Ghostbusters #2
Written by Erik Burnham
Art by Dan Schoening and Luis Antonio Delgado
The short of it:
There’s a ghost on the loose! With a knife! Who ya gonna call? Well, apparently not the Ghostbusters, as our new team is being forced into a photo shoot by PCOC before they can get any real work done! This means everyone has their own colored uniform, and the girls are in short shorts. They hate it, but they don’t get much of a choice; conditions like this they were forced to accept if they wanted to be interim Ghostbusters. They miss their long pants. Especially now that they’ve got to run around Central Park in pursuit of an angry ghost with a KNIFE! The ghost of a serial killer that went to his grave satisfied in the knowledge that nobody found the bodies. Ortiz knows him from her time at Quantico, not him him, but she studied his case. She’s the smart one. She figures out the trick.
There’s is hardly the only story, though, as the boys are still stuck in limbo and seeking a way out, while an interlude with Janosz may lead to the explanation of everything. Will the new team be able to help the old team? Will the old team escape on their own? How much time has actually passed in limbo, because Winston’s fiancee say that it’s been months and she can barely take it anymore.
What I liked:
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Agent Ortiz knocking some sense into Ron Alexander. Anytime Ron gets punched in the jaw, an angel gets its wings….or something. Point is, Ron needs to be punched in the mouth often.
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Janine and Melanie have a great little chat about the killer ghosts fate. Melanie wishes he could rot in hell, that he could suffer for all eternity. She’s a religious Latina that works for the FBI. This is perfectly in line with her character. Janine, thankfully, is able to find brightside enough to let Ortiz have her feelings of justice despite it.
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Ron is such a magnificent bastard. He works one part as the comic relief, but he also satisfies the d-bag quota, and with Venkman gone? Well, someone has to be the team jerkass.
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Gotta give more credit to the art. There’s great attention to detail, and the most subtle (and yet effective) example is the scratches and scrapes on the ladies legs. At one point near the end, Janine draws attention to them as proof of why they need to wear long pants. I went back to see if it was a ‘that panel only’ sort of thing, and nope. Full issue. Very subtle, but very well handled, and had I noticed them earlier on in the issue I’d have called them great foreshadowing.
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Janine’s ability to rationalize long pants. Sex may sell, but nothing beats something capable of actually protecting someone.
What I didn’t like:
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Jack Hardemeyer from PCOC. I get why you need him, and I see the potential of him, but he just didn’t really work for me in this issue. Too much of a buffoon and I never really got the feeling he’s going to be more of annoyance than a mosquito bite. Walter Peck he is not.
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Not enough Walter Peck.
Final thoughts:
Ron in the pig costume during the photo shoot. So awesome. Had me cracking up.
Kylie is going to be the star of this book for as long as this team is together. Sure, Erik is going to try and push Ron and Janine as the stars, but I watched Extreme Ghostbusters, I’m not ashamed to admit it, Kylie Griffin is awesome. And she has the ever present cat.
Man, for as much as I wondered where the storyline with crazy Janosz was going, I somehow never made the connection between that and the disappearance of the Ghostbusters. I feel kinda dumb, like, it was so obvious. There’s no reason to do a slow burn with a character (one page every issue or two) if something big isn’t going to happen with them.
I had completely forgotten the name of the Pumpkin Headed ghost from The Real Ghostbusters, always just thinking of him as Pumpkin Head. Samhain. Well, now all I can think of is the bad guy from Hack/Slash…and that mask of his.
Really, Ghostbusters is a fantastic comic featuring one of my all time favorite properties. It’s fun, exciting, well paced, features great characterization, and is something I can not recommend enough. One of the best books you can pick up every month.
Overall: 9/10
