Reprinted from Green Man Review.
The Dead Boy Detectives, which mixes a handful of characters from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series with characters pulled from history and a creepy murder mystery to boot, originally saw print as four individual issues back in 2001. The titular characters, Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland, first appeared in an early Sandman issue and have resurfaced in a couple of other Vertigo titles as well as this, their own mini-series. As might be inferred from the title, both Edwin and Charles are indeed dead — and detectives. Both have declined to follow Death to the afterlife, opting to spend an eternity watching movies and reading books, hoping to become top-notch detectives. This has left them in an odd sort of limbo, not alive, but not proper ghosts, really.
Enter the “damsel in distress,” punky homeless girl Marcia, who approaches the detectives (not realizing their true nature) to discover who’s killing her friends, leaving their desiccated bodies looking as if the victims have rapidly aged. She decides the pair are too juvenile to be of any help, and declines to hire them, opting to rely on her own skills. Edwin and Charles decide differently, and start investigating in their own haphazard manner.
This leads them to Mad Hettie, who repeat Vertigo readers will recognize from Sandman and Hellblazer. She teaches the boys a lesson in manners and sends them on their way to the subway tunnels where they find not just Marcia, but a dark, dangerous looking gentlemen who the threesome end up chasing and losing in a train station.
Though the boys also lose Marcia to the clutches of a cop, they find the mysterious man waiting in their tree house home, where he attempts to enlist their help by telling them what he knows of the killer. And it’s quite the tale. The boys are won over by his story and proceed to do his bidding, learning how to cast at least one powerful spell and really take advantage of their ghostly nature.
Unsurprisingly, given the boys’ bungling attempts earlier, things go very awry, and it falls on Mad Hettie to help set things straight (though Edwin holds his own, when the chips are down). But all’s well that ends well at the end of the story . . . excepting Charles’ mildly broken heart when he doesn’t win Marcia.
The Dead Boy Detectives, has some engaging side characters (Sandman‘s Hob Gadling joins Mad Hettie in putting in an appearance) and Edwin and Charles are amusing, if somewhat exasperating, as they bumble around. However, what could have been a solid mystery falls somewhat flat in the execution. Unfortunately, it’s immediately apparent to the readers — though obviously not to the somewhat dense boys — who the true villain of the story is, which makes the plot that follows somewhat frustrating. Better to keep readers guessing for a little while longer.
Imperfect, but still entertaining, The Dead Boy Detectives, is a pleasant enough trifle, but seems a minor addition to the Vertigo universe.
(Vertigo, 2008)
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