The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives
Pornsak Pichetshote, writer; Jeff Stokely & Javier Rodríguez, pencillers; Craig Taillefer, Jeff Stokely & Javier Rodríguez, inkers; Miguel Muerto & Javier Rodríguez, colorists
DC Black Label, 2023
When last seen, the Dead Boy Detectives had a 2014 Vertigo ongoing series that ran for 12 issues. There were some new additions in that series, such as the existence of a ghost realm and the founding of the detective agency Rowland, Crystal & Paine ("No Case Too Weird"). No problem for new readers, though: this miniseries largely starts from scratch, back to the original dead boys Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine; there is even a brief retelling of their origin story. The boys are in California, visiting from London.
The case is a search for a missing neighbor girl named Jai (payment is to be a rare foil Magic: The Gathering card). They immediately find her at the Thai temple she visits every weekend, only to be attacked by a serpent ghost. It turns out that the Thai kids are fellow ghosts, but Thai culture believes in hundreds of different types of ghosts. Melvin (the kid who attacked Charles) is a Snake Ghost, while Jai is a Hollow-Backed Ghost. This is all explained to them by a ghost doctor, who also says that Thai kids who die in L.A. should be coming back as Western ghosts, not Thai ghosts: so something is wrong.
There finally is a callback to the previous series: the reason the boys are in L.A. is because their old partner Crystal Palace has moved there with her parents, and she and Charles had become fond of each other. The ancient witch Thessaly is also involved, having been captured by a bunch of kumanthongs ("little golden boys") who were created by necromancy. It turns out that the whole situation was caused by a Thai who tried to raise his dead daughter, but summoned Thai ghosts instead. He also managed to trap Thessaly in a magic circle, so not bad for an amateur.
The boys put themselves in Thessaly's hands and released her. She had been working on a huge spell all along and had expected them to be sacrificed in the process, but somehow everyone survived. The final panel says that Thessaly's trail will continue in the second Nightmare Country series, so that is something to look forward to. In the end, this story did tie back to the larger Sandman Univers in surprising ways. The Thai ghosts were a new element, which provided the artists an opportunity for some really horrifying visuals. In the less intense scenes, they did a good job portraying the YA ghosts as cute and innocent, despite all of the strange things they have been through.
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I have never branched out into the Sandman Universe myself. When the TV series was on I started to re-reading the comic book from the beginning, but took a break after "World's End" and have yet to resume. I really need to get back to that one of these days. Maybe when (if?) Sandman comes back to TV that will inspire me.
Maybe. I liked the TV series a lot. While working on this review I discovered that there is an upcoming Dead Boy Detectives series coming soon.