The contributors to Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson’s What’cha Mean, What’s a Zine? were invited to make one-of-a-kind hand-made zines for a show at Junc Gallery in 2006. I enlisted the help of of illustrator and comics artist Jamie Tanner, and together we produced this zine. Jamie mailed me the tiny inked watercolors and I placed them into a book that I glued and hand-stitched (the gallery provided the paper and cover stock).
As there was only the single copy, not too many have seen it before. But so here it is. You can appreciate Jamie’s ability in light of him turning the art around in just a couple days, on top of his own busy schedule.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
This imagined childhood was heavily influenced by actor Jeremy Brett’s (best Sherlock ever) public comments on how he imagined Holmes’ youth, and on the biographies of Conan Doyle that I was able to lay hands on.
It was also the result of research I’d been doing on a dream project, a film script that was jokingly referred to as “Sherlock Holmes Begins.” In the original Holmes stories, Sherlock’s a bit of a cipher, creep, and spider. Not someone you can pal around with or understand. As someone says on the Granada DVD commentary, “his heart is asleep”. So Watson was really the window for the reader; the normal human/heart they could attach themselves to, the source and receptacle of empathy.
I wanted a story that would have the scruples not to conflict with any of Doyle’s stories, but would explain why Holmes was such a misanthrope. And in doing so, allow a viewer to say, Yeah, Holmes is a warped creature, but now I understand him, I get why he is like he is. I don’t need Watson to put a human face on this story. I have an emotional attachment to a man who’s done a great job at becoming emotionless.
But last I checked, we’re going to get hit with two Sherlock Holmes films that threaten to savage the character with poor regard for the original stories. This pet project is indefinitely shelved.
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