James Moriarty

Few villains carry the weight of literary legend into the four-color world quite like James Moriarty, who made his Bronze Age comics debut in DC's Sherlock Holmes #1 in 1975, brought to the page by the sharp creative instincts of Denny O'Neil and E. R. Cruz — with Arthur Conan Doyle's towering source material as the foundation. Over a span reaching into the turn of the millennium, Moriarty's shadow fell across both Sherlock Holmes and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, placing him in extraordinarily rarefied company alongside the likes of Sherlock Holmes himself, Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, Wilhelmina Murray, and The Invisible Man. That roster alone tells you everything about the caliber of the fictional universe this character inhabits — a grand collision of Victorian imagination rendered in ink and color. For collectors drawn to the intersection of classic literature and comics history, even a modest three appearances makes Moriarty a figure of genuine intrigue.