Ghostbusters: Year One #2 - IDW Publishing

GHOSTBUSTERS: YEAR ONE No. 2, February 2020

Matching up to Erik Burnham’s intention of including “as much as possible from the original movie”, the former video store manager’s script for Issue Two of “Ghostbusters: Year One” not only must have delighted this supernatural comedy franchise’s fans by revisiting the Boys in Gray’s opening foray in ghost-busting at the New York Public Library. But rather splendidly then depicts a suitably tongue-in-cheek rematch between the proton pack wearing quartet and “the bibliothecary known as Eleanor Twitty” in which brains, as well as a battered copy of Ptolomy’s Cosmographical, undoubtedly wins the day over brawn.

In fact, the vast majority of this twenty-page periodical focuses upon poor Alice Sherman’s frightening confrontation with a “full torso apparition”, and Roger Delacourt’s desperate attempt to get the team back to his library in order to “finish what we started.” Crammed full of “symmetrical book stacking, just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947”, and a simply stunning splash page by artist Dan Schoening, which rather marvellously captures the sheer spectacular of the elderly spook transforming herself into her utterly hideous, fearsomely fanged other self, this thoroughly enjoyable return to both pastures new and nostalgically familiar must surely have provided most readers with a thoroughly entertaining trip down memory lane.

Similarly as successful, is the American author’s ability to provide plenty of characterful cameos into this comic, with the (re)appearance of Jenny Adams and Bob Douglas proving particularly amusing, as the students somewhat spikily reminisce over Doctor Venkman’s poorly thought out experiment to ascertain psychic gifts; “That maniac electrocuted me. You know? I’ve had weird dreams ever since!” Rather impressively, the “Minnesota writer” even manages to provide some ‘screen time’ to Ray’s much ridiculed “honest-to-goodness”, undersea, unexplained, mass sponge migration.

However, cleverly intermixed with all these nods to its source material, is Burnham’s take on just how Stanz and Spengler were introduced to one another, courtesy of the smart-mouthed Venkman. These particular verbal exchanges could easily have been viewed by some as something of a sedentary sacrilege, yet due to Erik’s ‘spot on’ dialogue, such as Peter’s sassily going to “grab a slice with the Ladies Fencing Team”, as well as Schoening pencilling Egon with a “Doctor Who” length multi-coloured scarf, they arguably fit in with the surrounding canon reasonably neatly.

Written by: Erik Burnham, Art by: Dan Schoening, and Colors by: Luis Antonio Delgado