The Dark Herald Recommends: Dead Boy Detectives
Watching this I began wondering something. How much of her career does J.K. Rowling owe Neil Gaiman? The most obvious is Tim Hunter.
Back in 1989, Neil Gaiman was tasked by DC Comics to create a series that tied all of their magic characters together into a story. For a protagonist, he modified Wart from The Once and Future King and put him in a modern setting but his destiny instead of being Arthur was to be Merlin, the greatest wizard the world had ever known. The character of Tim Hunter had unruly black hair and glasses. His mother had been killed when he was an infant. His father was so negligent that Hunter basically didn’t have a father. Timothy was also English and may as well have been in a lower-middle-class dump like Privet Lane. Oh, and he had an owl.
However, a boy wizard with glasses, unruly dark hair, no parental supervision, an owl, and a special destiny is not a genre in and of himself. And Harry Potter’s genre is that of Boy Detective, which had quietly died out during the 1950s. No one had used that since characters with names like Biggles Gimlet were on bookstore shelves in Slough. Certainly, no one back then was putting them in genuine supernatural settings.*
Except for Neil Gaiman.
The Dead Boy Detectives first appeared in Sandman #25. In 1916, Edwin Payne was murdered at an English public school in a satanic ritual performed by the school bullies. A frequent problem with English boys’ schools, I’m given to understand. His poor soul was dragged off to Hell but then in 1989, Lucifer quit his job and Hell was emptied out. Payne and quite a few evil ghosts return to the school at that time. Charles Rowland was spending a Dickensian Christmas break at that same school when the Forces of Darkness arrived. Payne was able to help Rowland survive. For a while. Finally, Rowland was severely injured and left in an attic to die of exposure.
Instead of leaving with Death, Rowland opted to stay with Payne and have adventures on Earth running a supernatural boys’ detective agency.
Gaiman more or less accused Rowling of plagiarism but then appears to have been told by Warner Brothers that, no, no she definitely did not plagiarize your work, and by the way Stardust is now greenlit. Gaiman now maintains that she absolutely didn’t copy anything of his.
The Dead Boy Detectives had their own mini-series written by Gaiman called Children’s Crusade. Have had a number of one-shot appearances in various comics since then and briefly had their own monthly title in 2015. They also picked up a human medium interface named Crystal Palace which honestly feels like somebody who isn’t Neil Gaiman trying too hard to come up with a Gaimanesque name.
The boys were prepubescent when they died but have been aging slightly for a few years. They are now in their early teens and Payne now has the gay for Rowland despite the fact that he hasn’t had a dick for a hundred years.
They showed up in the Doom Patrol TV series last year.
Although, this show is not a carryover from that. Technically.
This series acts as an expansion of Netflix’s Sandman. I was honestly expecting a Death series myself but they are being a bit more daring here with a less-known but perhaps more interesting property.
Darklings: Is it Woke?
HA! HA! HA! HA! (*gasp…wheez…gasp*) HA! HA! HA! HA!
Is it Woke? Do eggs come from hens? Does Disney make shitty Star Wars? Is water wet? Is the Pope Catholic? (okay, forget that last one) Do the Cheneys hate Donald Trump?
Yeah, it is in fact Woke. No surprise because…
Neil Gaiman. Has. Always. Been. Woke.
He invented Woke. He was Woke before anyone had heard of the word.
I’m honestly surprised the series isn’t more Woke. Truth be told, calling them boys is kind of pushing things. Both actors appear to be in their late twenties but I’m more comfortable with that than letting Gaiman and Netflix get weird with real child actors.
So far it’s decently written, the action scenes have been good and the scripts have been pretty tight for a series produced by Greg Berlanti. It’s closer to Netflix’s Lockwood and Company than Netflix’s Sandman.
Edwin Payne remains ambiguously gay and I’m sure he’s going to cross that line soon despite his not having dick. The plot is that the Boys and Crystal get stuck in Port Townsend USA for the entire first season due to ridiculous contrivances involving a Cat King who has the hots for Edwin despite the fact that he doesn’t have a body. I suppose it’s possible the gay can conquer all, it is based on Gaiman’s works after all.
There is also a character called Night Nurse (she appears to work for Death in the lost and found department) she’s played by Ruth Connel who played Rowena, Crowley’s mother in Supernatural, which is a pretty roundabout way to get back to Neil Gaiman. The Night Nurse is and antagonist at first. Although, as near as I can tell she’s nowhere to be found in the DC Database, she must only be from the Doom Patrol TV show.
This project started life as a spinoff of that and was originally supposed to be a part of HBOmax’s DC universe. However, when Zaslav killed that whole project, it was canceled but then picked up by Netflix as part of their Sandmanverse with a few legally required cast changes. The Boys are now in their late teens and Crystal had the de rigueur race swap.
The real antagonist is a powerful witch named Esther Finch. She was granted immunity from death but not from aging so she had been kidnapping children for centuries and draining them of their life to keep her young. The Dead Boys and her get into it when they rescue one of her victims. This first season is about their war.
I am hesitant to give this a good rating. Don’t get me wrong it’s been surprisingly watchable, although I’m likely to give anything with Ruth Connel in it a better review than I should, but it’s hard to determine the audience for this. If you liked either Supernatural or Lockwood and Company then you might want to give this a look. If you didn’t like either of those shows, then you are sad and I don’t want to know you. Truth be told, if you think it’s not for you, then you are undoubtedly right.
The Dark Herald Recommends with (some) Reservations. (2.8/5)
*About that exception you are about to bring up. I don’t care. No one cares. Go, “Well akshually,” someplace else, Melvin.
