The Dead Boy Detectives (2013-2014) Vol. 2: Ghost Snow

Dead Boy Detectives #4

by Toby Litt, Mark Buckingham (Illustrator)

Edwin Paine and Charles Roland have a lot in common - they’re both English schoolboys who love a good detective story, and they’ve been known to dabble in mystery-solving themselves. They’re also both dead, a condition which has proven to be less of a hindrance than one might think.

Springing from the pages of Neil Gaiman’s THE SANDMAN comes Toby Litt and Mark Buckingham’s DEAD BOY DETECTIVES VOL. 2: GHOST SNOW, collecting issues #7-12 of the acclaimed series and featuring art from celebrated collaborators Ryan Kelly, Russ Braun, and Al Davison as well as a special sketchbook section from Buckingham.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

138 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 28, 2015

About the author

Toby Litt was born in Bedfordshire, England. He studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury, winning the 1995 Curtis Brown Fellowship.

He lived in Prague from 1990 to 1993 and published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled Adventures in Capitalism, in 1996.

In 2003 Toby Litt was nominated by Granta magazine as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'.

In 2018, he published Wrestliana, his memoir about wrestling, writing, losing and being a man.

His novel, A Writer's Diary, was published by Galley Beggar Press on January 1st 2022.

A Writer's Diary continues daily on Substack.

He lives in London and is the Head of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton.

Reviews

[Calista · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was entertained here and I found the first volume to be better. This is the last volume and some things did not get resolved. Such is life.

The boys help Rosa in a coma to get back to her body. Also one of them meets his sister who is not a Buddhist monk. I like her character. She is awesome and has no problem with her ghost brother.

This was a fun series. I enjoyed it.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this series, too bad it didn't last. Basically it's a fun, quirky yet macabre little book like you'd expect out of Mark Buckingham. Fans of Books of Magic, The Unwritten, and Fables will enjoy.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's kind of a fairytale vibe happening in this book. Partly it's because the art is by Mark Buckingham who drew "Fables" and partly because the Sandman universe has always had that vibe.

The Dead Boys have a really sweet friendship, in many ways they act like an old married couple so I like how that dynamic is disrupted with Crystal's arrival. Charles has a crush on her, Edwin is jealous so it's a cute, interruption to their day to day activities.

I think this may be the conclusion of the story arc that began in the first volume, but the good thing about the Dead Boys is that they can pretty easily come back in any number of stand-alone adventures, so I'll look forward to seeing them again someday.

[Ernesto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mucho mejor que el volumen anterior y también mejor que las series de cómics anteriores sobre estos personajes. Aquí el caso a investigar es si el padre de Charles fue o no un asesino. El último número del volumen es un episodio suelto que es un poco meh, pero todo lo demás bastante bien.

[Hanieh · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5
It's unhinged, it's sweet, it's fairytale, it's mystery and the art is amazing!
And I also love my boys.
What's there more to say?

[Cale · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not quite as disjointed as the first volume, this book does still suffer from a large number of story threads which are not juggled well; it always feel like a lurch between the different character groups, and it makes the overall story feel a lot weaker than it actually is. The concept of the Ghost snow is interesting, if not really explored, and the world of the Neitherlands shows a lot of promise, although it's barely explored here. The story of Charles' sister and the death of their mother makes for an interesting if depressing mystery, but the addition of Clementine and Miranda makes for something interesting interplay. And the cats are cute as always.
This book has a lot of potential, but it never quite pulls it off. And it looks like it ended with this volume, which is okay; the story resolves itself well and it feels like an end point. But it never fulfilled its potential.

[Cyndi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better outing this time around. Story was more cohesive and gave some character back ground and development.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't get the negative reviews or the low rating or why this is so hard to find. The art and the characters are very cute. The story is good and easy to follow. I think this one was easier for me to follow than the first volume and fit together better. I love the cats--they are so funny! I love the relationships between the characters. I think the ending mostly works as an end of series, but I obviously wish there were more. The only thing I really noticed was that at one point Charles called Edwin Edward. Overall, a VERY solid read.

[Ben Trube · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edwin and Charles might be dead, but that doesn’t stop them from being great detectives. Branching out from Sandman Volume 4, the Dead Boy Detectives solve the mysteries of their past and the supernatural netherworld of the Netherlands.

In Volume 2, Crystal Palace convinces Charles to seek out his half-sister Clementine, a monk living in a windmill with her scientifically oriented daughter Miranda. Charles learns that his father may have murdered his mother, a ballerina who fell to her death from the stage lights above the theater where she danced. As they pursue the truth they also learn of the danger to their friend Rosa, who is trapped in a coma dying but also trapped in a world between life and death, tormented by a creature named Nye and the “poppets” he creates out of the elements of the world. Charles must journey back to the boarding school where he was killed to save Rosa and to finally uncover the mystery behind his parents.

Though I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on with Rosa, Hana and the Netherlands (something presumably explained in Volume 1), I found Charles’ story touching. There’s a good deal of humor throughout, from Miranda who is skeptical of the boy’s existence, to the two ghost cats, and also in Buckingham’s fanciful but relate-able illustration. The budding romance between Charles and Crystal is charming and sympathetic.

I particularly liked the ties to the Sandman universe, with Edwin being terrified when someone dies nearby for fear the personification of Death will find him and force him to pass on. The side-tale involving ghosts connecting to an MMORPG and Edwin and Charles’ old schoolmaster being pulled in from a summoning is pretty funny as well, though the lines are less detailed than in the Ghost Snow storyline.

I definitely want to pick up volume 1 after reading this, and hope for more adventures with these two.

A little confusing if this is your jumping on point, but still a compelling family-driven story.

* I received a free ARC from NetGalley in return for my honest review

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are those who would prefer Firefly to have lasted more than one season. I'm not in that camp. Sometimes, what makes a story great, is that it isn't contintually drawn out. Toby Litt was hired to write a Sandman spinoff that was on-going. Instead, it was cancelled after 12 issues. The result is amazing artwork geared toward grabbing in all the readers and storytelling that opens a lot of loose ends. Thankfully, Litt is either a master at plotting or was given enough notice to tie-up his loose threads. Like Brubaker's miniseries, this adds to the dimensions of characters seen ever so briefly in Seasons of Mists. It is good to know that Charles and Edwin still know that you don't have to stay anyone place forever.

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this installment - even more than the first volume! The characters of the boys are endearing, as usual, and Crystal Palace returns to bring a solid female presence to the series. This installment focuses on Charles, and his meeting his half sister, and learning more about his family's past. Crystal's history with Rosa and Hana is also further developed from volume one. My favourite new characters in the series have to be the black and white naughty kittens! The artwork is consistent and enjoyable. Although, at one point Edwin gives his hat away, but is shown a few panels later with it back on his head!
However, all the story threads are wrapped up nicely, but with room to continue the series if they choose.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry, but this confused the hell out of me. I just wanted a clever mystery like the boys have been in before but this was too trippy and made little sense. Edwin and Charles along with Crystal still make a great team but there was too much extra stuff that took away from the family history drama. Mark Buckingham's art continues to be superb though. Overall, this strayed too far away from the core ideas and had little magic.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found early parts of this book a bit befuddling, but I suspect that's because I don't remember enough about volume 1. Despite that, I increasingly came to love the mythology that Litt was spinning here, and all of his many (many) characters. I also loved the personal importance of the mysteries here. This was a fun book, peopled by interesting characters, and I'm sorry to see it now gone.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging both in visuals and storyline, this graphic novel is an excellent escape from the normal. Interspersed with humor and deeper meaning, it succeeds at many levels. Highly recommended. Buy it if you can; borrow it if you can't.

[Theediscerning · Rating 2 out of 5]

Looks OK, but is completely impenetrable if like me you've not read the first book in the series. Jumps around too much, never so much as tries to introduce the characters, and leaves one with too much unknown.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

More fun adventures being dead, with a story that takes us to one of the lands of the dead and to a windmill where a Buddhist Monk relative of one of the boys lives. Like the first collection, this was decent with some silly over-reaches in character creation.

[Drucilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still strong. Now the series is set up and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Netgalley advance. A marked improvement over the first volume, as the repercussions of what happened at the private school follow Crystal home and as Charles learns more about his family history.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

With a personal mystery about Charles' father, this title continues to be a solid mix of the Hardy Boys and a Stephen King novel. Fun, low key, ghost silliness.

[Alex Sarll]

This follows directly from the events of the first volume - which, I realised as I got underway, I don't recall at all. Something about prose writers turning to comics is part of it - often it takes them a while to get the hang of conveying interiority again, so the shape of the story is fine, but it has no hooks, slides right off my mind. Still, the voice of Gaiman's undead schoolboys was always the main thing when it came to these characters, which Litt catches, and art from Mark Buckingham and Ryan Kelly meant it was very pretty, even if I never did altogether work out what was going on.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

After how badly written the first volume was, I almost didn’t read this. It still has its faults but the art and writing are clearer and the story is much more engaging. The characters still needed a little more personality to feel lifelike (pun not intended), and the spoiled daughter Miranda was dreadful and annoying, and unnecessary. The yin yang cat philosophers were cute but also out of place and did not add anything to the story.

3.8/5

[Helen (they or he) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars.

Honestly I loved seeing Buddhist monks in this volume. They were immediately recognizable even in volume one but great to have a confirmation. We deal a lot with Charles' past and Crystal's past as well as their current stuggles, which I enjoyed a lot but I'm less thrilled about the fact that there was little to no mention of Edwin's past or present.

[Edwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Low on story high on dream state imagery

Don't read this for gripping storylines or character studies. Just go with the flow and enjoy the dreamy images and allow your imagination to fill in the blanks.

[Scott Waldie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Halloween 2022 Marathon, comic 11 of 13.

[Bill Boswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great adventure for the Dead Boy Detectives in this exciting graphic novel

[Roxanne Stormblessed · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
I like it but it's written weirdly

[Arianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I got the distinct sense we would all rub along very well" "There she was - the missing piece of the puzzle" they're my family <3

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obsessed with Bing and Tim. Maybe we could’ve had them in the show if Netflix weren’t my enemy!!

[Samantha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate to say it, but this was so boring I'm gonna dnf it.