The Strange Case Of Mr. Hyde – Cole Haddon & M.S. Corley
The Strange Case Of Mr. Hyde – Cole Haddon & M.S. Corley (Dark Horse www.darkhorse.com)
If asked, which characters, both factual and fictional, from the Victorian age of horror, both real and imagined, do you think most people would name? I’m willing to wager the sum of twenty shillings that both Henry Jekyll and Jack The Ripper would be in the first ten listed, and given the frequency with which both appear in literary works, whether as hero’s or villains in alternate history novels, or as the subjects in biographies of Robert Louis Stevenson or re-examinations of the Whitechapel murders, most people would be foolish to take the wager. Both characters lie at the heart of Cole Haddon’s ‘The Strange Case Of Mr. Hyde’, but interestingly, Haddon appears to have found a new twist on both the Ripper murders, and a way in which to bring Henry Jekyll into the story, as he incorporates a touch of Thomas Harris into the story, with a young detective, Thomas Adye, seeking the help of Jekyll in order to catch a killer seemingly possessed of super-human abilities, the beast responsible for grizzly atrocities plaguing London’ seedier night life. As the murders continue, Adye is forced to plunge ever deeper into Hyde’s world in order to catch the perpetrator, but as he descends to depths he previously swore he never would, it soon becomes horribly apparent to Adye that this case goes far deeper and is far darker than the mutilations and murders would have him believe, and if the case is solved, and the truth exposed, the consequences for London society could be beyond compare. Haddon’s tale explores the ideas and notion of class with Victorian society, ridiculing the system that gave rise to the believe that position and breeding were everything by enforcing the idea that all are equal, driven by the same desires, dreams and goals, whilst M.S. Corley’s artwork grounding the story in Victorian realism, whilst retaining a touch of the fantastic that I can’t quite put my finger on and for some reason I’m reminded of both Mignola and O’Neill, but that might be as much the setting as the artwork itself. Hyde was one of the highlights of 2011, and I’m eagerly anticipating the further adventures of Thomas Adye as he steps out into a world where truth is often stranger than the fiction that it’s based on. A literary treat that you’ll savour, and return to, time and time again… Tim Mass Movement
