This is not a trivial graphic novel. It's of relatively typical size, collating eight issues of a Vertigo comic book series published between 2014 and 2015. However, its story, or perhaps we should go with its theme, is split up across four different timelines. To help us to distinguish them, writer Si Spencer assigned a different artist to each. While the colorist, Lee Loughridge, handled that job throughout, he brought very different colour palettes to each of the timelines. It's not hard to keep track of who's who and when's when.

It's a lot harder to figure out Spencer's goals and it may well be that everything's in the theme rather than the story and perhaps the story doesn't matter at all. The ending, rather ironically, if it's what I think it is, may be something of a damp squib. It certainly doesn't wrap things up in a nice neat bow and it may be that it has no intention to. So let's start with the basics and see if they gradually focus in on what we're supposed to see.

The first commonality is the place. We're in London for each timeline, specifically in an area of the East End where police discover a body in Longharvest Lane. It's a murder victim who's been damaged in specific ways like losing an eye and having a sigil cut into his arm that looks like two Hs attached to each other, though there's no sign of violence at the scene. If it's two Hs, it has meaning with supporting characters, the Harker family historically using the same symbol as a monogram. I've seen it suggested that it stands for the double helix that contains our genetic code. While I didn't see that myself, it certainly fits.

While that body appears to be the same body in each timeline, the investigation into it is done by different detectives. In 1890, it's Inspector Edmond Hillinghead, a bright young man who's a notable fan of Sherlock Holmes, then still being published. He's dedicated and keen to adopt a number of recent forensic advances, like fingerprints. In 1940, it's Inspector Charles Whiteman, who escaped the Krakow ghetto for London at great cost. He's corrupt and highly protective of his territory. In 2014, it's DS Shahara Hasan, who's eager and diligent. In 2050, it's Maplewood, a young lady with such serious amnesia that it's hard to imagine how she's still functional.

Each of these characters faces an external threat, both on a personal and a societal level. Insp. Hillinghead is gay at a time when that was not socially acceptable and his department is busy trying to catch Jack the Ripper. Insp. Whiteman is fighting a territorial war with the Irish while also surviving through the Blitz, the Germans representing both a physical threat with bombs and an ideological one with fascism. DS Hasan is resisting the attentions of a superior and her city is struggling with race riots. Maplewood is presumably the way she is because of some sort of pulsewave that's caused a technological apocalypse.

All of these characters would appear to represent elements of society that aren't necessarily seen as compatible with the traditional British way of life, at least according to the prejudices that we witness. Insp. Hillinghead is gay. Insp. Whiteman is both Polish and Jewish. DS Hasan is Muslim. Maplewood, I presume, counts as mentally disabled, though we must assume that it's the product of the pulsewave. However, all of them have value to the nation and all count, in a legal sense, as British. DS Hasan is the epitome of this, because she battles so-called patriots who march for the purity of their country but she firmly believes herself to be far more British than they are. And who are we to say that she's wrong?

Gradually, we realise that the story really isn't about this well-built, muscular and thoroughly naked man who appears as if by magic on an East End street. It certainly seems to be initially because we're conditioned to see this as a mystery, a crime thriller with a solution to be found as to whodunit and hopefully why. Sherlock Holmes would figure it out. Will we before one or all of these detectives do? However, as we realise that this very particular double H symbol is showing up everywhere, from a Masonic hand signal to the design on a balloon in Whiteman's niece's dream, and we notice that dialogue, far more than a common refrain of "Know you are loved", is bleeding across each of these characters, we realise it's about them.

Eventually, a name starts to appear. The victim, previously anonymous, gains the name of John Bull, which has specific meaning in England. While John Bull is usually depicted as middle-aged and rather stout, the fan favourite character that Big Daddy adopted in professional wrestling, he's always a personification of England and everything that it stands for. I must assume then that the body or bodies aren't real, explaining why they disappear after a while and the victim shows up later confessing to his own murder or threatening to blow up the city or something a lot more obvious than just being dead.

If this is where Si Spencer was going, then the point is that they represent England at a crucial time when England is being assaulted, by a serial killer, a would be invader, a crisis from within and a technological assault, not to mention a whole slew of prejudices that were never part of John Bull's make up, however systematic they might have been at a particular point in time. It matters that England, or by extension, Great Britain or the United Kingdom, is being attacked and that the characters, however flawed, that care and want to stop it, are the true patriots, even if they happen to be gay, Jewish, Muslim or seriously mentally damaged.

And, if I've got this remotely right, then it has always applied, because there are details in the background of multiple timelines. In 1890, there's a painting, centuries old, of the body with its recognisable injuries and wrist carving, with the refrain of "So begins the long harvest" on it in Latin. Remember that the road the bodies are found in is Longharvest Lane. And in 2014, which is the contemporary timeline for readers of the original comic book series, there's a television show on air about a three-thousand-year-old murder mystery, the body of a man preserved in a bog who looks precisely like the bodies found. This suggests that times might change but what it means to be English, or British, doesn't. And it doesn't have anything to do with sexuality or religion or colour or mental stability.

Whew. So I think I've dissected this graphic novel enough, even though it really does invite us to do that. I have no doubt that Si Spencer wants us to dig deep and puzzle through it to find some sort of meaning, even if it's only for ourselves. I may not have come anywhere near what he had intended but I got somewhere and maybe that's enough.

I should also add here, before I wrap up, that this graphic novel was lent to me by a friend for a review and, reading the back cover blurb, I realised that I knew the story already, or at least a version of it. Sure enough, while I didn't know it at the time, this is what the 2023 Netflix show was based on. That was one that the better half found and watched and then insisted that I do the same and I wasn't unhappy that she did so. I now know that it's rooted in the same core of story, with the four timelines and four detectives and consistent body, but it doesn't end up in the same place, taking this away from theme and into story. Which certainly made it far more accessible and easy to understand.

I recommend both versions for different reasons. ~~ Hal C F Astell