Dead Boy Detectives #9 – Review

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

The Story: Crystal may not be a pyromaniac, but she gives a pretty good impression of one.

The Review: Some writers go out of their way to craft a world that seems as true to life as possible, where the characters talk and act much as the people we see every day do. And that’s fine; you get a lot of immersion in the story that way. But I think my favorite kind of stories take place in a world that’s like the real world, but slightly more so, cartoonish, but not caricaturized, quirky and eccentric, but not implausible. That is, after all, the beauty of fiction.

This might explain a lot of my fondness for Dead Boy Detectives. You can believe these ghost kids and their hacker gal pal exist because everyone else around them, even the ones who aren’t dead, are so unusual in themselves. I imagine for people who have a low tolerance for the implausible, this can be a real turn-off for them,* but the rest of us probably wish the world had more characters like Clementine, Miranda, and Crystal’s parents.

The trick, of course, is to give them a pinch of strangeness without throwing in the whole shaker. Clementine may be a little spacey, but she’s also perceptive and serious when the occasion calls for it. Even Crystal’s parents reveal a grounded side towards the end of the issue. Litt well understands the balance of making characters interesting without being off-putting, so he can afford to create someone as broad as Crispian the Thespian as an exception to the rule. Crispian, true to his title, flounces about the stage of the Old Gaiety, unsurprised at the sudden appearance of two kids floating above him, and even taking the opportunity to spout sonnets at the charmed Crystal. He essentially serves his chosen purpose, to entertain, as livener for what could have been straight exposition.

For at the Old Gaiety, Charles and Crystal learn that his mother’s death wasn’t a suicide at all, but murder, bloody murder. Of course, the way light-smith Sparks comes about that information is a bit contrived. How did he manage to get a hold of the letter she received and keep it all these years without turning it over as evidence? How can it be that enough people saw the incident to know the culprit was a woman, but have no descriptive details? These aren’t fatal questions, but nagging ones.

Anyway, Litt has his hands full juggling several mysteries at once, so you can forgive him for taking a few narrative liberties. Real progress is made on the Hana/Rosa front, as Lobsang confirms (unfortunately with his dying breath) that Hana is alive, leading our detectives to conclude Rosa must be, too. This revelation takes them all the way back to Morningstar Mansion, nursing home to Clementine’s mother, site of Rosa’s hospice care, and home to the ghost girl Edwin met last issue. These are the makings of the best mysteries, when the strings of the various plotlines start to weave together.

Buckingham’s simple but thoughtfully formed art is upbeat, fun, and charming, especially with Kelly and Davison to give them a little more character than Buckingham is wont to do on his own. It’s important in a world as exaggerated as this one that the characters don’t exaggerate their emotions too much either, or else the serious parts of the story lose weight, and Buckingham strikes that balance as carefully as Litt. I also appreciate Buckinham’s attempts to energize the exposition with interstitial scenes like the soap opera-ish “What Sparky Knew” and the one-act play “The Snow Conversation.”

Conclusion: A lot of information being conveyed here, but Litt and Buckingham find ways to make it less dense, and the plot does make a huge advance.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * I’m thinking specifically of one of my friends’ civil engineer husband, who once told me, “Art has no value.” After a stunned silence, a scathing debate followed. I think I got him to come around, but I wonder if I’ll ever forgive and forget that comment. I’m amazed I didn’t remark, “And of course, adjusting traffic light patterns enriches our lives daily.”

– Crystal protests, but she indicates a tiny bit of interest at Crispian’s insistence that she perform with him. I guess there’s a little of her parents’ drama in her.

– And the award for Most Delightfully Outdated Insult goes to Charles for this annoyed remark at Crispian’s flirting: “Hey, you old smoothie!”

– As for the award for Best Uncalled-for Insult goes to Sparks’ distressed exclamation when the rigging catches fire, “This place is as wooden as Crispian’s acting!“