Dead Boy Detectives #7 – Review

By: Toby Litt (story), Mark Buckingham (layouts), Ryan Kelly (finishes), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: Even ghosts can have daddy issues.

The Review: We’ve had a lot of fun with the Dead Boy Detectives’ miscellaneous adventures, but now seems like the right time for us to grapple with more long-term material. I expect most of us are new to the characters, so we really know nothing about Charles and Edwin before they attended, died, and returned to St. Hilarion’s. If a ghost exists only because of unfinished business in its life, then it’s essential we learn more about that life, no?

It’s easy enough to see what was left unresolved with Charles’ untimely death: his feelings toward his father. We’ve seen hints that Charles’ dad wasn’t a very nice guy, but the nature of his cruelty is unclear, even after Charles recounts his boyhood memories of the man. Obviously, Charles’ dad was kind of a douche for receiving his son’s thoughtful, handmade gift with more thought to its flaws than delight, and the fact that he was constantly away isn’t great, either. But these seem like typical paternal failings, not the kinds of things that’d keep a long-dead boy attached to the world.

But a son’s feelings for his father is a complicated thing as Charles tries to articulate, in the series’ most personalized moment thus far: “It’s all very well investigating other people, but this is me—this is my dad. He had this whole secret family, this whole secret life… What if my half-sister tells me something about him that means I can’t love him at all?” What Charles is really saying is despite his dad’s flaws, he still wants to believe his dad was worthy of his love, which really means he wants to believe his dad loved him in return.

So you can well understand why he flees crying out of the room when Clementine, his half-sister, declares grimly that their father was “the most evil man” her mother ever met. It’s not just that he loved the destructiveness of the weapons he created, nor that he left her mother when she was “not young, not well off, and six months pregnant.” He was “[a] murderer,” Clementine adds. Whether she means he literally killed people or his weapons work led to people’s deaths, we don’t know. Either way, Charles takes it poorly, swearing he’ll prove it isn’t true.

As for Clementine herself, she’s about as quirky as all the other characters in this series, a bald woman in monk’s clothing who takes the idea of Charles as ghost in stride. At the same time, she’s different from the other odd birds in DBD by virtue of her self-awareness. When her daughter, Miranda, complains that Crystal’s family “sound[s] like complete flakes,” the two of them chime in unison, “Look who’s talking!” She knows the difference between misguided intention and practical effect: “I’m sorry about Miranda—I said I treat her as an adult, not that she is an adult.” And then there’s the rather lovely way she speaks to Charles before he manifests before her, showing how much faith she can put into the unknown. If she’s to be a recurring character for this series, I can live with that.

I’ve only just lately started to understand how a certain finish can change the look of a layout, but I think I can see some of that here. A quick glance at the art establishes it clearly as Buckingham’s, but a closer look reveals a noticeable increase in detail and delicacy in the linework. Buckingham’s figures tend towards the chubby side, but here they’re more in proportion and expressive, which is all Kelly’s doing, I believe. Loughridge’s colors are still a bit too pale; at times, the flesh-and-blood characters look nearly as thin and wan as the ghosts.

Conclusion: We’re finally getting to know our heroes a little bit, and it’s all very interesting, but nothing to write home about just yet.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Sounds like Crystal’s going to experience a media maelstrom pretty soon, what with the news about her burning down her school, cosplaying in public, and talking to invisible people (and playing with invisible cats) in her chauffeured car.