in theatres, the character of Basil of Baker Street's antagonist left me puzzled. Holmes and Watson had very clear analogues in the humanized mouse characters Basil and Dr. Dawson. There is also an analogue of Mrs. Hudson (okay, I didn't make of that at the time), and Basil's home resided directly beneath that of their human counterparts. When the villain Ratigan was introduced, however, it seemed rather obvious that he, too, was modeled on a character in the Holmes canon. Toby, the dog who belongs to Holmes in the same movie, actually does exist in the canon, in "The Sign of Four," in case you didn't know.
But Sherlock Holmes had no reoccurring nemesis--did he? I certainly had never heard of one. I'd known about Sherlock Holmes since I was a small child. I'd read "The Red-Headed League" in the eight grade. And my dad read me the whole of The Hound of the Baskervilles at around the same time. There was no so much a hint of any villain that would serve as the Joker to Holmes's Batman. Then, one evening when my dad was watching a Sherlock Holmes movie on PBS, he pointed out Porfessor Moriarty, who was a reoccurring villain in the Holmes canon. I knew at once I'd found Ratigan's counterpart!
The reason I'd never heard of Moriarty before is not hard to guess. The character is hardly mentioned throughout the entirety of canonical stories. He's well-known to most fans precisely because his role has been blown out of proportion in films and non-canonical tales. Moriarty is present in a major role in only "The Final Problem," and "The Valley of Fear," and only appears in person, and later clashes with Holmes, only in the former tales. Other than that, he's only referenced in scattering of other stories. How did he come to loom so large?
Moriarty was originally conceived as little more than a plot device to do away with Holmes. Sherlock Holmes was, famously, more wildly successful than his creator ever intended him to be. Doyle grew tired of even being referred to as "the creator of Sherlock Holmes," and would have preferred being referenced as author of, say, The White Company, or other novels barely known today. In inventing Moriarty as a device for ridding himself of Holmes's unwanted popularity, however, Doyle accomplished something else he obviously never anticipated: the prototype of the recurrant bad guy. Without Moriarty, would there be a Joker, a Lex Luthor, and the rest? Probably not. And just like his adversary, Moriarty refuses to stay dead.
One other thing: while Mouse Detective's Ratigan is a large, flamboyant, swaggering bully, it seems rather doubtful that Moriarty is that way, at least as Conan Doyle conceived of him. While there is relatively little canonical info on him, Moriarty himself seems like he would be more shadowy, more reserved, even soft-spoken, than Ratigan is. And while Basil indicates that Ratigan would commit any depravity, no matter how low, some authors, such as Anthony Horowitz, as I explained in the earlier post, portrayed the character more as "aberrant," or evil, but still possessing with a code of honor.
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