Dangerkatt visits Fandom Planet - Moriarty & The Prophet

This week, SAX and Tim meet Daniel Corey (writer) and Anthony Diecidue. (artist) for DANGERKATT and its Graphic Novels Prophet and the brand new Moriarty. Along the way, the boys discuss independent publishing, digital distribution, and the new Green Hornet movie. For more information and to get your copy of these great graphic novels, visit www.dangerkatt.com and tell them Fandom Planet sent you!

The Green Hornet is a masked superhero, created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker for an American radio program in the 1930s. The character also has appeared in film serials in the 1940s, a network television program in the 1960s, and multiple comic book series from the 1940s to the present (2010). Though various incarnations sometimes change details, in most incarnations the Green Hornet is Britt Reid, a newspaper publisher by day who goes out in his masked "Green Hornet" identity at night to fight crime as a vigilante, accompanied by his similarly masked Asian Wheelman Kato -- who drives their car, equipped with advanced technology, called "Black Beauty". The Green Hornet is often presented as possessing fair to above average hand-to-hand combat skills and is often armed with a gun that sprays knock-out gas (a sonic blast weapon called the "Hornet's Sting" was added to his arsenal for the television series).


Originally, the radio program was to be called The Hornet, but the name was changed to The Green Hornet so that it could be more easily trademarked. One relatively minor aspect of the character that tends to be given limited exposure in the actual productions is his blood relationship to The Lone Ranger, another character created by Striker. The Lone Ranger's nephew was Dan Reid. In the Green Hornet radio shows, the Hornet's father was likewise named Dan Reid, making Britt Reid the Lone Ranger's great-nephew.


The Lone Ranger property was sold to another company in the 1950s, which resulted in a legal complication that precluded The Lone Ranger being directly associated with the Green Hornet (though a comic book from NOW Comics depicted the Britt Reid's living room furnished with a painting of a man dressed very similarly to the Lone Ranger, and the radio series had expressly indicated the presence of just such a portrait hanging there).


During World War II, the radio show's title was used as a codename for SIGSALY, secret encryption equipment used in the war. "The Green Hornet" also became a popular nickname for Lieutenant-General George S. Patton, due to the unique and attention-getting uniform that he proposed for tank crews, which featured a gold-painted football helmet. Supposedly, while Patton was testing it after development (which he funded out of his own pocket), one Army trooper said "Look! It's the Green Hornet!" and the name followed Patton for years[citation needed].


Professor Moriarty's first appearance and his ultimate end occurred in Doyle's story "The Final Problem", in which Holmes, on the verge of delivering a fatal blow to Moriarty's criminal ring, is forced to flee to the Continent to escape Moriarty's retribution. Moriarty follows, and the two apparently fall to their deaths while locked in mortal combat atop the Reichenbach Falls. During this story, Moriarty is something of a Mafia Godfather; he protects nearly all of the criminals of England in exchange for their obedience and a share in their profits. Holmes, by his own account, was originally led to Moriarty by the suggestion that many of the crimes he perceived were not the spontaneous work of random criminals, but the machinations of a vast and subtle criminal ring.


Moriarty plays a direct role in only one other of Doyle's Holmes stories: The Valley of Fear, which was set before "The Final Problem," but published afterwards. In The Valley of Fear, Holmes attempts to prevent Moriarty's agents from committing a murder. Moriarty does not meet Holmes in this story. In an episode where Moriarty is interviewed by a policeman, a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze is described as hanging on the wall; Holmes remarks on another work by the same painter to show it could not have been purchased on a professor's salary. The work referred to is La jeune fille à l'agneau; some commentators[1] have described this as a pun by Doyle upon the name of Thomas Agnew of the gallery Thomas Agnew and Sons, who had a famous painting[2] stolen by Adam Worth, but was unable to prove the fact.[1]


Holmes mentions Moriarty reminiscently in five other stories: "The Empty House" (the immediate sequel to "The Final Problem"), "The Norwood Builder," "The Missing Three-Quarter," "The Illustrious Client,", and "His Last Bow." More obliquely, a 1908 mystery by Doyle, The Lost Special, features a criminal genius who could be Moriarty and a detective who could be Holmes, although neither is mentioned by name.




Viktor Yevgrafov as Professor Moriarty in Igor Maslennikov's TV series.Although Moriarty appeared in only two of the 60 Sherlock Holmes tales by Conan Doyle, Holmes' attitude to him has gained him the popular impression of being Holmes' arch-nemesis -- as "The Final Problem" clearly states, Holmes spent months in a private war against Moriarty's criminal operations—and he has been frequently used in later stories by other authors, parodies, and in other media.


In the Doyle stories, narrated by Holmes' assistant Dr. Watson, Watson never meets Moriarty (only getting distant glimpses of him in "The Final Problem"), and relies upon Holmes to relate accounts of the detective's battle with the criminal.


Doyle himself is inconsistent on Watson's familiarity with Moriarty. In "The Final Problem", Watson tells Holmes he has never heard of Moriarty, while in The Valley of Fear, set earlier on, Watson already knows of him as "the famous scientific criminal."


Moriarty's weapon of choice is the "air-rifle", a unique weapon constructed for the Professor by a blind German mechanic, von Herder, and used by his employee Colonel Sebastian Moran. It closely resembled a cane, allowing for easy concealment, was capable of firing revolver bullets and made very little noise when fired, making it ideal for sniping; the weapon became infamous for being Moriarty's favorite tool. Moriarty also has a marked preference for organising "accidents". His attempts to kill Holmes include falling masonry and a speeding horse drawn van. He is also responsible for stage managing the death of Birdy Edwards.


Holmes described Moriarty as follows:


"He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him.
But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the University town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and come down to London. He is the Napoleon of Crime, Watson, the organiser of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city..."


—Holmes, "The Final Problem"
The "smaller university" involved has been claimed to be one of the colleges that later comprised the University of Leeds.[3] However, in Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography, the "smaller university" is said to be Durham.[4]


Holmes also states Moriarty wrote The Dynamics of An Asteroid, describing it as "a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticising it."


Doyle's original motive in creating Moriarty was evidently his intention to kill Holmes off. "The Final Problem" was intended to be exactly what its title says; Doyle sought to sweeten the pill by letting Holmes go in a blaze of glory, having rid the world of a criminal so powerful and dangerous any further task would be trivial in comparison (as Holmes says in the story itself). Moriarty only appeared in one book because, quite simply, having him constantly escape would discredit Holmes, and would be less satisfying.


Eventually, public pressure and financial troubles forced Doyle to bring Holmes back.


A point of interest is that the "high, domed forehead" was seen as the sign of a prodigious intellect during Conan Doyle's time. In giving Moriarty this trait, which had already appeared in both Sherlock Holmes and the detective's brother Mycroft, Doyle may have intended to portray Moriarty as a man having an intellect equal or greater than that of Holmes, and thus the only man capable of defeating him. Moriarty died when he fell off the Reichenbach Falls and Sherlock only faked his death to protect Watson from being pursued.[5]





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