Comic digest, 124 pages Published 2005 Borrowed from the library Read October 2012 |
by Jill Thompson
The Dead Boy Detectives is the second solo outing for the two ghosts who previously appeared in The Sandman Presents: The Dead Boy Detectives-- yeah, that's not confusing at all. This volume sees Jill Thompson (of The Little Endless Storybook fame) take over for Ed Brubaker and Bryan Talbot, and convert the whole thing into a manga style. While Thompson's previous attempt at the manga-conversion in At Death's Door didn't really work for me, I ended up enjoying this one a lot.
The premise of two ghosts who only other kids can see is played for laughs, much as it ought to be I think, and this is only heightened by the manga-style hijinks: Charles and Edmund have to go undercover at an elite all-girl boarding school in Chicago to find a missing student. Wackiness is basically the order of the day, and that's just fine. Their fish-out-of-water status is utilized more than it was in Brubaker's story.
Thompson's art is also suitably cute, with the manga styling put to good use. Though I had difficulty distinguishing the female students from each other sometimes, I typically enjoyed it. I'd read more adventures of the Dead Boy Detectives if she wrote them, though after seven years that seems a bit unlikely.
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