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By Jill Thompson<\/strong> (Vertigo) The legacy of The Sandman<\/strong> continues under the auspices of Jill Thompson, but her second venture into this Mangamerican style sadly isn’t as good or even as readable as her previous At Death’s Door<\/strong>. The two dead schoolboys, Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine, who refused to go when collected by Dream’s sister, Death, have hovered around the Vertigo corners of the DC Universe since their introduction in Sandman: Season of Mists<\/strong>, obviously garnering some fans amongst both creators and the general public, but their role here might be something of a stretch.<\/p>\n As consulting detectives they are contacted by a girl from a private school in Chicago. Her new best friend has disappeared, but her teachers refuse to care about it or even acknowledge her existence. Having both died under similar circumstances, our heroes rush to the rescue.<\/p>\n So far, so good, but then it all breaks down. Thompson has elected to produce the tale as an homage to the Japanese publishing convention of Sh\u00c5\u008djo Manga, which emphasises a world of passivity, dreams, inner searches and human relationships over conflict, drama, perseverance and action \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or as we’ve come to define it, Girls’ comics rather than Boys’ comics. It must have been a plausible pitch, but the actual story is vapid and meandering with no real dramatic hook, no threat, real or implied, to produce tension, and a resolution copped from the worst days of Scooby-Doo<\/strong>. A series of embarrassments and misadventures leads to a conclusion devoid of revelation, empathy, or satisfaction.<\/p>\n All that leaves is the humour, and there is precious little of that. I’m afraid that dressing dead boys up as girls will never make it into the gagsters Hall of Fame, no matter how venerated a tradition it might be. Its good news that such memorable characters aren’t being sidelined and doubly so that DC are prepared to let creators experiment with them. Sometimes, however, that means a miss rather than another hit. Let’s just wait for next time, then.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a9 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00c2\u00a0 By Jill Thompson (Vertigo) ISBN 1-84576-181-2 The legacy of The Sandman continues under the auspices of Jill Thompson, but her second venture into this Mangamerican style sadly isn’t as good or even as readable as her previous At Death’s Door. The two dead schoolboys, Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine, who refused to go when … <\/p>\n
\nISBN 1-84576-181-2<\/p>\n