Review: Ghostbusters International #5
“I have full authority to shoot you if anything is irreparably damaged.” – French Police Officer.
Erland Vitter has hired the Ghostbusters to travel from Venice Italy to Paris France. There they find trouble at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Certain Ghoulies want a piece of cloth that Ray found at Poveglia’s haunted asylum. Our trusty trio plus one captured the ghosts smoothly enough, but now the boys are in trouble with the French police. Kaia May, Vitter’s assistant, was also looking for the artifact and unwittingly unleashed the spirit of the unknown soldier. This brings our crew of containment officers to the Louvre…which has been slimed.
The Creative Team:
Erik Burnham gives us a brief history of the most famous, and haunted, museum in the world. Then he has our ghostbusters sneak in through the sewer to avoid detection. Egon is in New York doing his research and communicating with the rest of the team via phone on how to deal with this phenomenon. Burnham’s story telling is intriguing as he has split up our team and introduced other ghostbusters into the mainstream, this could be in anticipation of the new movie. A great way to showcase different team member’s talents. There’s humor and adventure on every page, including a scene where slimmer flips off Egon, all done in PG fashion but funny nonetheless.
Dan Schoening is his usual reliable self when rendering our favorite paranormal investigative team. IDW, just like NOW before them, do not render the characters in a realistic sense based on the actors but more as cartoon characters. NOW opted to copy the cartoon series which was hot at the time, but Schoening opted for a totally new look, since the cartoon hasn’t been on in years. He still captures the spirit of the characters if not the image of the actors. Egon is literally an egghead while Ray is his loveable goofball self and Venkman’s sarcastic wit is still a thorn in his team mates side. IDW’s Ghostbuster’s is a unique original read and still fresh after all these years.
The Cover:
And here’s where we come to my greatest criticism of the series. The picture itself is fine, we have the ghost of the Mona Lisa attacking Zeddemore, Stantz, and Venkman. A clever way to let the reader know that they’re about to enter the Louvre in Paris. But the background colors are dull, dull, dull! As in color me brown. Why not blue or red or even green? (Everything in comics is green, the Hulk, Martian Manhunter, the Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and the list goes on.) So the cover could be tweaked just a little.
In Conclusion:
Ray sees the potential to catalog something new. A ghosts evolving into a higher spectral plane but Venkman has to remind him that the thing has to be destroyed before it destroys them. So our Ghostbusters go to town to try and destroy this entity before they are themselves destroyed. And what of Ray’s Spectral artifact? Will they keep it or lose it? To be continued.***1/2
Ghostbusters International #5
Writer: Erik Burnham
Art: Dan Schoening
Colors: Luis Antonio Delgado
Letters: Neil Uyetake
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Publication date May 25, 2016
About the Author
Kevin Given Kevin Given has studied with "Longridge Writers Group" and "Writer's Boot Camp" a speech/communications major from the University of Maine Presque-Isle/Orono sites. He has created the "Karl Vincent Vampire Hunter" franchise which includes 2 novels and 8 comic books. They can be found on amazon, Indyplanet and Kindle. For a limited time you can get digital copies of "Karl Vincent: Vampire hunter" #1 and "Files of Karl Vincent" #1 for free on Indyplanet. Kevin is producing the third novel in the series "Dracula Rising" (working title) and developing "Foul Blood" into comic book form.
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