Victorian Undead ends, unfortunately, with a set-up for a sequel. My problem isn’t with the prospect of another Holmes versus zombies series, it’s more to do with Edginton’s set-up itself. His grand reveals for the series are, for the most part, bad and he suggests any sequel will directly involve them.

This issue, with its action-packed conclusion, plays pretty quickly. There’s a hurried, confusing resolution to the conspiracy and a callback to the first issue, which is also hurried and confused, and then Edginton moves to the final sequence.

In some ways, it seems as though Edginton is setting up a Scarlet Traces like London for Holmes to jaunt around in–there’s futuristic (steampunk) technology here, without any explanation of its origins–and I guess it’s an interesting setting, but his Holmes and Watson are so boring… I’m rather indifferent.

I was hoping for a lot more.

Umm, ok, I’m now confused and it’s all Fabbri’s fault. I can’t tell his living Doctor Moriarty from his living Colonel Moran… or whatever rank that character had reached.

And I’m upset because I was actually going to complement Fabbri for his Holmes this issue. A couple panels he took the time to age line Holmes’s face, so it didn’t look like Ashton Kutcher would be playing him in the movie adaptation.

Otherwise, the issue pretends to have some detecting but really just talks about it and moves along the zombie story. I think I’d be more partial to the comic if Holmes were less of an emphasis–if he were just a player in the story of zombies attacking late nineteenth century London instead of the ostensible principle.

There are some cool scenes with zombie attacks and so on; the conspiracy foreshadowing, however, is rather unnecessary.

But acceptable overall.

Half the issue is talking heads, the other half is zombie attacks on London. The zombie attacks work better. Fabbri’s not suited for talking heads, especially not with his characters boldly edged, standing out against the backgrounds. It makes it seem unreal and artificial, something a talking heads scene should never be.

The exposition–it’s Holmes, Watson and Mycroft sitting around and basically recapping what the reader already knows and what Holmes and Watson don’t yet–is a little tedious. The payoff comes with the zombie attacks, but even those are a little… restrained. There’s not the en masse zombie attack yet, only the hints of it.

The concept for the series–the tagline–is better than Edginton’s script, unfortunately. His Holmes is a pop culture figure, not really Conan Doyle’s consulting detective. He’s playing to zombie fans, not Holmes aficionados. In fact, he’s ignoring them, except for occasional callouts.

The second issue brings things quite a bit more into the Sherlock Holmes popular mythology. Edginton uses so many familiar characters I wouldn’t be surprised if Irene Adler shows up at some point soon.

The issue nicely mixes action–zombie action no less–with a more traditional Holmes investigation (even if it is Holmes in the field instead of consulting) and it’s a fine read. My developing concerns are few and the issue only really bothered me when it came to some of Fabbri’s artistic choices.

For example, he draws Watson as a white-haired, mustached young man. Both he and Holmes are young and hip looking (as hip looking as possible) instead of being either faithfully portrayed (based on the Sidney Paget standard) or revisionist. It’s like Sherlock Holmes as a young adult novel series character. It’s a little goofy.

But he’s otherwise fine. A little too steampunk perhaps.

The cynic in me has to wonder if this series got the greenlight because of the recent Sherlock Holmes movie. It’s a fantastic concept, Sherlock Holmes vs. zombies (each cover features an reminder of it no less), but it doesn’t seem like a Wildstorm book… though I can never figure out their publishing mentality.

The art, from Davide Fabbri, is a lot cleaner than I was expecting. The covers suggest a certain Victorian icky zombie thing, but Fabbri’s artwork is, well, it’s Wildstorm clean. Holmes and Watson are so generically portrayed, I wouldn’t have been able to pick them out.

Luckily, Edginton’s script is strong in its portrayal of the two. I’m not sure about his overly complicated history of the zombies in Victorian London, which is only hinted at here, not even fully explained, and already I feel like he’s spent too much time on it.

But good stuff.