light spoilers
Since these comics were released in 2013, there is necessarily a bit of a tone shift if you first met Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland in the ‘Season Of Mists’ Sandman arc. There were also a number of distinct limited run series between ‘Season Of Mists’ and ‘Schoolboy Terrors’, which shouldn’t trip you up too much if you just assume ‘stuff happened’ in the intervening decades. Since I read the 2024 Sandman Universe Dead Boy Detectives story and saw the only season of the Netflix show before this, it was neat to see the “origin story” of Crystal Palace.
Things begin (pretty much) in the treehouse office of the detective agency. A clairvoyant toddler loses her ghost cat and Edwin’s notes are instantly evocative of the client and the payment from the Sandman Universe story:
“CASE Number 42
Clients: Maggie Rosendale and her little sister Libby.
Payment: TBC
Request: Find Libby’s cat, Twinkle.
Further note: Please, PLEASE find Twinkle!
Twinkle is a cat.
Twinkle is a very special cat.”
In the SU story, the majority of the plot is far-removed from the chatty little boy who initially contracted them at the price of a “shiny card of MAGIC made of FOIL!” (They were “informed that it was VERY rare.”) Basically, the kid wants to know where his neighborhood friend went. Once they find her, the actual story begins.
In ‘Schoolboy Terrors’, the client relationship largely comes through in where the dead boys decide to set up shop. By the end of volume one, the detective agency exists in a Japanese tea house in a tree; a gift for Crystal Palace from her erratic, famous, absentee parents. It is decent plot-economy but the efficiency is quietly morbid. Charles and Edwin know how unstable Crystal’s home life is but Charles, Edwin and Crystal are still obviously kids- no matter what their chronological ages are. The reaction to the tea house is therefore kid-like: it’s like a tiny furnished apartment with video games and an internet connection. It is simply ‘cool’. Crystal, meanwhile, gets two live-in ghost friends, which is also ‘cool’. At the same time, the reader can’t help but notice that the only reason the detective agency has a fancy new office and a third (living) detective is because Crystal hasn’t had a friend her own age in forever and her family is never present.
A Sandman reader will also notice that the ‘Schoolboy Terrors’ arc doubles as both Crystal’s portrayed origin story and a retrospective origin story for Edwin and Charles.
As it happens, Crystal asks her parents to enroll her at Saint Hilarion’s- the very school where Charles and Edwin were killed. The Netflix show did its own version in its final episode and it’s perfectly consistant with the show. While we don’t get a ton of flashbacks to the ‘Season Of Mists’ stuff, there are a few. There is also a great moment with Despair of the Endless.
I think I like the ‘Schoolboy Terrors’ version better, though. We actually get “on screen” appearances from the 1916 Headmaster Parkinson and the bullies Cheeseman, Skinner and Barrow- not to mention Headmaster Theodore, from Charles’ lifetime (very old and possessed by Parkinson). Since these ghosts returned to the site of their deaths after being turned out of Hell, they’ve maintained certain relationships with the authors of their misery.
Portraying Crystal’s online gaming in pictures and word balloons was a neat touch, especially given the relevance of psychic constructs and the other planes they can lead to. Speaking of that: the last story of volume one (issues five and six) connects Edwin’s memories of Hell with the psychic domain of cats. Issues five and six also feature the ghost roads, which I had hoped would appear in the Netlflix series. It even seems to lead into potential future stories. Without spoiling too much- Edwin, Charles, Crystal and two other ghosts need a last-minute escape route. Charles and Edwin can normally travel through the ghost roads instantaneously (“sqwooshing”) with little awareness of the disintegrating, conglomerating souls of which they are made. In the last story in volume one, they are forced to beg for passage, offering to carry messages and investigate things for the ghosts that let them through. Not quite as cool as the ghost roads and the kumanthongs in the SU story but a nice touch nonetheless.
AilixChaerea 