I Reads You Review: THE SANDMAN PRESENTS: Deadboy Detectives #1

THE SANDMAN PRESENTS: DEADBOY DETECTIVES #1 (OF 4)
DC COMICS – @DCComics

STORY: Ed Brubaker
PENCILS: Bryan Talbot
INKS: Steve Leialoha
COLORS: Daniel Vozzo
LETTERS: Willie Schubert
EDITOR: Will Dennis
COVER: Dave McKean
32pp, Color, $2.50 U.S., $4.25 CAN (August 2001)

Suggested for mature readers

“The Secret of Immortality” “Part One”

The Sandman created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, and Mike Dringenberg

Dead Boy Detectives created by Neil Gaiman and artists Matt Wagner and Malcolm Jones III

Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland are “The Dead Boy Detectives.”  They are two DC Comics fictional characters that first appeared in The Sandman #25 (cover dated: April, 1991) and were created by writer Neil Gaiman and artists Matt Wagner and Malcolm Jones III.

Since that debut, the Dead Boy Detectives have appeared in a number of comic books published under DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint.  In fact, the Dead Boy Detectives recently received their own eponymous, ongoing comic book series from Vertigo.  News of that new series re-ignited my desire to read the 2001 four-issue comic book miniseries, The Sandman Presents: The Deadboy Detectives.  It was written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Bryan Talbot (pencils) and Steve Leialoha (inks), with colors by Daniel Vozzo.

Paine and Rowland are not your average boy detectives (like the Hardy Boys).  Edwin Paine was murdered at his British boarding school in 1916, and spent 75 years in Hell.  He escaped in 1991 and met Charles Rowland at his old boarding school, during the events of The Sandman story arc, Seasons of Mist.  Rowland died during this time, but refused to accompany Death (one of “The Endless”), preferring the prospect of future adventures with Paine.  The two ghosts spent a decade haunting places, preparing to become “first-rate detectives.”

The Sandman Presents: The Deadboy Detectives #1 opens with the boys settling into their new office – a tree house.  Now, the Rowland and Paine Detective Agency needs a client, and they get one.  Marcia, a young runaway, tells our intrepid duo that many of her fellow street urchin friends have been disappearing and then turning up dead.  These are not ordinary deaths, however, as the corpses appear to have been quite aged and withered.  Marcia claims that the police are not willing to put much effort into investigating crimes against runaways and the homeless.

Ultimately, Marcia decides not to hire Paine and Rowland, as she does not take them seriously.  They decide to investigate anyway, but their hunt will force them to meet people who may be dangerous even to ghosts.

If the rest of The Sandman Presents: The Deadboy Detectives is junk, then, the series would have to have taken a steep fall, because it really is good.  Ed Brubaker takes the boy detective genre (as best exemplified by the aforementioned Hardy Boys) and made it more imaginative and maybe even a little smarter.  I prefer the bookish Rowland, but Brubaker makes the alpha-male Paine not only the perfect foil for his partner, but also the tough guy that a mystery-solving duo needs.  I like how Brubaker sends his young heroes to interesting places that seem as real as they are imaginative.

Talbot and Leialoha’s art fills the spaces of the pages, which also gives the story a sense of verisimilitude.  Vozzo’s colors permeate the graphical storytelling with a sense of magic.  We have pretty pictures and good fantasy storytelling.  I’m ready for more of The Sandman Presents: The Deadboy Detectives, and I am also prepared to move onto the new series.

A-

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

#IReadsYou Review: SWEET TOOTH #1

SWEET TOOTH #1
DC COMICS/VERTIGO – @DCComics and @vertigo_comics

CARTOONIST: Jeff Lemire
COLORS: Jose Villarrubia
LETTERS: Pat Brosseau
32pp, Color, $1.00 (November 2009)

Sweet Tooth was a comic book series created, written, and drawn by cartoonist and graphic novelist, Jeff Lemire.  At that time of Sweet Tooth’s debut, Lemire was best known for his Essex County Trilogy:  Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories, and The Country Nurse, which were all published Top Shelf Productions.

Sweet Tooth was Lemire’s first ongoing series.  Published by Vertigo (the publisher of Lemire’s graphic novel, The Nobody), Sweet Tooth is a post-apocalyptic series that focuses on a human/animal hybrid child who pals around with a dangerous friend.  The series concluded with the publication of issue #40.

Sweet Tooth #1 opens ten years after a still mysterious pandemic ravaged America.  A boy named Gus is part of a rare new breed of human/animal hybrid that emerged from the devastation.  This breed is also apparently immune to the infection that still continues to kill.  Gus lives with his ailing father in a Nebraska state wilderness sanctuary.  Gus’ father is determined to keep his son living in isolation.  After his father dies, Gus is left to fend for himself, but not for long, as the hunters arrive.

In his “On the Ledge” essay, which appears in Sweet Tooth #1 (and all September 2009-dated Vertigo books), Jeff Lemire writes that “there are no tired, played-out stories – just tired and played-out ways of telling them.”  This is a frank admission from a distinctive voice in comic books that his latest work is – plot, characters, and setting – firmly rooted in the familiar subgenre of post-apocalyptic America.  Lemire, however, is correct about tired stories, and didn’t someone recently win a Pulitzer Prize for his post-Apocalyptic-set novel?

Lemire tells stories in a voice most comic book characters avoid.  His stories are both disquieting and alluring in the tranquil way in which Lemire weaves tales of a rural folk, a breed of people who are not often seen in comics, compared to other types.  There is beauty in the way Lemire depicts desperation; it is desperation that is as serene as the landscape of wide open farms, small towns, and woodland areas where much of the Essex County stories set.  Lemire’s stories aren’t so much forlorn or even melancholy as they are calm and settled.  No matter how sad the life of a particular Lemire character may be, the reader is drawn into the stillness of contemplation, introspection, and self-observation.

This is how Lemire will make Sweet Tooth such a unique take on the post-apocalyptic world.  Lemire’s unobtrusive way is not Mad Max, but he offers the reader the chance to find insight in every panel.  Each panel is a moment in time, not to be taken for granted.  In this way, perhaps, Lemire will show us the profound even in a hopeless world, where there just might be hope.

A-

[This comic book also contained an 8-page preview of the hardcover prose novel, Peter & Max: A Fables Novel by Bill Willingham with illustrations by Steve Leiahola.]

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

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