first time we meet Irene is when she’s introduced to Jane Eyre, our other lead protagonist. Jane has just returned from the Boer War where she served as a nurse, and is looking for lodgings. Through a mutual acquaintance, Miss Havisham, she’s introduced to Irene. Irene immediately deduces that Jane was a medic in the war, is overly rude to her, and then the two of them move into a flat together where Irene mulls away her time practising her music, wearing a dressing gown, and getting into mystery adventures. It’s a complete copy of the Holmes and Watson dynamic, which if not bad enough in itself, is made even worse by the acknowledgement that Holmes and Watson exist in the world too. It feels like a lazy attempt to show how she’s like Sherlock by just making her exactly the same, which doesn’t actually give her any character of her own and leads to her feeling like a bad rip-off.
This was only in the first issue, and I was hoping that it would get better from there, but it didn’t. The main antagonist for the book is Queen Ayesha, a woman whose kingdom in South America was destroyed by the British Empire, so she’s come to London to exact her revenge. Whilst this is fine motivation, her character, much like Irene’s, has a lot wrong with it. First up is the way she’s dressed. The book dresses Ayesha, and all her warriors, in next to nothing. Their clothing seems to be nipple covers and loin cloths, with the occasional cape thrown in. Their designs, much like Irene and her allies, seem designed purely to titillate and arouse, drawn for a male gaze where seeing a woman’s breasts almost falling out is paramount above practicality or comfort.
Unfortunately, the issues with the Amazons don’t end there. Despite coming from South America, every single one of them is the palest white, with bright blonde hair. Any design that feels like it could be true to people from that region of the world seems to have been thrown out in favour of what can only be described as Norwegian super-models playing dress-up. I can’t think of a single reason why these aren’t women of colour, why they don’t represent the peoples of South America. It’s incredibly jarring, and kind of insulting.
Despite copying the origins of Sherlock Holmes, dressing its female characters like dominatrixes, and having some serious issue with race and colourism, the book tries to tell a compelling story, and is interesting in parts; but these moments are few and far between. Instead, readers have to contend with action scenes that feel ridiculously over-the-top or incredibly dull, and not even the inclusion of some of the most notable characters in literature can help them.
I don’t know how the book failed as much as it did, how it took such a good idea and did it so wrong, but I would like to hazard a theory. The book is about female characters, it’s about women doing amazing things and being just as competent as men; yet it appears that not a single person on the creative team is a woman. From the writer, to the artist, and even the letterer, they’re all men. I’m not saying that men can’t write good women, but why was this project not given to a female writer, someone who could point out the cliched dialogue and the sexist designs? I’m not saying it would have solved all the issues with the book, but I can’t help but think it would have at least stopped it being painful to read.
March 30, 2021
As a comics writer, Lavie Tidhar is a wonderful novelist. This is a deeply bad book, much less interesting than its premise suggests. It borrows heavily from Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman, particularly the first volume. However you feel about Alan Moore, there is no denying he puts a lot of thought into his work: every panel brims with references and in-jokes, and every literary reference he makes is thoroughly integrated into the plot and often done subtly enough that it is clear he doesn’t think his reader is functionally brain dead. In contrast this comic feels dashed off and ill-considered, about as richly developed and meaningful as Marvin Berry calling his cousin Chuck in Back to the Future, though infinitely less funny. “Give me my medicine, DOCTOR JEKYL” bellows Queen Victoria directly into the viewer’s eyes, the noun in text as bold as charging money for this comic, in case they are so immured in a coma they might miss anything less obvious.
The plot here is never surprising: you pretty much know exactly what will happen at each moment from early on, and the plodding nature is death to a sense of adventure. The dialogue is mostly expository and characterless. The villains are dull and unthreatening. The ending makes no sense. It is a comic you can read quickly and should, before it disappears from your memory like thin mist on a warm day.
The biggest issue here for me, though, is that this is supposed to be about Irene Adler and Jane Eyre, but really they are quite literally just Holmes and Watson. They are not written as Adler and Eyre at all. If you drew the characters as men and removed the names from the text there would be no problem publishing this as a (terrible) Sherlock Holmes story. Arguably Adler is not a very strongly developed character in the Arthur Conan Doyle story, but she has more character in that than in this comic, and the Adler from the story is in no way recognisable here. This is a conscious choice on the author’s part (the meeting of Adler and Eyre is a pretty exact retelling of the meeting of Holmes and Watson.) But it is a stupid choice and says nothing of interest about any of the characters involved.
Tidhar genuinely is a brilliant novelist and short story writer, and I bought this comic hoping for a story that developed Irene Adler, the con woman who tricked Sherlock Holmes, the daring adventuress who flouted the rules of the society she inhabited. I think that would be a great idea. Instead I got a dashed off bit of gender swapped Sherlock Holmes fan fiction.
The plot here is never surprising: you pretty much know exactly what will happen at each moment from early on, and the plodding nature is death to a sense of adventure. The dialogue is mostly expository and characterless. The villains are dull and unthreatening. The ending makes no sense. It is a comic you can read quickly and should, before it disappears from your memory like thin mist on a warm day.
The biggest issue here for me, though, is that this is supposed to be about Irene Adler and Jane Eyre, but really they are quite literally just Holmes and Watson. They are not written as Adler and Eyre at all. If you drew the characters as men and removed the names from the text there would be no problem publishing this as a (terrible) Sherlock Holmes story. Arguably Adler is not a very strongly developed character in the Arthur Conan Doyle story, but she has more character in that than in this comic, and the Adler from the story is in no way recognisable here. This is a conscious choice on the author’s part (the meeting of Adler and Eyre is a pretty exact retelling of the meeting of Holmes and Watson.) But it is a stupid choice and says nothing of interest about any of the characters involved.
Tidhar genuinely is a brilliant novelist and short story writer, and I bought this comic hoping for a story that developed Irene Adler, the con woman who tricked Sherlock Holmes, the daring adventuress who flouted the rules of the society she inhabited. I think that would be a great idea. Instead I got a dashed off bit of gender swapped Sherlock Holmes fan fiction.
October 10, 2023
Oh dear. I like a lot of Lavie Tidhar's stuff, but I should have remembered that one of the big exceptions was his alt-Victorian Bookman. Operating in similar territory, this unsubtly positions itself as a girl power Wold Newton or League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen, with Jane Eyre playing Watson to Irene Adler's great detective, while Ayesha and her henchvamp Camilla seek to usurp Moriarty's control of London crime. But even aside from LoEG itself being gender-balanced after the first volumes, the big thing this misses is its thoroughness - as witness the way characters from books set forty years apart are here palling around together, as though '19th century' is just one easy mix and match setting. In his more substantial work, Tidhar's creative anachronism can be fun - Lancelot as Jewish ninja! - but here it only feels lazy, not helped by the generic steampunk trappings and Paul McCaffrey's uninspiringly Avatar-esque art. Being much readier than Moore and O'Neill to throw historical figures into the mix with the fictional ones only irritates further: how do you put Tesla, probably the second most-recognisable scientist in history (at least before Nolan's interminable hat ad) into a comic, and yet have him look more off-model than he was in the Ms Marvel issue I read yesterday, where he'd been crossed with a toucan?
April 6, 2021
Wow, this was... not good. Like, really not good. I'm generally a pretty chill person when it comes to reading Sherlock Holmes-related junk, but... this was not good. Between the fact that you couldn't tell the women apart, the fact that most of their artwork centered around T&A, and just the general nonexistent plot (I mean, there was a plot... that made very little sense...), it was just... not good. Also, what is the point of having a forward where the authors note that British imperialism was not great, and then make the villain a victim of British imperialism- and have her not be sympathetic, but just evil? Like? No. Also: why the hell was she wearing bikini armor. Seriously. SO BAD. It doesn't take the place of my least favourite Holmesian adaptation ever (no, that honor remains with The Last Sherlock Holmes Story), but I think it may actually be my second least favourite. Because this was THAT bad. (Not even enjoyable bad! I have read so many enjoyable bad Holmesian adaptations!)
May 4, 2021
I was super excited to read this because the description says that this is the "League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen," I didn't find this very extraordinary at all...
Full of famous literary characters and historical figures, this seemed to be a promising read. I was excited to see Irene Adler paired with Jane Eyre, Marie Curie, and Miss Havisham.... This just didn't work.
The art was beautiful, but the story was all over the place and jumbled up! The author took these great characters, played dominatrix dress-up time with them and gave their dialog little importance. This wasn't a fun adventure. This was a disappointment and a discredit to all of the famous characters used.
Full of famous literary characters and historical figures, this seemed to be a promising read. I was excited to see Irene Adler paired with Jane Eyre, Marie Curie, and Miss Havisham.... This just didn't work.
The art was beautiful, but the story was all over the place and jumbled up! The author took these great characters, played dominatrix dress-up time with them and gave their dialog little importance. This wasn't a fun adventure. This was a disappointment and a discredit to all of the famous characters used.
September 13, 2025
There are one of two results that often happens when mixing fictional characters with historical people in comic book form. It is either a hodge-podge mess of uneven and boring story telling. Or it is a brilliant and fun adventure when these characters with their different personalities converge into the same world. This story very happily falls into the second category. This story captures the spirit of the individual people tossing them into a historical fiction world with excellent art.
It would be a delight to get more stories in this series using the main characters.
It would be a delight to get more stories in this series using the main characters.
August 5, 2021
Everything on the back of the book, everything in the description, would lead you to imagine a work better than this. Squandered potential and excellent characters have been reduced to name-drops, fight scenes, and steampunk corset pastiche. A disappointment.
February 26, 2023
My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:
https://youtu.be/-7zQJSAjU4w
Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/-7zQJSAjU4w
Enjoy!
March 7, 2025
At first I thought it was interesting to see the main leads Jane and Adler (I ship them) partner together but then it just became boring all of a sudden. Pretty disappointed to say the least ;/
July 5, 2021
Want to like this more than I do.
It ticks so many of my boxes, but also feels like that's all it's doing: going through a checklist of 'so, you want to write a steampunk adventure'.
The good: interesting mix of characters, decent art, lots of good action set pieces.
I like for every obvious character choice there is an obscure one, that caught me by surprise.
Not sure if the timeline for the cast works, but it was fun seeing the mix.
The not so: I'm tired of Irene Adler being written as though she was Sherlock Holmes with boobs.
She was clever, and being an actress, a good hand at a disguise, but everyone turns her into a detective or Laura Croft.
I get this is meant to be girl power League of extraordinary gentlemen, but does that have to mean every man is an idiot?
There isn't a single guy in this story that comes across as competent or not a jerk.
Even Moriarty...?
Are you kidding me?
The grand reveal of the amazons' masterplan is a bit feeble and the immediate set up of volume two felt tacked on and overly cute.
It's a fun time waster, but there;'s little here to make me find out oof there really was a volume 2.
It ticks so many of my boxes, but also feels like that's all it's doing: going through a checklist of 'so, you want to write a steampunk adventure'.
The good: interesting mix of characters, decent art, lots of good action set pieces.
I like for every obvious character choice there is an obscure one, that caught me by surprise.
Not sure if the timeline for the cast works, but it was fun seeing the mix.
The not so: I'm tired of Irene Adler being written as though she was Sherlock Holmes with boobs.
She was clever, and being an actress, a good hand at a disguise, but everyone turns her into a detective or Laura Croft.
I get this is meant to be girl power League of extraordinary gentlemen, but does that have to mean every man is an idiot?
There isn't a single guy in this story that comes across as competent or not a jerk.
Even Moriarty...?
Are you kidding me?
The grand reveal of the amazons' masterplan is a bit feeble and the immediate set up of volume two felt tacked on and overly cute.
It's a fun time waster, but there;'s little here to make me find out oof there really was a volume 2.
April 14, 2021
This looked promising - but failed to deliver.
Not only were a lot of the drawings the usual sexist framing, but there wasn't a lot original to the story either. For something that could have been a feminising of the Sherlock Holmes canon, it turned out to have nothing new. I read to the end, but only because I knew I could do so in one sitting. This not only took well known fictional characters and changed them beyond recognition (Haversham was a tired old lady in a decrepit wedding dress, not to a gun-toting adventurer). There were too many stollen lines - why Lestrade would use a Laurel and Hardy catchphrase is beyond me. Then there is the treatment of actual historical figures - shudders at the use.
All it all is felt like an uncomfortable mash-up that was never needed.
The writing of this comic only deserves 1 star, I've given my review 2 stars because of the artwork, which, scantily clad Amazonians annoyance aside, is pretty good. Can't say I'll bother with any more of this stuff though.
Not only were a lot of the drawings the usual sexist framing, but there wasn't a lot original to the story either. For something that could have been a feminising of the Sherlock Holmes canon, it turned out to have nothing new. I read to the end, but only because I knew I could do so in one sitting. This not only took well known fictional characters and changed them beyond recognition (Haversham was a tired old lady in a decrepit wedding dress, not to a gun-toting adventurer). There were too many stollen lines - why Lestrade would use a Laurel and Hardy catchphrase is beyond me. Then there is the treatment of actual historical figures - shudders at the use.
All it all is felt like an uncomfortable mash-up that was never needed.
The writing of this comic only deserves 1 star, I've given my review 2 stars because of the artwork, which, scantily clad Amazonians annoyance aside, is pretty good. Can't say I'll bother with any more of this stuff though.
Read
August 14, 20222 and a half stars. i normally like Tidhar's writing, including the pulp stuff, which of course by definition tends to be short, shallow, sensational, and genre-crossing. this graphic novel puts Sherlock Holmes' Irene Adler in charge, and takes a short dive into an alt-Victorian world of desperate literary characters, in pursuit of an Alan Moore-style League of Extraordinary Gentlemen adventure comic, only this time with emphasis on female characters like Miss Havisham, and Jane Eyre. unfortunately, this version of that landscape is cursory, unexamined, and even largely disinterested in both characters and plot, leaving the impression that it is merely an attempt to rip off that earlier work, with nothing else to recommend it. and i took against the illustrations too, with the costuming that heavily emphasized the breasts: okay, also very pulp-like, but also indicative of a certain err... anti-intellectual stance at odds with the supposed emphasis on Extraordinary Gentlewomen. my thoughts, anyway. if the makers don't care, why should the reader?
May 12, 2024
Fundamentally, I found this book to be aggravating. It went out of its way to have Irene Adler plagiarize many of Sherlock Holmes' best quotes while simultaneously reminding us that Holmes and his ménagère exist within this world, forcing itself to repeatedly justify why Adler is the protagonist instead of Holmes (that said, I applaud their decision to place the events during The Hound of the Baskervilles, as it provided a ready made "gap" where Holmes was absent from London in the original SACD canon).
The plot itself was fairly well constructed, but I found their repeated efforts to upstage Holmes within his own world too distracting to fully appreciate the steampunk-detective-noir-anti-imperialist adventure. Ultimately, I wish they had spent more time developing Irene as her own unique protagonist instead of just copying Holmes' skills, personality, and crusade.
The plot itself was fairly well constructed, but I found their repeated efforts to upstage Holmes within his own world too distracting to fully appreciate the steampunk-detective-noir-anti-imperialist adventure. Ultimately, I wish they had spent more time developing Irene as her own unique protagonist instead of just copying Holmes' skills, personality, and crusade.
May 26, 2021
The references to famous Victorian characters was a fun game of spotting. The opening was directly re-written from Sherlock Holmes of Holmes and Watson meeting, and it was supposed to be a sort of steampunk re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes with female characters. The art is pretty but suffers a lot of same-face, and the ending was seriously unrealistic.
March 29, 2022
Like many others rating this title on the low end, I found the premise promising. Sherlockian riffs are among my favorites in fiction. Unfortunately, this offering is unworthy of most of that company.
Adler: Volume 1 instead joins the Breasted Boobily Canon created by Men Who Cannot Write/Draw Women But Try Anyway. As a reader, I'd appreciate a list or a warning label or something similar:
Beware the Breasted Boobily Brigade!
Adler: Volume 1 instead joins the Breasted Boobily Canon created by Men Who Cannot Write/Draw Women But Try Anyway. As a reader, I'd appreciate a list or a warning label or something similar:
Beware the Breasted Boobily Brigade!
July 18, 2022
Characters fell flat for me and plot wasn't anything to overcome that. Art was sort of pretty, but typical and it felt like they were trying too hard to make the women sexy, without any actual variety of body types. In short, the art, characters, story all felt pretty predictable and boring. They tried to do action, but honestly, that fell flat, too. Normal women can't just hold their own in a fight against Amazonian/warrior women.
June 13, 2021
Nothing fresh here at all. It's just another author's alt-history, steampunk fantasy with characters lifted from Victoria literature and history, death, mass destruction, and a vampire, of course. The artwork is very interesting and the only thing I enjoyed about this "League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen".
May 27, 2024
The British Empire colonizes the Amazons, and we're supposed to NOT sympathize with their quest for revenge? We're also NOT supposed to take offense to the soulless reimagining of some of literatures' most badass women. Dishonor on your fucking cow, Tidhar!
April 27, 2021
A graphic novel surrounding female leads, surprisingly comes off as sexist. The bikini armored woman, neccessary? The story seemed like a good idea, but it fell flat. The art however was amazing.
June 21, 2021
An Irene Adler story but mostly turns the most prominent female character in the Sherlock Holmes into a generic, Victorian heroine and it felt, from beginning to end, like a missed opportunity.
June 29, 2021
Good premise, but fell short for me. I'm not sure what I was expecting with this, but I just wish there was more. May be me though.
August 3, 2021
2 and 1/2
August 21, 2021
Didn’t really care for it.
November 1, 2021
This was horrible. I really wanted it to be better. I read the whole thing hoping it would get better, and it didn't. 😔
May 23, 2021
This review is also on http://dnruttan.com
“Adler” by Lavie Tidhar, illustrated by Paul McCaffrey, published by Titan Comics, promised a League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen from science and history, and on that front, it delivered. It had me at that premise, so I can’t fault it for expecting any less.
But this book belongs to a new genre that I would call historical fiction, but reimagining history as if sexism and racism were not barriers. On the one hand, it’s amazing to see more representation and badass women doing badass things, as a woman comics fan in an industry dominated by badass men who get to have all the fun. On the other hand, I think rewriting history to be more inclusive can have an adverse effect on women – people can then weaponize it to argue that sexism never existed.
However, since this is a comic book, and thus prone to bombastic retellings because that’s expected of the genre, I am willing to give it license to go there, and just call it historical fantasy. As Adler says, “To be a woman is to be at war, Jane.” Best line of the whole book.
The protagonist of this story is Irene Adler, a minor character in the Sherlock Holmes universe who now gets top billing. Jane Eyre, who was an ambulance driver in the Boer Wars in South Africa, comes to London looking for work and a place to live. She’s introduced to the irrepressible Irene Adler and her London, a city at war with brutal crime gangs. First it’s Moriarty, who is easily dispatched, followed by, naturally, Ayesha, a barbarian queen come to take her revenge on the British Empire.
The art was decent, some interesting plays with light and shadow to follow the arc of the narrative drama, but I found the plot somewhat scattered. For example, orphan Annie’s mission at the beginning of the book is to deliver special papers to Irene Adler; for starting off strong, this plot bunny falls by the wayside, and we never really hear about the papers. I suppose that’s coming in Book Two. Also, the villains meet with far too easy ends; the stakes just didn’t seem particularly high.
Bottom line was, I think this story was just trying to do too much with too many famous people from history. It was the point, but it didn’t quite work for me; it felt like a gimmick. I would have liked it better if it was just Irene and Jane teaming up to fight crime and then having a little romance. They were the strongest characters in the book for me and I wanted more of them together. But, I suppose that is just not bombastic enough.
“Adler” by Lavie Tidhar, illustrated by Paul McCaffrey, published by Titan Comics, promised a League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen from science and history, and on that front, it delivered. It had me at that premise, so I can’t fault it for expecting any less.
But this book belongs to a new genre that I would call historical fiction, but reimagining history as if sexism and racism were not barriers. On the one hand, it’s amazing to see more representation and badass women doing badass things, as a woman comics fan in an industry dominated by badass men who get to have all the fun. On the other hand, I think rewriting history to be more inclusive can have an adverse effect on women – people can then weaponize it to argue that sexism never existed.
However, since this is a comic book, and thus prone to bombastic retellings because that’s expected of the genre, I am willing to give it license to go there, and just call it historical fantasy. As Adler says, “To be a woman is to be at war, Jane.” Best line of the whole book.
The protagonist of this story is Irene Adler, a minor character in the Sherlock Holmes universe who now gets top billing. Jane Eyre, who was an ambulance driver in the Boer Wars in South Africa, comes to London looking for work and a place to live. She’s introduced to the irrepressible Irene Adler and her London, a city at war with brutal crime gangs. First it’s Moriarty, who is easily dispatched, followed by, naturally, Ayesha, a barbarian queen come to take her revenge on the British Empire.
The art was decent, some interesting plays with light and shadow to follow the arc of the narrative drama, but I found the plot somewhat scattered. For example, orphan Annie’s mission at the beginning of the book is to deliver special papers to Irene Adler; for starting off strong, this plot bunny falls by the wayside, and we never really hear about the papers. I suppose that’s coming in Book Two. Also, the villains meet with far too easy ends; the stakes just didn’t seem particularly high.
Bottom line was, I think this story was just trying to do too much with too many famous people from history. It was the point, but it didn’t quite work for me; it felt like a gimmick. I would have liked it better if it was just Irene and Jane teaming up to fight crime and then having a little romance. They were the strongest characters in the book for me and I wanted more of them together. But, I suppose that is just not bombastic enough.
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