![]() Geary doesn't try to explain Holmes' behaviour through speculation but only mentions the known facts, few as they are. His "castle" burned down shortly after he was executed. He targeted mainly young women and estimates on his murders reach triple figures though he only admitted to 27 after he was caught. He then opened the doors to visitors coming to Chicago's World Fair that summer. This was due to the various rooms he wanted built: a hanging room, airtight rooms with gas injectors, secret rooms, a trapdoor in the bathroom leading to and from the basement, an enormous furnace, stairs that led to nowhere, rooms without windows, and a medieval style basement with stretching rack. He hired different companies to build different parts of his hotel with the overall scheme of the building known only to Holmes. ![]() H H Holmes scammed insurance companies to raise enough money to build his own hotel labelled by locals, "the castle". Told succinctly but thoroughly and always clearly, despite the often complicated situations Holmes created, Geary has written a highly engaging book on the man labelled as "America's first serial killer". This is the case of H H Holmes, the "Beast of Chicago". The stubbornly understated storytelling does have a certain obdurate charm, but I found myself gradually losing interest towards the story's end. The clinically detached narrative tone never allows the reader to get into the protagonist's head or truly empathize with his victims, though, and the result is a rather bewildering, neither historically nor psychologically rewarding reading experience. Still, the spotlight is on the macabre details of the protagonist's meticulously planned, increasingly deranged activities-an approach that makes The Beast of Chicago a more typical representative of the true-crime genre than Geary's other explorations of Victorian murder cases, and probably one of the more popular volumes of the series. To be sure, historical accuracy is as important to Geary here as ever, and the book's rigid visual style does a great job evoking the period's more traditional mindset and slower pace. Of all the Victorian Murder volumes I've read, this is the one most focused on the actual murder case, rather than its broader historical context. ![]() In 2007, they moved to the town of Carrizozo, New Mexico. He and his wife Deborah can be found every year at their table at San Diego’s Comic Con International. Rick has received the Inkpot Award from the San Diego Comic Convention (1980) and the Book and Magazine Illustration Award from the National Cartoonists Society (1994). The new series A Treasury of 20th Century Murder began in 2008 with “The Lindbergh Child.” His other historically-based graphic novels include Cravan, written with Mike Richardson, and J. His graphic novels include three adaptations for the Classics Illustrated, and the nine-volume series A Treasury of Victorian Murder for NBM Publishing. ![]() He was the artist for the new series of GUMBY Comics, written by Bob Burden, for which they received the 2007 Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Publication for a Younger Audience. His children’s comic “Society of Horrors” ran in Disney Adventures magazine. He has written and illustrated three children’s books based on The Mask for Dark Horse and two Spider-Man children's books for Marvel. His illustration work has also been seen in MAD, Spy, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and American Libraries. His early comic work has been collected in Housebound with Rick Geary from Fantagraphics Books.ĭuring a four-year stay in New York, his illustrations appeared regularly in The New York Times Book Review. His comic stories have also been published in Heavy Metal, Dark Horse Comics and the DC Comics/Paradox Press Big Books. He began work in comics in 1977 and was for thirteen years a contributor to the Funny Pages of National Lampoon. He worked as staff artist for two weekly papers in Wichita before moving to San Diego in 1975. He graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where his first cartoons were published in the University Daily Kansan. RICK GEARY was born in 1946 in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in Wichita, ![]()
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