Sunday Spotlight - Dead Boy Detectives

Originally from the pages of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the Dead Boy Detectives have previously had graphic novels written about them, and also appeared in the massive crossover Vertigo had, before they decided not to do those any more. Now, Edwin and Charles, the Dead Boy Detectives, have their own on-going series that has recently been released in trade paperback.



Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland are dead. They both died at the boarding school St. Hilarion's – Edwin in 1916 and Charles in 1990. However, Death was a little busy at the time, and so both boys lingered on, travelling the world as ghosts. To occupy their time, they formed a detective agency – the Dead Boy Detectives. Sometimes they find missing cats, sometimes lost objects. But now they've stumbled onto a much bigger case – they foiled a daring art theft and managed to save Crystal Palace, the teenaged daughter of two prominent celebrity artists. Unfortunately, Crystal saw them and realises that they must be ghosts (she's quite taken with the idea, in fact). She decides to head to St. Hilarion's to investigate further. Edwin and Charles follow, well aware of the horrors that lurk in St. Hilarion's halls, since those are what killed the boys so many years before. Now, they must try to protect Crystal – and possibly discover the truth about their own deaths along the way.

I'll admit to being a fan of the concept of the Dead Boy Detectives since I first saw them in Sandman. Two ghostly boys meandering through the afterlife and solving crimes? It's the Hardy Boys with ectoplasm! When I learned that the artist would be Mark Buckingham, I was sold on the new series. I love Buckingham work on Fables, and he brings the same level of quality to this book too. He melds the fantastic and the mundane superbly, making him a great choice to bring Toby Litt's story to life. Speaking of the story, it has a great mix of “boy's own adventure” coupled with some really dark horror themes that work well with the shared universe of Sandman. Edwin, Charles and Crystal don't bother disbelieving that the spirits, demons and magic they face is real – it's clearly real, so they better just get on with it. The adventures themselves follow the classic children's adventures; they're almost Enid Blyton, sometimes, but with a heavy dose of visceral horror.

This isn't a book for everyone. Sandman fans might find it too light, and younger fans could find the horror aspects a little too frightening – there's a couple of sequences of Edwin and Charles returning to their dead bodies that have been illustrated in beautiful detail by Buckingham, but that makes them incredibly confronting. It works wonderfully as a nostalgia-filled adventure, but I think the main appeal will be to those in their mid-teens, around the same age as the characters. The story develops nicely and introduces some good friendship drama along with the mysteries (ghostly and otherwise) that the characters must solve. It's definitely a series that I'm going to keep reading.

Dead Boy Detectives is available now.

Dead Boy Detectives vol. 1: Schoolboy Terrors – 9781401248895 - $16.99 – 160 pages

Wednesday Weirdness - Saucer Country

Wednesday Weirdness is the day when we remember that sometimes, comics are just downright WEIRD! We take individual panels and present them out of context. If you’ve got a panel you’d like to submit, you can do so here.


Saucer Country #4, 2012, Paul Cornell (writer), Ryan Kelly (artist)

Sunday Spotlight - Pick of the Month: Hinterkind

I think that given the massive success of The Hunger Games franchise, we can assume that the Young Adult dystopia genre is here to stay. Comics have jumped on this trend with titles like Avengers Arena and Attack on Titan (although that's a little different) but there's a new series out from Vertigo that I think suits the concept a really well. It's my Pick of the Month – Hinterkind!

Humanity has lost. After a plague wiped out most of humankind, nature reclaimed the land. The few humans that had not died were forced to re-learn survival skills in this new wilderness, where cities had been overgrown and wild beasts run wild. But not just beasts lurk in the dark places of the world. The Hinterkind have returned – the elves, the satyrs, the goblins, the ogres; all the things that humans had forgotten ever existed. Now their oppressors are dead, they have come back to claim the world that once drove them out.

Prosper Monday, teenage girl and one of the few pure human survivors living in what was once Central Park, sets out from the safety of her village in search of her grandfather. He left to find and give aid to another pocket of survivors but even if she finds him, there are other things afoot. The Hinterkind have their own intrigues in the works, and there's a price on the head of any pure human found. Prosper discovers quickly that she is the one being hunted and must face some of the harsh realities about what humans must do to survive in this brave new world.

The best way to describe this series by Ian Edginton is a mix of survival/adventure and fantasy. Much like 'Revolution' from NBC, technology for most humans is at a pre-industrial level. This follows the standard fantasy formula, but seeing an elf bounty hunter draw her sawn-off shotgun gives the series a whole new look. Edginton has written a few steampunk and alternate history comics before like Victorian Undead, that combined Sherlock Holmes and zombies because why not? The concept that Edginton has developed is a solid one – there are a number of urban fantasy series that use the idea that magic and fairies never really went away. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Charlaine Harris's 'True Blood' are probably the best known, but Edginton took it a step further. Instead of 'peaceful' coexistence in the everyday world, Hinterkind takes place in the ruins of our civilization, and makes us question what actually gives humans the right to rule the world in the first place.

Like many of the other series being released from Vertigo this year, Hinterkind has a strong premise which should appeal to a wide group. Like fantasy? It's got that. Like action? There's loads. A strong female protagonist who must make tough decision and stay true to herself? Check. Intrigue and mysteries? Yup, that too. It's a fantastic book for people who might feel daunted (or just plain not interested) in the superhero comics – and I can understand why. Superhero comics are the most common out there (although that's starting to change) but they certainly aren't for everyone. Hinterkind could easily have been written as a novel instead, but making it a comic gives an opportunity to showcase some amazing art and introduce comics to a whole new readership. With memorable characters (that can easily die at the drop of a hat), you'll really get invested in Hinterkind's story.

Volume 1 is available now.

Hinterkind vol. 1: The Waking World – 9781401245184 – Ian Edginton, Fransesco Trifogli - $19.99 – 144 pages