The Dead Boy Detectives
The Dead Boy Detectives, by Ed Brubaker, Bryan Talbot & Steve Leialoha, Vertigo/DC/Titan
TWO YOUNG boys dream of becoming detectives, and while others play make believe games re-enacting and inventing mysteries and looking for made-up-on-the-spot clues, Clive Rowland and Edwin Paine decide to do it for real.
The little matter that they decide to make their headquarters in a tree house adds to the charm of their age. The rather harder matter is that they happen to be ghosts means they’ll never grow up and are quite likely never going to develop the maturity to handle such grown-up matters, but then maybe it’s the sprite and spunk of youth that will eventually prove their worth.
This is a spin-off from DC’s popular The Sandman series and as with other such spin-offs they never stray too far from the original patent’s blueprint and tend towards having cameo appearances with other characters from that series too.
The plot: children are being killed in London Town, and it’s believed they’re being committed by someone who uses the children’s spirits to enhance his own longevity of life. Our Dead Boy Detectives’s first case is to find that immortal murderer.
To be frank it takes far too long for the lads to solve the mystery – while we can appreciate that wee lads might not cotton on to things, adult readers (who most of Vertigo’s titles are) will have and it tends to become tiresome waiting for the story to resolve itself. This is the problem with fitting into the required 4 issue mini-series favoured by popular US comics, from which this collection originated.
There are some nice character pieces and observations, although at times it feels like a Gaiman-lite event rather than allowing Brubaker’s own credible voice to be heard, and while Talbot and Leialoha are talented artists in their own right and rarely do a bad job artistically this again remains in the Vertigo-style and offers little surprises. A pleasant collection, a fair read, but not a must purchase.
Sponsored by Target Media.
