Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXXIV: Dead Boy Detectives: Ghost Snow

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2014-15)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2016

Dead Boy Detectives, Volume 2: Ghost Snow

Writer – story: Toby Litt

Penciller – layouts – story: Mark Buckingham
Finishers: Ryan Kelly, Al Davison, Emma Vieceli, Victor Santos
Colorist: Lee Loughridge

Letterer: Todd Klein

The second (or fourth, depending on how you count) and final volume of Dead Boy Detectives pays off some plot threads left dangling from the previous volume. Dead boy Charles Rowland meets the half-sister he never knew he had, a Buddhist monk with a rationalist daughter. His sister tells him his father may have directly caused the dead of his mother, so it's up to the Dead Boy Detectives to investigate with the help of new friend Crystal Palace. At the same time, Crystal's comatose childhood friend Rosa is trapped in the dimension of the half-dead, the Neitherlands, along with another one of her friends, Hana, where a mysterious power is amassing to invade our reality. But Rosa's parents are read to pull the plug on her life support, which could doom both her and the universe.

There's a lot going on in this book, apparently.
from Dead Boy Detectives #8 (art by Mark Buckingham & Ryan Kelly)

I kind of like this set-up for the Dead Boy Detectives. Crystal Palace is great, as is Charles's skeptical rationalist niece, and the two cats that are each half a philosopher are fun. I'm less into the Buddhist sister, though at least Litt stops her from being a serene cliche. But I'd rather see the dead boys out in the world solving supernatural mysteries, not plunging the depths of their own backstories: I don't think we gain anything from Charles's family being anything other than an ordinary human family. Their deaths should have been an entry point into a weird world after banal yet horrifying lives, and involving Charles's family so much with ghosts and murder plots and mystical meditations undercuts that; it's like how Steven Moffat Doctor Who companions all have these complicated backstories where they're splintered across time or grow up near cracks in reality when Russell T Davies showed us all they really need is a life boring enough to want to leave it behind. This is a good set-up, but it's only being used to generate insular stories.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXXI: Free Country: A Tale of the Children's Crusade

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 1993-2015)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2016

Free Country: A Tale of the Children's Crusade

Writers: Neil Gaiman, Toby Litt, Rachel Pollack, Alisa Kwitney & Jamie Delano

Artists: Chris Bachalo, Mike Barreiro, Peter Gross, Al Davison & Peter Snejbjerg
Colorists: Daniel Vozzo & Jeanne McGee

Letterers: John Costanza & Todd Klein

It's probably impossible to discuss this book without discussing its means of production. Though it would be interesting to discuss it as a purely standalone book, its strange genesis will always influence anything you can write about. The Children's Crusade was a 1993-94 "annual" crossover, by which I mean a crossover through annuals of ongoing series (like Eclipso: The Darkness Within or Armageddon 2001), not a crossover that took place annually. It was Vertigo's first and last attempt at such a thing, spanning Black Orchid, The Books of Magic, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, and Doom Patrol. In addition to those five issues, it was bookended by issues featuring Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine, the so-called "Dead Boy Detectives" from The Sandman, which were (mostly) written by Neil Gaiman. The crossover has never been collected, I guess because the middle parts didn't make a lot of sense on their own, and didn't connect into the last issue in the way they were supposed to. But because printing Neil Gaiman is like printing money, DC has finally collected the bookends he wrote, commissioning a new middle chapter by writer Toby Litt and artist Peter Gross to bridge the gap between the two Gaiman-penned issues, covering all the ground needed to get you from The Children's Crusade issue #1 to issue #2. Litt and Gross also add extra pages to the closing issue, I guess to clarify or expand rushed aspects of it.

I actually meant to scan a different sequence of panels on the facing page, but I messed up and I'm too lazy to redo it, so this'll have to do.
from The Children's Crusade #1 (script by Neil Gaiman, art by Chris Bachalo & Mike Barreiro)

The opening issue is Neil Gaiman at his most typical and his best, aided by Chris Bachalo and Mark Barreiro on art. Charles and Edwin, the two boarding-school ghosts who eluded Death in Season of Mists, have set up a detective agency, finally answering a long-standing point of bafflement for me. Their first case is brought to them by a girl whose brother has vanished, along with every other child in their village, plus a huge number of children the world over. In typical Gaiman fashion, though, their investigations (such as they are; they're delightfully poor detectives) are interspersed with tales of lost or missing children from throughout history: a chronicle of the Children's Crusade, a boy telling the Victorian poet Robert Browning about the Pied Piper's visit to the town of St. Cecile, and a very grim story of how a group of children trapped in a pit managed to escape.

Review: Doctor Who: Final Sacrifice by Tony Lee, Matthew Dow Smith, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, 138 pages
Published 2011 (contents: 2010)
Acquired May 2014
Read July 2014

Doctor Who, Volume 3: Final Sacrifice

Story by Tony Lee, Jonathan L. Davis, Matthew Dow Smith, and Al Davison

Art by Matthew Dow Smith, Kelly Yates, and Al Davison
Colors by Charlie Kirchoff, Phil Elliott, and Al Davison
Lettering by Robbie Robbins & Neil Uyetake

I guess if you cared about Lee's original companions, you'd care about this book, but I don't and I don't. The situation here is contrived by a seemingly-omnipotent and poorly-motivated enemy, solely to teach the Doctor some kind of lesson that I don't really understand the purpose of. The end piles on crazy revelation after crazy revelation. Plus Torchwood is in this, which I guess is good for you if you like "The Time Machination" (I didn't) or if you thought what this story needed were a group of pointless characters to stand around.

There are some short stories in the back, which are decent: some are better in concept than execution, but I like the art in all three (and in the main story, too, actually; Matthew Dow Smith is great at capturing likeness but keeping it stylized). There's a lovely moment where the tenth Doctor dreams of the eleventh.

Review: Doctor Who: Tesseract by Tony Lee, Al Davison, & Blair Shedd

Comic PDF eBook, 134 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009-10)
Acquired May 2014
Read July 2014

Doctor Who, Volume 2: Tesseract

Written by Tony Lee

Art by Al Davison & Blair Shedd
Colors by Lovern Kindzierski & Charlie Kirchoff
Lettering by Neil Uyetake & Robbie Robbins

What's with the dreary covers on these collections? Anyway, it was a preview of the first issue collected here that back in the day convinced me I was right about my decision to skip the IDW ongoing. And on reading it in context, it's still awful. Though Al Davison's art in Fugitive was good, his characters are just ugly here, especially his David Tennant and his Matthew (even though he invented Matthew's appearance!). The dialogue is unnatural and awkward, and there are random, forced continuity references.

So, Tesseract completely squanders all the potential I saw being built up in Fugitive. We find out what the deal of the Shadow Advocate is, but it's just not satisfying: when Finch killed her, she was actually flung back into the Time War and she witnessed its final moments over and over again before escaping. Having seen what the Doctor did, she wants to kill him. But the only reason she got flung into the Time War is because after she escaped, she told Finch to send her back! Predestination paradoxes can sometimes drain the drama out of situations, and this is one of those cases: a writer can make a character do anything, no matter how implausible, on the pretext that they had to do it to maintain the loop. And though I kinda like the idea that someone seeing the Doctor use the Moment to wipe out the Time Lords and the Daleks would conclude that he's too dangerous to have around (the Doctor himself reaches that conclusion in "The Parting of the Ways," after all), she just acts like a generic scheming villain, using complicated plots to ensnare the Doctor for no readily apparent reason when she could just kill him multiple times. Also the plot requires a number of people who should know better (like UNIT) to trust the Shadow Advocate against all reason. What is it with the unlikeability of the new-series UNIT commanders? Until Kate Stewart, the show (and its spin-offs) seemed intent on giving us a series of assholes.

The new companions are not great, either. I liked them all right in Fugitive, but Tony Lee can't write them as people to save his life. I get what he's trying to do, but it doesn't work because it lacks all subtlety; Emily is all "I NEED A GUN TO FEEL SAFE" and Matthew is "I DON'T TRUST THE DOCTOR BECAUSE A WOMAN I JUST MET TOLD ME NOT TO." Why does Matthew listen to the Shadow Advocate? Who knows. The Doctor points out that the flaws in her story indicate she's manipulating him, and he basically goes, "She might be a manipulator, but she learned it from you, even though the only person who told me that was her, who we just established as an untrustworthy liar." I can't bring myself to care about either of these characters because there's nothing likeable or interesting about them. Also, Lee seems to keep forgetting they're from the 1920s, as Matthew explains he was too busy to read The Lord of the Rings (and not, perhaps, too from-the-past), and Emily does the "the TARDIS doesn't look like a proper spaceship" bit seemingly obligatory for new-series companions, but I'm not sure really makes sense for someone from the 1920s.

I haven't even talked about the stories here, but I didn't really like either of them. "Tesseract" is flimsy while "Don't Step on the Grass" is just an overcrowded mess of elements that don't work together.

Review: Doctor Who: Fugitive by Tony Lee, Al Davison, and Matthew Dow Smith

Comic PDF eBook, 134 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009)
Acquired May 2014
Read June 2014

Doctor Who, Volume One: Fugitive

Written by Tony Lee

Art by Al Davison and Matthew Dow Smith
Colors by Lovern Kindzierski and Charlie Kirchoff
Letters by Chris Mowry, Robbie Robbins, and Neil Uyetake

The tenth Doctor's comic book adventures continue-- like The Forgotten, this seems to be set somewhere between "Journey's End" and "The Waters of Mars." It's comprised of two stories. The first, "Silver Scream," sees the Doctor meeting Archie Maplin (ugh) in 1920s Hollywood, only there's a dastardly plot afoot to drain hopes and dreams from aspiring actresses (of course there is). This is a decent runaround, and Tony Lee does a good job of capturing the voice of the tenth Doctor. The real highlight is the way that Lee and artist Al Davison create some arresting images: the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 1 is divine, and its reprisal is a cool reversal. Then, there's a section done in the style of silent film-- you could only do this in comics! And it's hilarious. One of the two bad guys seems to be dealt with off-panel, but otherwise I enjoyed this.

"Fugitive" is the kind of story I expected to roll my eyes at: the Doctor is captured by the Shadow Proclamation (from "The Stolen Earth") and put on trial, with Brother Lassar a.k.a. Mr. Finch (from "School Reunion") as the prosecutor, and he ends up on a Judoon spaceship (from "Smith and Jones") on the way to the prison world of Volag Noc (from "The Infinite Quest") with a Sontaran, an Ogron, and a Draconian (the events of Frontier in Space are referenced a lot).* But it actually really worked! I don't really see why Finch was necessary, but the rest of the elements come together nicely-- when the Doctor ends up on the run with his fellow prisoners, there's a lot of fun to be had to with the interactions between the four different prisoners, as they move from one deadly situation to another. And the Doctor is made to think about the repercussions of his actions in Frontier in Space in a way that actually ties in nicely with the kind of contemplation the tenth Doctor seemed to be doing late in his life. I wasn't really into Matthew Dow Smith's art at first, as his style is very distinctive, but I soon grew to appreciate it-- he's great at doing action while still capturing the characters, which is a too-rare skill in tie-in comics. All in all, this collection bodes well for IDW's Doctor Who output.

* There's even a Charley Pollard reference, which is maybe completely gratuitous (it would perhaps be less so if it was clear what the Doctor was actually on trial for), but I love Charley so I don't care.