Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (reading order here) led to the creation of multiple spin-offs, not all became as successful as Lucifer (reading order here). It was the case with The Dead Boy Detectives, two young sleuths that are also ghosts.
Created by Gaiman and artist Matt Wagner in Sandman #25, The Dead Boy Detectives are Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine. Edwin was murdered at his boarding school in 1916 and he went to Hell. But when Hell was emptied of its residents, Edwin and the souls of past teachers and pupils came back to the boarding school when Charles and a few teachers stayed for the holidays.
They didn’t survive and Charles became a ghost, like Edwin. The two boys decided to forego going to the afterlife with Death and became detectives investigating crimes involving the supernatural.
Dead Boy Detectives Reading Order:
Before exploring the previous editions of the Dead Boy Detectives collections, there is an omnibus collection to consider to read most of those stories:
- Dead Boy Detectives Omnibus
Collects The Dead Boy Detectives #1-12, Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives #1-4, The Sandman #25, The Children’s Crusade #1-2, Ghosts#1, The Witching Hour #1, Time Warp #1, Doom Patrol Annual #2, and Swamp Thing Annual #7.
If you wish, you can start by reading all of Sandman first, but you only need one book to start with The Dead Boy Detectives:
- The Sandman: Season of Mists
Collects The Sandman #21–28.
After that, The Dead Boy Detectives came back for Vertigo’s first and only crossover event which ran through all that year’s Vertigo annuals, Children’s Crusade. All of The Dead Boy Detectives‘s story is now collected in one book:
- Free Country: A Tale of The Children’s Crusade
Collects The Children’s Crusade #1 and The Children’s Crusade #2, written by Gaiman with cowriters Alisa Kwitney and Jamie Delano, and a brand-new middle chapter written by Dead Boy Detectives writer Toby Litt and drawn by artist Peter Gross
Then came some short stories, appearances, and miniseries:
- Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #3
- Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives
Collects Sandman Presents: The Dead Boy Detectives #1-4 by writer Ed Brubaker and penciler Bryan Talbot. - Death: At Death’s Door
A manga-style graphic novel, written and illustrated by Jill Thompson, showcasing Death’s activities during Season of Mists. - Dead Boy Detectives
A manga-style graphic novel, written and illustrated by Jill Thompson and spin-off/sequel to Death: At Death’s Door.
In 2012, Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine came back with the Vertigo Anthology series for a trio of one-shots titled: Ghosts, Time Warp, and The Witching Hour. That and the publication of the new prequel The Sandman: Overture led Vertigo to publish the first Dead Boy Detectives ongoing series – written by Toby Litt and Mark Buckingham with art by Buckingham and Gary Erskine.
- Dead Boy Detectives by Toby Litt & Mark Buckingham
Collects Dead Boy Detectives #1-12, as well as the short stories “Run Ragged” from Witching Hour #1, Ghosts #1 and Time Warp #1.
Previously collected in:
- The Dead Boy Detectives Vol. 1: Schoolboy Terrors
Collects Dead Boy Detectives #1-6 And Stories From Time Warp #1, The Witching Hour #1, and Ghosts# 1. - The Dead Boy Detectives Vol. 2: Ghost Snow
Collects Dead Boy Detectives #7-12.
The Dead Boy Detectives are back. There’s even a TV show that is supposed to come one day, following an apparition of the characters in the Doom Patrol TV adaptation. In the meantime, as part of the revived line “The Sandman Universe,” Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine began a new investigation into a Thai American girl’s disappearance from her Los Angeles home that puts them on a collision course with new and terrifying ghosts that could give even a dead boy nightmares—including a bloodthirsty krasue.
- The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives
Collects The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives #1-6.