GeekTyrant says HBO Max ordered a pilot for a TV series titled Dead Boy Detectives. This supernatural horror series follows the adventures of two deceased pupils who decide to skip the afterlife, become ghosts, and investigate crimes. Jeremy Carver (creator and showrunner of Doom Patrol) and Steve Yockey (creator and showrunner of The Flight Attendant) are in charge of the project. Warner Bros. Television is the studio behind the project.
As for characters, writer Neil Gaiman and artists Malcolm Jones III and Matt Wagner created dead boy detectives in 1991 for Vertigo’s Sandman. Due to larger events in the storyline, murdered pupil Edwin Paine escapes hell and returns to his old boarding school where he was murdered in 1916. There, he tries but fails to save the life of another pupil named Charles Rowland. Together, two ghosts decide to become boy detectives.
Gaiman revived the characters in 1993, during Vertigo’s Children’s Crusade crossover event. In 2001, they received a four-issue mini-series by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Bryan Talbot. Jill Thompson used the characters in her graphic novel Death: At Death’s Door. In 2012, the pair returned in the Vertigo Anthology series. Finally, in 2014 Vertigo launched a short-lived ongoing series created by Toby Litt, Mark Buckingham, and Gary Erskine.
