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strangefate

Tower of Iron Will

All who enter the Tower regain 100 sanity points.

Currently reading

Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die
Randall Munroe, James Foreman, K. Sekelsky, Camron Miller, John Chernega, David Michael Wharton, K.M. Lawrence, Jeffrey C. Wells, Vera Brosgol, Kit Yona, J. Jack Unrau, Jeff Stautz, Aaron Diaz, Matthew Bennardo, Yahtzee Croshaw, Douglas J. Lane, Brian Quinlan, Kate Beaton

Never Mind the Sherlocks

Honour Among Punks - Guy Davis, Gary Reed

Honour Among Punks is a gender-flipped Sherlock Holmes pastiche set in the London punk scene of the 1980's. To make it more Holmes-ish, it is also a world where respectable English society never moved on from Victorianism. It would have been very interesting if the hows and whys of this world had been explored, but it just exists as an unexamined background element. The main character is a former CID Inspector who was dismissed for exposing police corruption and then went punk and solves crimes as a hobby.

 

I am a fan of Guy Davis' art. His runs on Sandman Mystery Theater and The Marquis are among my favorites. His work is detailed, gritty, and not afraid to be ugly when the situation calls for it. Unfortunately I did not care for this story.

 

The biggest failing of the story requires some spoilers, so spoilers follow.

 

One of the main characters is revealed to be trans and the story proceeds to hit every cliched negative trans trope from immediate pronoun confusion to the psychologically unstable trans woman. Eventually the trans character is revealed to be a serial killer who targets men. I am not a reviewer who insists all trans portrayals must be positive, but the trans = monster trope is a tired thriller cliche.