The Season of Mists story-arc of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was one of my favourite parts of an outstanding series. I loved the whole central conceit of having Lucifer grow tired of running Hell and quitting his job, kicking out the demons and the damned and giving the key to Morpheus. The cast was huge, from the First of the Fallen through Odin, Bast and other mythic archetypes. And a couple of schoolboys called Paine and Rowland at an English public school.
Jill Thompson has already visited this story arc in her first Manga-style digest outing with the delightful fun of Death: At Death’s Door (which has a great scene where a party for the returning dead in Death’s apartment leads to Edgar Allan Poe giving her sister Despair the eye!). It was great to see the rich events of this chapter explored a little more. I did always wonder what happened to Rowland and Paine after their deaths at the school; we last saw them walking away from their bodies to see what life, or Death, had to offer them.
Neil has remarked that he did always mean to get back to them but considering the sheer demands of tying up the 8 year run of the Sandman, he never quite made it, so I was pleased to see that someone was going to follow up on those characters and even more pleased to see that it would be Jill Thompson with Dead Boy Detectives.
Once more done in a Manga digest style she has the boys, now amateur sleuths, having to go undercover for an investigation at a posh school. Unfortunately it is a posh girl’s school, so undercover here means our deceased detectives will be donning drag… Hugely enjoyable fun and an interesting take on some Sandman characters from the Eisner-winning Jill. They’ve just arrived in the last few days, so if you’re looking for something new and enjoyable, this is perfect.
Mon, Jul 11, 2005
Comics and cartoons