Neil Gaiman personally contributed to 2 'Dead Boy Detectives' episodes

LOS ANGELES, March 15 (UPI) -- Dead Boy Detectives, based on Neil Gaiman's comics, is coming soon to Netflix. Showrunners Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz told UPI on Friday that Gaiman has joined the writers for two of the eight episodes.

"He's contributed to two episodes in particular," Yockey said in a Los Angeles interview.

Yockey declined to specify which episodes feature Gaiman's contributions, but said fans will recognize his touch.

"People will see those when they come up," Yockey said. "I think they'll get it."

Yockey and Schwartz said Gaiman has been supportive of them reinterpreting his characters. Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri) are ghosts who solve cases involving other ghosts.

"It freed us to do our version of the Dead Boy Detectives," Yockey said. "We were excited about basically doing The Hardy Boys on acid."

Yockey said "Hardy Boys on acid" was his interpretation of Gaiman's comics. Yockey said he found them psychedelic in the way the art and text were arranged on the pages.

Schwartz said she and Yockey encouraged their writing staff to go wild.

"We start the room off saying, 'Pitch your most outrageous ideas,'" Schwartz said. "They all ended up making it into Season 1."

Schwartz and Yockey said the episodic cases Charles and Edwin solve are all original to the series. They have taken elements of their backstory, and that of Crystal (Kassius Nelson), a living psychic assisting them, from the comics.

"A lot of times, too, we've taken things from the comic book and reappropriated them to use in a different way," Yockey said.

Schwartz added that fans can discover "a lot of Easter eggs" in the show.

Gaiman first introduced Dead Boy Detectives in an issue of The Sandman. Sandman also has a Netflix series adaptation, so Yockey promised "a fun amount" of crossovers.

The series premiere of Dead Boy Detectives already had some Sandman Easter eggs. Yockey said Netflix, and Sandman creators Gaiman and Allan Heinberg have been cooperative and supportive.

"We've got some more surprises beyond what's in the first episode," Yockey said.

UPI will have more on Dead Boy Detectives before the show premieres.

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