Ghostbusters #14
Written by Erik Burnham
Art by Dan Schoening and Luis Antonio Delgado
PCOC by Tristan Jones
The short of it:
Ray has a James Bond dream, but the woman turns into John Belushi and it only gets better from there. You see, the ghost of Jake Blues only appears to Ray to warn him, the last time about Gozer, and now about the walls between dimensions. The whole time still in the body of a Bond girl. I love this book, he even rags on Ray for the girls giant chest. Anyway, dreams are over and Peter Venkman is none too pleased with the Ghost Smashers taking his headlines and his paycheck, Janine doesn’t care, and Egon….Egon is concentrating in front of the empty tank where Peter’s favorite green spud has been kept prisoner. It’s an experiment, trying out the Ghost Smasher method of dispersing ghosts without containment…it is not a permanent solution, they come back angry. On top of that, even Walter Peck hates these guys…more than he hates the Ghostbusters! That’s right, everyone’s favorite bureaucrat is fed up by these guys as well, and while he can’t really do much…he is more than able to point Pete in the right direction.
We’ve got Egon finally calling Janine out on her choice of men, and the fact that her current boyfriend she keeps talking about incessantly and bringing around, who happens to look like a blonde Egon. Janine is mad, Egon is jealous, and across town Ray just climbed out of the sewers to eat hot dogs. All in time for an appearance by the Ghost Smashers, and their boss who hates working for free, and a giant purple ram ghost! One they can’t seem to actually hurt with their Ghost Smashing tools! Could this be the end for our resident douchey new comers? Nah, Doctor’s Venkman and Stanz are on the job to show these new kids how it’s done!
Of course, a simple honest question from Ray leads to nothing but aggression, and Egon thinks he’s figured out just how bad things are going to get if ghost keep getting smashed….
What I liked:
- Dan Schoening’s cartoony art was something I thought was kinda weird and off about the book when I first started reading it, but now I don’t think I’d accept it any other way. Sure, I also enjoy the dark and moody pages Tristan Jones contributes to this book, but I really think it all works best in concert.
- I love that Slimer isn’t Slimer. Sure, I grew up with the cartoon that quickly devolved into “Slimer and Friends”, but he was always my least favorite character. He was the Scrappy Doo of the team. So seeing him used in his movie form; not talking or treated like a pet/friend, really works for me.
- Psychoanalytical Egon is amazing, but jealous Egon is perfectly human. It’s so rare to see, but so well handled. Egon processing human emotions in the most mechanical method he can.
- Venkman and Peck play off each other so well, there’s no respect, no trust, just an understanding that they both need each other in order to really get things accomplished.
- The ghost designs in this book are simple and awesome, I mean, it’s a giant purple goat. A giant, purple, demonic goat.
What I didn’t like:
- This books only real flaw is that you always NEED more after it’s over and done with. It’s just that good, you want more pages, or the next issue to drop in two weeks, but you wind up just waiting patiently for the next amazing installment.
- Not enough of Tristan Jones’s backup work, I mean, what we get is cool, but it’s one page of info and one pages of a few sketches. Not enough!
- There’s not nearly enough Winston in this book.
Final thoughts:
I need to review this book more often as I’ve yet to not absolutely love an issue. It’s consistently in my top five books every months, and if not for my occasional Gold Standard gush…I tend to love it quietly. I really need to work on that, as while I have definitely reviewed a few issues of this book, I know I never wrote up one for THE BOYS and me ignoring my favorite titles seems a bit strange, especially with how much attention I give to terrible events like AVX.
I remember buying the first issue of this book on a whim because it was on the staff recommendations section of my LCS. One of the best comic book decisions I’ve made in the last two years.
Ronald Alexander is proving to be a great little villain for our team, which is a nice change of pace. You can only hate Walter Peck so much, and the ghosts themselves don’t really make for long term villainy, more of a flavor of the issue sort of thing. Having a complete assclown that wants to get rich quick by third rate ghost busting is going to make things interesting, especially if he’s too dense to consider the science behind what he’s doing. You get the feeling that things are going to blow up huge, and you can’t wait to see how. Especially with the PCOC backup letting us know just how big of an assclown he is by showing us his record, and even his rejection letter when he tried to franchise the Ghostbusters.
Speaking of Ronald, one of his girls doesn’t seem overly pleased with him. Maybe a little sympathy love for Ray?
I love how complicated the book tries to sound right before characters dumb it all down enough for readers to really get what Egon is saying. There are so many books out there where the writer just expects every reader to get all of the smart talk, even when it refers to theoretical physics. Egon really needs sub titles, but Ray and Winston do a good enough job that I don’t mind not having them.
You’ve got action, comedy, romance, drama, really, you’ve got everything. This book has it all, and is really a must read for any and every fan of Ghostbusters. Both this issue and the serie as a whole.
Overall: 9/10
