As pop-cultural dominance is consistently monopolized by a handful of big corporations, the tenuous grip seems to bring big names more and more into conflict. Over a year ago, HBO Max announced an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman comic Dead Boy Detectives, which runs afoul of multiple existing franchises as it quietly comes to the service.

Comic books are complicated, and sometimes a character who was introduced in a seminal genre-defining work goes onto a less glamorous solo career. When the big names make it to the big screen, their co-stars have the option to spin off. What happens if multiple versions of the same minor figure get their day in the sun around the same time?

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The Dead Boy Detectives are Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine. Rowland was once an everyday youth living at a traditional English boarding school in 1990. His life is normal until his school is suddenly flooded with the immortal souls of deceased former teachers and students. Unbeknownst to mankind, the denizens of Hell were kicked from their realm of eternal torment, leaving them free to return to their homes and continue their evil deeds. Remember the end of Netflix's The Sandman? In the comics, Lucifer's next move is to shut down Hell and hand Dream the keys, leaving the other realms to deal with all the damned souls it once held. Rowland struggled to survive his new haunted boarding school as the faculty died around him. At his side was Edwin Paine, who was murdered at the school in 1916. Unfortunately, Rowland did eventually die, leaving him and his new best friend ghosts forever.

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Since Rowland died in the Sandman universe, he met everyone's favorite member of The Endless, Dream's big sister Death. Rather than head to the afterlife like most people, Rowland decided to stay on Earth as a ghost with Paine. They spent the next several years in the school library, studying adventure fiction to teach themselves how to become detectives. When a young lady hires them to find a series of missing kids in a tiny British village, their career as private paranormal investigators begin. Their story began in the second collection of The Sandman, and it went on to connect with many of Neil Gaiman's other works. The duo got their own solo series in 2001 and a longer follow-up in 2014. The characters mostly exist on the page, but they do have a slight history on the screen.

Roland and Paine (now spelled "Payne" for unclear reasons) appear alongside their medium companion Crystal Palace appear in a single episode of HBO's DC series Doom Patrol. They are introduced with their detective industry established and contracted by the heroes to rescue the group from death. Their backstory isn't addressed, and no mention is made of any of the other characters in the franchise they originated. They're just a fun cameo from some lesser-known DC characters who pop up to help the main characters out of a jam. Doom Patrol has consistently been a haven for obscure characters, inciting the occasional applause from fans of niche figures throughout the massive DC catalog. This, unfortunately, makes the show a bit more complex.

The upcoming Dead Boy Detectives show is sort of a spin-off of Doom Patrol. All three of the pre-established roles have been recast, ensuring that the link between the two is almost immediately dashed. The shows have producers in common and Ruth Connell will reprise her role of Night Nurse in the new series, proving a link between the two. Whether the shows will have any narrative connective tissue remains to be seen. Rowland and Payne are minor characters in a single episode who don't have a huge impact on the plot, so they can easily exist on their own terms. Interestingly, if The Sandman gets the second season fans are eagerly crying out for, the detectives will appear in their original incarnation as well. Across two different streaming services, the world will get to enjoy competing versions of these minor characters. It's a good time to be a Dead Boy Detectives fan.

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The Dead Boy Detectives may well become a big deal within the next few years as audiences are introduced to them from two different angles. DC's on-screen efforts haven't delved into the paranormal very often, so the idea of the Doom Patrol team playing with all the ghosts and monsters hiding in that canon is appealing. Though this project has been in development for a long time, it seems as if fans might get to see a pilot soon. Neil Gaiman's desire to blend boarding school fiction and kids' adventure stories resulted in a classic issue of The Sandman, and the fact that this humble idea is still inspiring creators is fascinating. Dead Boy Detectives is still in production at HBO Max with no release date in sight, but there seems to be life in this strange idea yet.

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