Captain America and Sherlock Holmes Inspire Doll Man #42, at Auction

Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: quality comics, reed crandall, william woolfolk

Captain America and Sherlock Holmes Inspire Doll Man #42, at Auction

A 1951 Sherlock Holmes exhibit and a 1946 issue of Captain America inspired the weird tale of the Mind Monster in Doll Man #42.

Two American tourists stop a London policeman to ask the way to Sherlock Holmes’s home. They’ve got the number wrong, asking for “22 Baker Street,” but what interests novelist Hubert Perrin in Doll Man #42 is that they believed the place was real. Arthur Conan Doyle created a detective so convincing that readers actually want to seek out where he lived. Back in America, Perrin picks out a deserted house at 313 Bleak Street and gives his own fictional villain, Kain, that address. The character becomes a hit, and before long, there’s a whole crowd and a television crew outside waiting for him to come out.

From Baker Street to the Mind-Monster

This appears to have been inspired by more than just the idle curiosity of dedicated fans. During the 1951 Festival of Britain, visitors to Baker Street could see Holmes and Watson’s sitting room reconstructed at Abbey House. The local public libraries committee even issued an exhibition catalog. By May 1952 the display had reached New York City, where arrangements were being made to show it complete with an actor to play Sherlock Holmes. Judging by the amount of media coverage it got, the exhibit must have been quite a success.

The belief that Holmes was real had already figured in another comic-book monster’s origin, which seems to have inspired this story. In “The Case of the Telepathic Typewriter!” in Captain America Comics #52, cover-dated January 1946, a radio writer creates a character named Am who becomes “as real as Sherlock Holmes” to his listeners. When millions of listeners focus on Am during a broadcast, he becomes real and actually walks out from behind the studio curtains. The writer discovers that Am obeys commands typed on the typewriter that created his scripts. Captain America is no match for this creature created by the minds of millions of fans. He is only stopped when a reporter types “AM DIES!” on the typewriter that created him.

Doll Man’s “The Mind-Monster!” takes a very similar course. After Perrin’s novel creates a sensation followed by media coverage, the television audience can see the front door at 313 Bleak Street. When Kain materializes, one of the first things he does is smash the camera equipment, on orders from Perrin’s typewriter. Doll Man thinks the viewers’ concentrated brain waves brought Kain to life. This is perhaps not unusual for a hero whose own powers are manifested by willpower. Perrin quickly becomes interested in what his now-real villain can be made to do, creating chaos that ends the same way as the previous Captain America Comics story did.

GCD credits the art to Art Gates and script to Bill Woolfolk. Reed Crandall‘s cover features the Mind-Monster near the rural home Perrin bought for him. There are only three copies graded higher than this CGC 7.5. For Crandall’s cover and a Pre-Code horror story that starts on Baker Street, there’s a Doll Man #42 (Quality, 1952) CGC VF- 7.5 with off-white to white pages up for auction at the November 5, 2026 Golden Age Century Comics Showcase Auction VI #40378.

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