Thread by @textfiles

You can't really comprehend the full depth of this until you visit the Doyle Estate site

https://twitter.com/Sane_Intolerant/status/1384892764630958082

Imagine you control a file folder and you tell the photographer to style your family as if you run an international spy network

conandoyleestate.com/the-family

"STEP GREAT GRANDSON"

But let us not focus on the negative. Let's tell a funny story.

So, in the height of Sherlock Holmes being popular as an ongoing property (i.e. new stories being written, they're popular, etc.) this French publisher starts translating them into French and publishing them.

This goes along fine for a while, there's a pretty long history of that sort of thing (translate a work into a new language, in a country the original work isn't published in, reap the rewards), as well as a history of the rights being sold in that country and then lawsuits.

So that's what happened here - Sherlock Holmes starts getting published for real in France, and that first bootlegging/translating publisher has to stop.

But that's good money! So they hire a writer to write NEW Sherlock-y stories with a total French aspect to them.

That writer says "Nah, instead of a detective, I'll make him a thief. But still with a heart of gold trying to solve crimes, but often he's doing crimes too. And he's a also a superhero, but you can never quite trust him."

Hence: Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar.

In fact, LeBlanc (the author) actually creates a detective character in it that Lupin constantly outwits! And his name:

HEMLOCK SHEARS.

In the 1960s, Kazuhiko Katō (Monkey Punch) works on a manga about a thief who commits crimes, womanizes, also solves crimes. He is, it is claimed, the grandson of Arsene Lupin. Hence:

Lupin III