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No. 938: Sherlock 6

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Sherlock 6

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Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/owls/?comic=938

Strip by: Buster Maruca

Caption: 221B Baker St., London.
{Meridien and Oliver enter a room; Ambrose is already there.}
Meridien {as Inspector Lestrade}: Holmes! Thank Gosh you’re here!
Ambrose {as Sherlock Holmes}: Yes? What do you need help with this time, inspector?
Meridien: Four people staying at Strigiforme Manor were murdered last night! And despite our best efforts, we can’t figure out how it was done, or who did it!
Oliver {as Dr. John Watson}: By Jove!
Ambrose: Very well. I’ll see what I can do. Lead on, inspector.
Caption: Strigiforme Manor.
{Meridien, Olvier, and Ambrose enter a room.}
Meridien: Here is the body of the first victim, the venerable Lord Strigiforme.
Ambrose {leaning over to look at something off-panel on the ground}: Well, he clearly drowned — he’s completely drenched. But the carpets don’t have even a single drop on them…
{The three move to a new room.}
Meridien: And this is the body of his wife, Lady Strigiforme.
Ambrose {leaning over again to look at something on the ground}: She was done in by blunt trauma, obviously. But these flecks of granite she’s covered in — they’re not found anywhere in England…
{They move to another room.}
Meridien: And the third victim, Reginald the butler.
Ambrose {leaning over again}: He was suffocated, it seems. And yet there are no marks on his neck…
{And they move to yet another room.}
Meridien: And the last victim was a visiting dignitary from Biskittia.
Ambrose {leaning again}: Burnt to death, as you can see. His clothes are absolutely charred, but the rug has not one scorch mark on it…
Oliver: Well, Holmes, how could all of these paradoxical murders have been committed?
Ambrose {standing up straight}: Watson, the only conceivable solution is that the victims were murdered by a person or persons wielding mystical power over the forces of Water, Earth, Air, and Fire.
Oliver: But Holmes, what sort of people could possess such an esoteric power?
Ambrose: Why, elementalists, my dear Watson.

The author writes:

Strigiforme.

Biskittia.

Despite the title, this isn't the sixth LMoO strip to feature Sherlock Holmes. But it is the sixth strip to follow the "Sherlock <number>" naming pattern.

Also: bleh, I did a terrible job with the lighting for this one. It's particularly noticeable to me in panels 2, 5, and 6, where the characters are really shadowed for some reason, and panels 1 and 3, where the light I was using is shining on the background too much.

I used paintings from the Smithsonian Open Access website as the backgrounds for every panel in this strip. It's a good resource for free old-timey images to use in making comics and other projects. Anyways, the paintings used are as follows:

All of which are released under CC0. (Or, at least, the Smithsonian's digital scans of the paintings are. I imagine that the paintings themselves are simply naturally in the public domain, as their artists all died in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.)