Well, "Ghostbusters: Crossing Over", brought together the three movies, the cartoons, and the video games into one big nostalgia fan-gasm anniversary bash, and it was great.
Everything a GB fan could ever dream of (short of a new movie).
So, everything should be canon now in Ghostbusters-land, right?
Not quite...
Here's what ended up on the cutting room floor.
Ghostbusters: Legion (2004)
By 88MPH studios.
Which...now doesn't exist.
This supposedly picks up two years after "Ghostbusters 2", but....they ret-conned the timeline so that GB1 & GB2 happened in the 2000's.
That's....fuckin' stupid.
There are calendars in GB1 that say 1983, which is when they filmed, there are Princess Di being pregnant with Prince Harry newspapers, the clothes and cars are clearly 80's, Larry King had brown hair, and didn't have his CNN show yet, the guys are clearly baby-boomers in their musical tastes.
To be in their 30's in the 00's, they'd have to be gen-xers, and that's a whole different set of cultural baggage.
It just makes a mess.
I can see the DESIRE to do that, so they're still young men, but interacting with our times, but...yeah, misguided.
IDW was right to do it their way, that real-time has passed in the 84-89 timeline, and the movie Busters are in the mid 1990's by now.
Then, later on, they dimensionally crossed with the girls from ATC who ARE in our times, and then they get the best of both worlds.
Anyway, this series still could have been redeemed by taking part in "Crossing Over", and becoming canon as an alternate universe.
But, the defunct state of 88MPH puts it in legal limbo.
That killed that.
And that's why that timeline is dead.
Ghostbusters: The Return (2004)
Same year as "Ghostbusters: Legion".
The first and only GB expansion novel.
Every other GB prose book has been a movie adaptation, or a source-book like "Ghosts From Our Past".
So, the intention is that this would pretty much be Ghostbusters 3.
And a 20th anniversary present.
Problem is, they did the same ret-con bullshit as "Legion", by saying the movies were in modern times.
Well, how are you celebrating 20 years of a franchise if you hand-wave away 20 years of franchise history??
Despite the futzed with timeline, this book has its fans.
It's known in fan circles as "the one where Peter runs for Mayor of New York".
Sadly, you're never gonna see it, cuz just like "Legion", the company that made it folded, and getting a used copy on Amazon costs *checks* a thousand dollars and change.
Holy fuckballs!
And just like "Legion", it's why there's no Mayor Venkman in "Crossing Over".
5 years later, "Ghostbusters The Video Game", became the official sequel to GB1 & GB2, and was set in 1991, setting the pattern for the IDW comics.
Kiss the "The Return", timeline goodbye, kiddies.
Ghostbusters: The Other Side (2008)
This isn't non-canon because of anything legal, it's non-canon because it sucks donkey dick with big slurping sounds, and hee-haws and hoof stomps of disturbing donkey pleasure.
All right, so here's why it sucks.
It's all wrong.
In the depiction of the characters, in tone, in look, in feel, they got everything wrong.
Here's how they got everything wrong.
And they did it all in one stroke.
They kill the fucking Ghostbusters.
You don't kill the fucking Ghostbusters!!
I see the logic behind it.
"Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey", killed Bill & Ted, and they got out of that.
And they got out of it with humor.
If you kill and revive your heroes in a PG comedy franchise, you damned well better do it in a funny way.
They don't do that here.
The tone is dark as fuck.
Ghost-gangsters get ahold of real Tommy-guns, and mow the Busters down, and you see their dead eyes, and bleeding bullet holes.
Then they carelessly toss the bodies into the East River.
That's pretty fucking dark!
After that, their spirits go to Hell, and they have to contrive some way to come back to life like the aforementioned Bill & Ted.
In-universe, it's possible, Vigo almost came back through possessing Oscar.
If there's one way, there are other ways.
But you'd better make me believe it.
They don't do that.
They don't even try to do that.
Now, here's where they get the characters wrong.
Peter is a cold blooded killer, and not all all jokey.
Well, a little jokey, but not as good as Bill Murray.
See, he's not really dead, he didn't get shot, he got possessed by a ghost-gangster, so that keeps his body alive, which keeps his spirit tethered to life, which gives him superpowers in the death realm, and he pops into Hell to save the other guys by tearing monsters to shreds like he's Ash from "Evil Dead 2".
Blood, guts, amputated limbs and heads, the whole deal.
Peter isn't Ash!!
You don't kill the Busters, and Peter isn't Ash!!
Dude who wrote this got Ghostbusters confused with both "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey", and "Evil Dead 2".
Ghostbusters isn't either of those.
Oh, a mashup of them could be done, but you have to adjust the dials just right to nail the mixture just right.
This writer doesn't.
It's a tonal mess.
And finally, the guys don't look like the guys.
Egon has spikey Bart Simpson hair; Peter, Ray, and Winston have the right hairdos, but none of their faces are right, they're all pretty generic.
Except Egon, who looks like Willem Dafoe.
Everything is wrong.
That's why it sucks, here's why it isn't canon.
The version of Hell depicted here drastically conflicts with with the one in later books considered canon.
When they do go to Hell again, these events are never referenced.
You'd think that would come up all the time.
"Hey, remember when we all died?".
"Yeah, those were the days".
Nope, it never comes up again.
Even when Egon is killed and resurrected by magical means in a later story.
"Hey, he's been dead before, let's bring him back that way!".
Nope, they go on this whole global quest for another magic force to reverse his magical death.
The events of "The Other Side", don't come up.
The only rational answer, is they don't exist anymore.
Erik Burnham has clearly disavowed this book in his GB universe.
Its not even allowed to come out and play in "Crossing Over", as an alternate universe.
It's a shame, because it's the first IDW GB book.
You'd like history to show that they nailed it right out of the gate.
Nope, they fell on their faces, and had to get up, wipe the dirt and blood off their noses, and give it a second go with a quiet reboot.
They've gotten it right ever since though.
So, that's about it.
Not bad for a 35 year franchise.
Star Wars hasn't been that lucky.
Star Wars had to delete the Ewock movies, the Holiday Special, the Ewock and Droids cartoons, and several hundred novels and comic books from the 70's to 2012.
Terminator's history is a graveyard of dead comics, books, a TV series, and half of it's own fucking movies.
Dozens of Star Trek novels, and truckloads of their comics are all landfill fodder.
Ditto Indiana Jones.
Ditto Conan.
Ditto Tarzan.
Up against a lot of famous franchises, Ghostbusters's report card is almost spotless in comparison.
Not bad at all.
Just a shame that minus those three books, Ghostbusters effectively sat out the 00's and we've got nothing to show.
I mean, yeah, the '09 video game, but come on, you know what I mean.
80's had the 2 movies, and RGB, and all the comics and toys connected to it.
90's had the tail end of RGB, and then EGB in '97.
10's have had the Burnham led IDW comics, GB:ATC, and more merch than ever before.
20's are gonna have GB2020, and probably the animated one we keep hearing about, and probably that prequel Aykroyd wants to do, and of course, IDW comics will continue to fill in all the gaps.
00's?
A deleted book, a deleted comic, and an ignored comic.
Well, the silver lining is IDW learned what not to do, and Aykroyd probably learned the public wasn't hungry enough for it in the 00's.
They probably could have cut better deals with better companies, and talent, if that thirst had been there.
But now?
People are salivating for GB2020.
So, maybe even that decade lull was a good thing in the end.
Anyway, here's to the new good old days of the Ghostbusters universe.
I think we'll look back on them as fondly as the 80's.
So long as we don't get nuked or something.
Previously-
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Ghostbusters: What's Not Canon. (MM #116)
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