Among the many beloved characters from Neil Gaiman‘s acclaimed The Sandman series are Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine, a pair of ghostly children who team up to solve mysteries. This morning DC Comics announced that the duo affectionately known as the Dead Boy Detectives will return in December in a new six-issue miniseries. The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives is written by Pornsak Pichetshote, illustrated by Jeff Stokely, colored by Miquel Muerto, and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
Here’s how DC describes The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives:
In Pichetshote and Stokely’s new six-issue comic book miniseries, Edwin and Charles are hired to find a missing Thai-American girl named Jai, only for her to turn up dead. Except not. Because Jai, along with her two friends Tanya and Melvin, are all ghosts like Edwin and Charles. Except not. Each child is Thai, with power unlike anything Edwin and Charles have ever seen before, and they all died in LA at different times over the past fifty years! And perilously close by to the boys’ adventure, Thessaly the witch finds herself held hostage by dangerous magics—both a threat to her life and an insult to her ego that simply will not go unanswered…
The first issue of the series will sport a main cover by Nimit Malavia, along with a number of variant covers by Alex Eckman-Lawn (open-to-order), Tyler Crook (open-to-order), Filipe Andrade (1:25), and Yoshitaka Amano (1:50).
Dead Boy Detectives marks the DC Comics debut for Eisner winner Pornsak Pichetshote, whose series The Good Asian with artist Alexandre Tefengki won the award for Best Limited Series earlier this year. In a statement announcing the series, Pichetshote spoke about expanding on the world and characters of The Sandman:
“The genius of Sandman is how seamlessly it fits different genres, histories, and folklores together, something that definitely inspired Jeff and I for Dead Boy Detectives,” said Pichetshote. “As a Thai-American, I grew up around all this wonderful Thai folklore that’s never made it to American pop culture, so by introducing some of my favorite Neil Gaiman characters to the truly terrifying and bizarre world of Thai ghosts, we will give horror and Sandman fans something new.”
“This is definitely a horror book,” continued Pichetshote, “as the boys discover Thai black magic’s getting more powerful in Los Angeles (the home of the largest Thai population outside Thailand), and it might even be changing the rules governing ghosts. All this, while Charles and Edwin, two ghost detectives, are secretly craving changes themselves—in a coming-of-age story starring two boys who can’t grow up.”
Check out a preview of panels from the first issue, as well as the variant covers by Eckman-Lawn, Crook, and Andrade, below. The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives #1 (of 6) is set to arrive in stores and digitally on Tuesday, December 27th.
