Interpreting Holmes: Joel Meadows Revisits The Consulting Detective in ‘The Empire Builders’

The genesis of Sherlock Holmes and The Empire Builders goes back to around 2002.

I had always been a big fan of Conan Doyle on the big and small screen. I enjoyed films like Young Sherlock Holmes by Barry Levinson and Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and TV series like ITV’s Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett.

Holmes like Batman, James Bond, King Arthur, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Shadow has always felt like an iconic and timeless character which lends itself to a range of different interpretations.

I found artist and collaborator Andy Bennett through a mutual friend I remember and we sent off a proposal in the format of a magazine with a new 8 page short in it to a few publishers. No one was interested at the time so I put it down and forgot about it.

Fast-forward to 2018 and one of our Tripwire writers, Scott Braden, asked me if I had any comic series that never happened that I could talk about with him for his “Lost Tales” series for the website. So I mentioned Holmes and he said it would be perfect. That interview reminded me what got me excited about it in the first place so I went back to it.

To test the waters, we created three brand new shorts set in the world of the Empire Builders and ran them in the Tripwire print magazine. They were very well received so we decided in 2022 to bite the bullet and publish a full-length story. But it was too long and too ambitious to do as a one off so we split it into two parts.

Sherlock Holmes and The Empire Builders The Gene Genie Volume One was published in January 2024 after a very successful crowdfunding campaign on Zoop in autumn 2023 which saw it double its target.

The series owes a lot to the work of Michael Moorcock (Elric, Jerry Cornelius) and acclaimed veteran British comics creator Bryan Talbot.

So this is a very different take on Holmes as here is an older version of the character, a little less sure of himself than he used to be. Sherlock Holmes and The Empire Builders The Gene Genie is a two-part graphic novel adventure starring the world’s greatest detective as you’ve never seen him before.

Volume Two has Holmes at his lowest ebb, losing his closest friend and confidante to prime minister Oswald Mosley’s thugs.

But a cornered man is perhaps the most dangerous, so can he with the assistance of rebel Mohock Franklyn Miller, Mosley’s former cats paw Six and others bring down Mosley and restore England to its status quo?

This time around, I brought hot US artist Dan Panosian (Conan, Nightwing) and veteran British artist Frazer Irving (Batman, 2000AD, Flash Gordon) on board to create the two unique covers.

Artist and co-creator Andy Bennett is an American artist but with a British sensibility so he is the perfect foil to bring my scripts to life.

Our second campaign ends on 13 December and we are already funded but we have a few cool stretch goals planned if we hit a couple of extra targets.

Holmes has already garnered a number of high profile genre fans and so the last word are with Oscar winning director Guillermo del Toro (Pinocchio, The Shape of Water) who said of The Empire Builders: “It’s a darn good romp.!”

People can support the campaign HERE!!!