As Neil Gaiman die-hards know, The Sandman‘s second season is currently filming, and given the show’s wealth of special effects, it’s unlikely that we’ll see episodes materialize until, hmm, maybe mid-2025. The wait will be worth that long and more, but for those who need a Vertigo-imprint fix now, a new Netflix series about ghostly teenage detectives hails from the same universe.
Dead Boy Detectives revolves around characters who surfaced during Season of Mists, which is the fourth graphic novel volume of The Sandman comics. These detectives solve crimes that human souls cannot hope to reconcile, and Gaiman previously explained to Tudum that he only felt it natural for these teenagers to take up the profession: “Who amongst us can honestly say that if we were hanging around the Earth as a ghost we wouldn’t want to start a detective agency?” Exactly. Co-creator Steve Steve Yockey has duly added that this series is like “the Hardy Boys on acid.” He believes that this show is as compelling as The Sandman “but through a severely cracked lens.”
So, where’s the connection to The Sandman? The detectives’ boarding school is awash with the consequences of Lucifer’s petty grudge against Dream/Morpheus. The story eventually struck such a chord that Gaiman branched the ghostly duo into their own comic. Via the official series description:
Meet Edwin Payne (Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Revri), ‘the brains’ and ‘the brawn’ behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends and ghosts… who solve mysteries. They will do anything to stick together – including escaping evil witches, Hell and Death herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal (Nelson) and her friend Niko (Kitamura), they are able to crack some of the mortal realm’s most mystifying paranormal cases.
Could we also (pretty please) have a Death spin off series to match those comic-book miniseries? Nobody could be mad at that.
Dead Boy Detectives‘ first season is streaming now on Netflix.