I have very mixed feelings about this book upon rereading it as an adult. I remember loving this in high school and came across my old copy when I was home for the holidays. While this was written and illustrated by Jill Thompson, it is based off the Sandman characters by Neil Gaiman and he consulted on it. I’m not someone who will never read work by an author accused of awful crimes because I feel like it can better inform my understanding of the work and my personal moral philosophy in general is to try to understand rather than avoid (see Marion Zimmer Bradley, where a lot of the sexual stuff in those books made a lot more sense after finding out what a horrific person she was). I just won’t spend money supporting their work, and since I already owned this, I felt fine rereading it. But I know people are completely boycotting him, so your personal mileage will vary.
The Dead Boy Detectives is about two dead ghost children, Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland, who try to solve crimes. In this book, they come across the Atlantic to Chicago to try to help some girls in boarding school find out what happened to their missing friend Liz. A lot of shenanigans happen at a very fast pace, with cameos from the Sandman and other Endless characters. Jill Thompson’s art lends itself well to the frenetic and lively pace of the story, as well as the young characters. She has always had a very playful style and this reminded me of her work on Scary Godmother. I think another reason I liked this so much as a teen was all of the crossdressing (subconsciously working things out!). However, as an adult, the pacing and the story itself feel all over the place to me and a bit too wacky for my taste now. I also find that the material (suspected adult relationship with a student, references to Lolita, the weird dieting stuff at the end) didn’t age well for me and distracted me from the story. This was sold under Vertigo, which was aimed at adult audiences, but then this is clearly aimed at teens, so the end product feels like not fully one or the other and is suffering for it. I do remember also liking the first volume, so maybe I’ll track down a used copy somewhere (not like I don’t have enough books to read already!!).
I don’t think I’d recommend this unless you are a big Sandman fan or a fan of Jill Thompson. Honestly, the rating should be 2 stars but nostalgia bumped it to 3.
Warnings for: suspected teacher/underage student relationship, bullying, prior murders of children (resulting in them being ghosts)