There's a reason I folded
books and comics into this series.
So they don't clog up movie reviews, even if technically, they're often movie sequels/prequels.
So, we start off the category reboot with.....
Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary (2019)
Previously with this franchise...
Yep, another "Answer The Call", sequel.
Mixed in with the other 3 generations.
As long as they keep doing ATC sequels, I'll keep reviewing 'em.
So, these one-shots came out over the last 4 weeks, and the last one was today.
Here we go....
1. Ghostbusters.
Remember when in the original movie, Winston was applying for the job of 4th Ghostbuster, and Janine rattled off all the bullshit he was expected to believe in, and one of them was "the theory of Atlantis"?
They finally meet up with Atlanteans.
Yep, they did it.
A spell tablet releases an Atlantean ghost, then the ghost raises Neptune as a disturbing Golem made of fish.
Nice fun little quickie.
Feels like a really good RGB episode, even though it's original recipe Ghostbusters.
Lots of little Easter eggs for the first 2 movies, and RGB.
Probably the best one of these.
2. The Real Ghostbusters.
Pretty cute.
Nails the style and pace of an RGB episode dead-on.
Lots of little callbacks to previous RGB episodes.
Both as direct Easter eggs, and little similarity echoes.
Story was a bit thin and fluffy though.
But...even that's a callback, cuz the old RGB comics by NOW publishing were thin and quick like this.
Hmm, y'know, this is the first solo RGB comic SINCE the NOW run!
*Googles*
Yeah, that ended in 1992, one year after the show ended.
It's been 27 years since an RGB comic!
Damn!
Anyway, plot...
A competitive ghostbusting business outdoes the Busters, and tries to head-hunt Ray.
They turn out to be frauds, and Ray and Slimer bring them down.
I guess this was the weakest.
It wasn't bad, just the other three were better.
I liked the RGB guys better in the crossovers.
Those interactions were far more interesting than going back to formula.
3. Ghostbusters: Answer The Call
First non-crossover adventure of the girls since "What Dreams May come".
Again, just cute.
Here, the character interaction feels more like the movie, but the plot and art style is what feels like an old NOW-era RGB comic.
A demon cult pulls a "Rosemary's Baby", routine, but the baby comes out a girl instead of a boy, so they abandon their plan.
The demon-daddy doesn't care, and tries to start the apocalypse anyway.
Proton beams, and quick thinking by Holtzmann save the day.
I'd rate this....third best.
A little better than the RGB one, definitely not as good as the classic-GB one.
4. Extreme Ghostbusters.
It's been 22 years since the last episode of EGB, and EGB NEVER had a solo comic of its own, so this is it.
I'd rate this second best after the classic-GB one.
So...
1. Classic
2. Extreme
3. Answer
4. Real
Tim Lattie has been doing awesome variant covers for the GB series all along, and they've always been my favorites, but now he finally does interior art, and the wait has been too goddamned long.
And it fits like a glove that he's doing the Extreme team, cuz you can tell from the covers he did for "Crossing Over", he fucking loves Kylie.
And speaking of fucking loving Kylie, holy crap, they finally actually evolved the Kylie + Eduardo relationship.
Cartoons were always trapped in a grade school crush version of romance, but now that the show is defunct, the comic writers can do anything they want.
Oh, they don't get to fuck or anything, but in dialog, you can tell they're moving ahead a little further.
Better than poor Egon and Janine ever got, anyway.
Anyway, story is, the ghost of a PETA activist endows zoo animals with intelligence and speech so they can rebel against humans.
Lot of similarity to a certain RGB episode.
Hmm...an RGB theme runs through all of these, actually....
Story/dialog is about equal to the ATC one, but the Tim Lattie art blows it out of the park.
Not just the beauty of it, but the "performance", of the characters he portrays.
You can almost see it move like a Disney cartoon.
If he got a whole regular EGB spinoff series, I'd buy that for a dollar!
Overall, yeah, fun little experiment, and fun little trip through the memory lane of the franchise.
I'll definitely buy the collected trade paperback.
Doesn't top "Crossing Over", but it isn't meant to.
Now, the Transformers crossover, that might just give it a run for its money.
I've seen preview pages, like the comic version of a trailer, and I already like what I'm seeing.
Y'know, I was originally gonna cover only the ATC sequels, cuz that's where it looked like the series was going, but the movies are going back to the classic generation, so I'll cover all of the GB stuff now.
"Crossing Over", canonizing literally everything necessitates it anyway.
So, I'll do the Transformers crossover when all the issues are out.
See you next time for that.
And, this is the 60th Meedya Morsel, so up next, a compilation of 31-60!!
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