Detective novel

A chained person in the cellar, a car with a trailer resembling a baby carriage (later to roll down the Odessa steps in "The Battleship Potemkin"), a scary old man with a beard like Grigory Rasputin’s, blood and corpses… The sketches for this comic strip, a detective story in Gothic settings, reflect Eisenstein’s interest in pulp fiction novels about the gentleman-burglar Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc, and the mysterious criminal, a 'Genius of Evil,' Fântomas by Maurice Leblanc and Pierre Souvestre.