The Dead Queen Detectives : The Crown Jewels by Bevis Musson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of the things I like to do is tweet about when I’m going to a comics convention and ask for advice on what to buy. I know what I like – feminist, girl-focused comics – and I know what I’d really want – a boarding school based comic that is good and does something akin to Robin Stevens’ Murder Most Unladylike for the genre – but I grant that sometimes we do not always get what we really want. However, I did get the creator of the Dead Queen Detectives tweeting me with the words “like the Four Marys” and that, my friends, was enough to send this to the top of my shopping list.
The Dead Queen Detectives : The Crown Jewels by Bevis Musson is a treat. It’s basically the Four Marys meets Corpse Talkt and I loved it. The Dead Queen Detectives are Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne and Queen Victoria. There are also the Dead Queens Detectives : International Queens who are Hatshepshut, Isabella, Catherine and Marie-Antoinette. And then, there’s also The Legion Of Substitute Dead Disputed Queen Detectives who are Boudicca, Empress Matilda, Lady Jane Grey and Mary Stuart. I mean, there’s a cast, right?
I had a few reservations about the font and lettering choices – the cover font doesn’t work for me at all on a thousand different levels, and it’s repeated within so I found that a tad problematic to work with. There were also a few moments in the text and captions that I felt could have benefited from being revisited and either tightened up or dropped. And yet, I massively enjoyed this and would go back to it in a heart-beat. I am here for comics doing intriguing, strange and delightful things and The Dead Queens is all that and more. It’s a fourth-wall breaking, deliciously anarchic thing and every now and then it absolutely shines.
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Daisy May Johnson 