A review by nigellicus
Dead Boy Detectives, Volume 1: Schoolboy Terrors by Víctor Santos, Mark Buckingham, Russ Braun, Andrew Pepoy, Gary Erskine, Toby Litt

5.0

Ed Brubaker and Bryan Talbot, two creators I respect loads, had a fist at a Dead Boy Detective miniseries, and it didn't really work. It's pretty hard to replicate the charm Neil Gaiman brought to Edwin and Charles in their introduction in one of the best issues of his Sandman run, an interlude in the middle of Season Of Mists when the souls released by Lucifer have all returned to Earth and Death is running around trying to round them up. Getting their voices right is probably impossible if you're not Neil Gaiman. Toby Litt doesn't quite manage it - the prelude adventure here is a bit weak and not very promising. The series proper kicks off, however, with the introduction of Crystal Palace, a cutting-edge contemporary personality, privileged daughter of self-obsessed performance-artist Mum and ex-rock star Dad who is welded to her phone and computer as well as engaged in a big online game and the subject of media scrutiny - an enfant terrible in the making. With Edwin haling from 1916 and Charles from 1990, the addition of a child of the new century is entirely appropriate and she works as a foil to their terrible innocence.

After a performance art stunt goes wrong, Edwin and Charles rescue Crystal, but her glimpse of the supernatural sends her to enroll in their old school where very evil doings are afoot, and old school bullies and new stalk the dorms. By this time, Litt has stamped his own mark on the series and made it his own, you stop comparing the boys' voices in this series to their voices as written by Gaiman, and with typically lovely Mark Buckingham art it turns into a wonderful modern supernatural adventure.