Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives #4 Review

Can Moriarty or Udo get into Bombastus Von Hoheneim’s safe or will they get caught in the act? Read on to find out.

The official description from Dynamite:

The deadly game of cat-and-mouse between the world’s most notorious villain and the most dangerous
man in Switzerland continues to unfold with skull-cracking, wife-stealing, cattle-mutilating action! Moriarty begins to move his plan into his endgame, but he may have already been outwitted by the master alchemist who delights in murder and atrocity. Can Moriarty be evil enough to emerge as a hero, or will the people who have trusted him find themselves betrayed? The game is afoot in the penultimate issue!

Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives has been an intriguing all be it relatively mediocre series as despite it having some exciting and gripping development points it’s not featured anything spectacular. In this penultimate issue we see Moriarty get closer to his goal of stealing Bombastus Von Hoheneim’s fortune with Udo questioning whether he can trust Moriarty.

David Liss does a wonderful job of setting up the conclusion as though the issue took a little while to produce anything of real interest once it did it did so big style. The narration along with Moriarty’s true colours being on display really appealed to me, with this methodical thought process adding an fabulous tone to the issue. Liss also did a terrific job of showing Udo’s character development with the vengeful young lad catching on to Moriarty’s game and making plans of his own.

The artwork in this issue was handled by Carlos Furuzono and though he did a good job it was far from perfect. The main inconsistency in Furuzono’s art has to be the detail as though in close ups to a very high standard it felt rather rough in wider panels. I also found Moriarty himself to look a little different with Furuzono’s version having his stature a little thinner. Despite all these negative points Furuzono’s art wasn’t terrible and overall was good but the change in style and lack of inconsistent detail let it down.

Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives reaches it’s penultimate issue and though it takes a while to get into the really interesting developments it does do a fantastic job of setting up next issues conclusion. Recommended.