Comic creators can’t leave Dead Boy Detectives, and the TV world has finally noticed
As a story about stories, it’s no wonder it’s by Neil Gaiman The sandman would have a number of characters that other creators would want to pick up and play with. Sandman spin-off comics have starred Dream’s sister Death, the strange inhabitants of the Dreaming and even Lucifer himself, leading to the cult success of an entire Match TV series years before a Netflix series adapted The sandman yourself.
The one from Netflix Dead boy detectives plows the same path. Since they first appeared on the pages of The sandman, comics creators are drawn to the eventful lives of Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine. These ghostly sleuths may not be the greatest Sandman characters, but who could resist the pitch? “He’s a 70-year-old ghost boy, and he’s a modern ghost boy. They solve ghost mysteries!” Not Netflix, is the answer.
So with season 2 of The sandman currently in production, here’s how Dead boy detectives is in line with Netflix’s expansion Sandman universe.
Who are the Dead Boy Detectives anyway?
Image: Toby Litt, Mark Buckingham/DC Comics
The Dead Boy Detectives are Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine, two ghost boys who died 70 years apart in the same terrible British boarding school. When Charles died in a 1991 edition of The sandmanhe and Edwin united and refused to go to their afterlife.
They spend their eternal ghostly existence opening the Dead Boy Detective Agency, where they solve mysteries for other ghosts and whatever mortals can see them – and do their best to avoid the attention of (the frankly very friendly and not scary at all) death of the Endless so she doesn’t force them to move on.
How does all this relate to Sandman?
Charles and Edwin first appeared in a 1991 series The sandman, in which Lucifer abdicates his position, throws open the gates of Hell and leaves the realm without a ruler. This has major consequences for Dream, but Charles and Edwin show up to illustrate the consequences on Earth. Now that the gates of hell are open, the souls of the damned are wandering back to the places they ‘haunted’ in their lives – and Charles is the only living person at his boarding school during the winter holidays, while the staff has been chased away by various means . of horrible ghost bullies and teachers.
However, there is one kind ghost: a boy about his age named Edwin. In 1914, Edwin’s classmates murdered him in an attempted satanic ritual, and hid his bones in the school’s attic. He has spent the last seventy years in a nightmare world. Charles eventually dies of exposure in that attic, and when he and Edwin refuse to go to their afterlife, Death – who is terribly busy with all these escaped ghosts, not to mention the recently deceased with nowhere to go – has no time for arguments.
Neil Gaiman showed the boys running their own detective agency in the 1993 Vertigo crossover The Children’s Crusade. From there, every five to ten years in 2001, someone returned to the Dead Boy Detectives’ well (The Sandman Presents: The Dead Boy Detectives), 2005 (The Dead Boy’s Detectives), 2014 (The Dead Boy’s Detectives), and 2023 (The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives). Charles, Edwin and their spooky mysteries are just too charming to be left alone for long.
I don’t remember any of that in Netflix’s Sandman?
Photo: Laurence Cendrowicz/Netflix
That’s because it hasn’t happened yet on the TV show!
You may remember Gwendoline Christie’s turn as Lucifer, in which she and Tom Sturridge’s Dream competed in a storytelling game for the information he wanted, and he soundly defeated Lucifer. And you may remember that the end of the season teased Lucifer’s impending revenge.
Like Netflix The sandman follows the events of the Sandman comics, we’ll get to see that revenge once the show returns. Lucifer will close up shop in Hell and “gift” the keys to Dream, making him the target of a dozen powerful figures from myth, religion, folklore, and the cosmos, who want the valuable metaphysical real estate that holds the keys to the represent hell.
You could say that Dead boy detectives has moved forward in Netflix’s plot The sandman series – but it was actually an accident during television production. Dead boy detectives was not originally planned as one Sandman not a spin-off at all, but as a series on Warner Bros.’ Max streaming platform, as a follow-up to the also DC/Vertigo-inspired Doom Patrol.
But in 2023, possibly because it did not fit properly with Warner Bros.’ changing plans for its DC-based projects, D.B.D was released from its obligations and purchased by Netflix. Shortly afterwards, Gaiman announced that the show would be considered part of the same canon as Netflix’s The sandman.
How are the Dead Boy Detectives and Sandman shows connected?
Image: Netflix
Even Dead boy detectives wasn’t originally built to fit Netflix The sandman, now it is. Gaiman came on board as executive producer, and there’s more than one cameo from a Sandman actor, most notably Kirby Howell-Baptiste who reprises her role as Death.
(Ed. remark: The rest of this piece contains some mild spoilers for Dead boy detectives.)
Dead boy detectives season 1 hits the Sandman TV Show Lights – Charles and Edwin meet under much the same circumstances as in the comics, but there is no mention of Lucifer, or a school full of damned ghosts. However, the show tantalizingly leaves the door open for more Sandman characters like D.B.D is getting a season 2, with a brief appearance by Death’s little sister, Despair, played by Donna Preston.
Among her endless cohort, Despair is objectively the least used in the comics, and it’s no wonder; it’s just a challenge to make a fun story about despair. But after watching the first season of Dead boy detectivesI’m more than willing to see the show try – the only thing we really know about Despair, aside from the basics, is that in all time she is the only one of the Endless to have died and taken on a new aspect (i.e. say, until..well, that’s a big spoiler for The sandman). Suffice to say, there are many places to explain its character and history.
And who knows! Of Dead boy detectives as a Netflix series, Jayden Revri and George Rexstrew could even return to play Charles and Edwin The sandman season 2. But we’ll have to keep waiting to see that one, as the next episode of Gaiman’s comic is still currently filming.