Discuss the Ghostbusters Comic from IDW, as well as the now defunct Ghostbusters: Legion series.
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By mrmichaelt
#454760
Sort of related to comics so... noticed this shaping up the past two weeks from Tristan Jones and some light bulbs are turning on.

July 22, 2013
*Tristan Jones tweets
Those Ghostbusters stories I never got around to telling...? Things are happening...
But was quick to dismiss he was writing something.

*Posted a drawing of Peter

August 8, 2013
*Tweeted this about a past job.
Looks like the job that evaporated that made me go from being a comics writer to a comics artist has rematerialized.
Which recall, Tristan originally got hired by IDW to do a spirit guide type book but some rights issue came up and he started working on the ongoing comic with the PCOC files.

*9 minutes later this
Christ, now I have to go back and re-read ALL the Ghostbusters comics by @Dapperpomade and @erikburnham. Who the hell wants to do that…?! ;)
But denied it is comic work.

August 9, 2013
*Tweeted today and brought up Spengler's Spirit Guide mock up he posted little over two years ago
If this were real, and I drew every creature from the movies, cartoons, comics & games, you'd all buy it, right?
Did the rights free up and Tristan might be back on track to doing a spirit guide book just in time for the 30th anniversary next year? Speculate.
By TristanJones
#454832
HA!

Alright, I'm going to put a few cards on the table.

You probably won't ever see me writing Ghostbusters. It's Erik's book. I would've loved to have come on and write TWO stories, but those two stories probably won't ever happen. I'm working on a creator owned series with a very good artist named Doug Holgate -- a great friend of mine -- very talented gent. We're cooking something up. We were shooting ideas back and forth regarding characters for story lines, and we both love Venkman, particularly PRE-Ghostbusters Venkman/Ghostbusters 2 Venkman, so it's a character we're feeling out and taking those stories I wanted to do for Ghostbusters and applying them to something else. I scribbled out that Venkman while we were brainstorming. I also drew a HEAP of other things, but revealing them would be too... revealing. I'll have you all know I'm a huge Peter Cushing fan too... (HINTS).

Re-reading everything came down to catching up with the series. I've been pretty slack in my reading. I took two steps into The NEW Ghostbusters #1 and thought I needed to read it all. And the job? It was an illustration job before IDW. There was some stuff I'd worked on just after the written work on TMNT and an opportunity to illustrate another book years ago came up. It actually had nothing to do with comics or Ghostbusters, but it's what got me drawing again.

The Spirit Guide thing was simply me looking back through my Deviantart file and looking back at things I had done, things I was happy with, things I could do better, etc. I haven't really heard anything from IDW since I left the book. I was lined up to illustrate Silent Hill, but it fell apart. Now I'm illustrating Hoax Hunters at Image (which you should all be putting your orders down for -- Burnham even did a story a little while ago).

Would I want to do more? Sure. Let me do some more covers. Let me write a story some time. But the likelihood of these things happening are pretty low. It ultimately comes down to you guys wanting it and actually doing something about it. I can ask and pitch to my heart's content, but that doesn't really make it happen. I pitched a handful of ideas while I was on that book and the only one that eventuated was "Who Killed Laura Parr?". The Tobin story was canned pretty early on when plans for an annual evaporated, which was why I put that story into the back of #8. I don't even think I told anyone what I was doing!

Would I want to do the Spirit Guide? Certainly. But I can't do it on my own. Whoever has the rights to do it would need to get in touch with me and ask me to do it. I don't know if that's IDW or not (though their IDW Limited selection caters to different books I think...).

Like I said, I'd love to come back and work on Ghostbusters. I was a little bit gutted that I didn't get to write Mars Attacks vs the REAL Ghostbusters, given it wasn't a part of the ongoing continuity, but eh. I was offered a spot doing Real Ghostbusters 2 page stories at the back of each issue (ala PCOC), but I declined. I just felt I couldn't get good stories across in 2 page chunks without it relying on simply being Titan-style gag stories. Erik's done great on it, though, and having the quick character back-ups is great too -- kinda like what PCOC's aim was (develop more around the characters in a subtle way).

Honestly, I'd kill a man to write an EGB or RGB mini-series, or the Spirit Guide, but at the end of the day all the speculation points to these things above. I'd love to say I was doing any of these things, just so I could get something out there for you guys again, but unfortunately, you'll have to make do with my creator owned stuff.
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By mrmichaelt
#454863
1) Nertz! But I hope you do have an opportunity and time to contribute something for the big GB arc next year. It is great seeing your work pop up now and again, such as your Mega Man cover.

2) Peter Cushing? Like Hammer Horror Peter Cushing? Interesting.

3) IDW Limited... email sent.
By Lord Nightwalker
#457058
I was wondering what had happened with your involvement at IDW. We even talked about this a bit over at the "Drome". I do hope you get the chance again, not only because you have great talent, but also because you are a fan. A fan that "gets it".
By TristanJones
#457065
Lord Nightwalker wrote:I was wondering what had happened with your involvement at IDW. We even talked about this a bit over at the "Drome". I do hope you get the chance again, not only because you have great talent, but also because you are a fan. A fan that "gets it".
Cheers mate!

It came down mainly to work.
We all kinda felt that going back to PCOC after "Laura" was something of a backwards step, but I did a lot more work on Laura than I could basically afford to at the time (don't get me wrong either, I loved every minute of it, but I was juggling personal things as well) and had to move on to some other work.

The original idea was to go back and do 2-page RGB stories as of the relaunch, but I honestly felt like I couldn't deliver satisfying REAL Ghostbusters stories in such tiny chunks, and it would be eight months to a year before you'd see any resolution to ONE relatively short story. I have heaps of ideas that I think would be fantastic for RGB and even EGB stories, but I couldn't make any of it work in such small chunks and have it read well when it's eventually collected.

Tom understood where I was coming from. I told him my interests lay more in writing than drawing these days too, though I'd be happy to do covers and draw the odd stories if ever needed, and that was pretty much that. Tom and I started developing a Silent Hill mini series which never eventuated unfortunately, and since then I've been working on other things.

I did say if the opportunity ever came up to do RGB mini series' or one shots or something that I would kill any man desired, but I don't know whether there will be. I know Erik did the Mars Attacks one, but yeah, I hadn't really heard anything since.
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By mrmichaelt
#457081
TristanJones wrote:The original idea was to go back and do 2-page RGB stories as of the relaunch, but I honestly felt like I couldn't deliver satisfying REAL Ghostbusters stories in such tiny chunks, and it would be eight months to a year before you'd see any resolution to ONE relatively short story. I have heaps of ideas that I think would be fantastic for RGB and even EGB stories, but I couldn't make any of it work in such small chunks and have it read well when it's eventually collected.
Yeah, that was the exact problem. The flow of reading them issue to issue was doable but rereading them all at once in the trade was way better. I still thank the gods you were able to get the length of pages per issue for the Laura Parr arc.
TristanJones wrote:Tom understood where I was coming from. I told him my interests lay more in writing than drawing these days too, though I'd be happy to do covers and draw the odd stories if ever needed, and that was pretty much that. Tom and I started developing a Silent Hill mini series which never eventuated unfortunately, and since then I've been working on other things.
I'm sure you would be #1 on the list to fill-in for Erik Burnham if he ever needed a break like Evan Shaner doing main art of #7-8.
TristanJones wrote:I did say if the opportunity ever came up to do RGB mini series' or one shots or something that I would kill any man desired, but I don't know whether there will be. I know Erik did the Mars Attacks one, but yeah, I hadn't really heard anything since.
<ahem> Erik being the one exception, I'd love to see you do anyone of those. Wonder what's the next company wide event IDW has planned for 2014...
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By mrmichaelt
#457352
WIP: Disgusting blob

And please keep on showing your support for Tristan and retweet this from Tristan to @IDWPublishing to let them know this is one pitch that needs the greenlight.
TristanJones wrote:Asked to pitch for my dream project (outside of creator owned stuff). Just handed in pitch. Cross everything. Particularly the streams.
By Razorgeist
#457742
mrmichaelt wrote:Yeah, that was the exact problem. The flow of reading them issue to issue was doable but rereading them all at once in the trade was way better. I still thank the gods you were able to get the length of pages per issue for the Laura Parr arc.
Thats an understatement. Laura Parr was great in the single issue but the trade collection just made it so much better.
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By mrmichaelt
#458088
Tristan has recently started asking fans to post their support at a Spirit Guide thread at the IDW forums. Please do, folks.

I hope this tweet of Tristan's is a good sign the pitch is going in the right direction!
Tristan Jones wrote:Just got a pretty exciting email. If all comes together and dream project gets approved then it will be the best anything of its kind! #fact
By TristanJones
#458110
mrmichaelt wrote:Tristan has recently started asking fans to post their support at a Spirit Guide thread at the IDW forums. Please do, folks.

I hope this tweet of Tristan's is a good sign the pitch is going in the right direction!
Tristan Jones wrote:Just got a pretty exciting email. If all comes together and dream project gets approved then it will be the best anything of its kind! #fact
To be clear, I think if it's something you guys want to see, talking about it to IDW is probably your best bet. Again, I don't even know if the rights lie there. If fans are passionate about something to do with Ghostbusters they should speak to them directly. The only other publisher I'm aware of that might have those rights is Titan, over in the UK, as they've published a bunch of Ghostbusters things recently and tend to hold onto licenses like that. It also wouldn't surprise me if they were the reason the comics were so hard to get in the UK and Australia for a while. I saw that someone had posted there and suggested people do the same. The key reason being that a lot of people email, message, tweet, post on facebook about wanting me to do things GB related or Turtles related or whatever it is, and there's honestly not a lot I can do. Tom's in charge of me if I'm working on the comics, and Chris Ryall, Ted Adams and a bunch of dudes are above him (I think). If they all know that there's a demand for something, they may look to meet that. A writer/artist that isn't Bendis or Gran Morrison or whoever can say "hey, here's my idea" all they want, but if there's no demand, there won't be a product. If IDW can't do it, then they can't do it.

And besides... I never said I'd repitched the book. If I see there's interest, and Tom's open to it and IDW in general are open to it, then sure, but I'm as in the dark as anyone else. I've got a few dream gigs and admittedly doing the Spirit Guide is one of them, but so is adapting the Hellbent script, and if I could ever get my hands on them I'd want to adapt the original GB2 scripts (the infamous "Seed" script people talk about every so often). I'd love to tell Real Ghostbusters stories, Extreme Ghostbusters stories, Dino Riders, BPRD stuff... you get the idea. These are all dream gigs, but so are my creator owned pursuits. I've also just been asked to pitch scripts for an animated series created by one of DC's current top writers, so things are filling up for next year and right now, none of it's Ghostbusters related. Unfortunately.

Like I said earlier in the thread, I'm working on a book with Doug Holgate, and a lot of the ideas I had for Ghostbusters stories are probably going to be put into that, so there's probably always going to be some confusion when it comes to these things because I know there's a section of you guys that really liked what I was doing and would like to see more, but a lot of these things that may seem like GB related posts actually aren't, they're for this thing with Doug, and if they ARE GB related, generally it's just me filling time and having fun, like the Tempus redo and the Earps. Certainly the responses here spurns my own desire to return to the book, but Erik and Dan are slaying people with the book at the moment, and to be honest, I haven't really heard from anyone except Dan properly since Silent Hill kinda fell apart.

That tweet you mentioned earlier is VAGUELY... TANGENTIALLY related to Ghostbusters... in that someone MAY be getting involved in something I'm working on if the stars align, but it's not ACTUALLY Ghostbusters related. Horror related, does involve demons and spiritualism. Could it be worked across to something Ghostbusters related? Sure, but like I keep saying, none of that is my call.
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By mrmichaelt
#458113
TristanJones wrote:And besides... I never said I'd repitched the book. If I see there's interest, and Tom's open to it and IDW in general are open to it, then sure, but I'm as in the dark as anyone else. I've got a few dream gigs and admittedly doing the Spirit Guide is one of them, but so is adapting the Hellbent script, and if I could ever get my hands on them I'd want to adapt the original GB2 scripts (the infamous "Seed" script people talk about every so often). I'd love to tell Real Ghostbusters stories, Extreme Ghostbusters stories, Dino Riders, BPRD stuff... you get the idea. These are all dream gigs, but so are my creator owned pursuits. I've also just been asked to pitch scripts for an animated series created by one of DC's current top writers, so things are filling up for next year and right now, none of it's Ghostbusters related. Unfortunately.
Sorry, I just inferred from your Facebook entries you pitched the Spirit Guide again or were about to this month. I think from reading my theories in the Ongoing Comic thread, I tend to get ahead of myself and connect dots that aren't there. lol.
TristanJones wrote:Like I said earlier in the thread, I'm working on a book with Doug Holgate, and a lot of the ideas I had for Ghostbusters stories are probably going to be put into that, so there's probably always going to be some confusion when it comes to these things because I know there's a section of you guys that really liked what I was doing and would like to see more, but a lot of these things that may seem like GB related posts actually aren't, they're for this thing with Doug, and if they ARE GB related, generally it's just me filling time and having fun, like the Tempus redo and the Earps. Certainly the responses here spurns my own desire to return to the book, but Erik and Dan are slaying people with the book at the moment, and to be honest, I haven't really heard from anyone except Dan properly since Silent Hill kinda fell apart.
Doug Holgate... isn't he another Aussie artist? Interesting. And yes, I think I'm confusing some of your tweets like that one that looked like Peter? Silent Hill fell apart... bummer.
By TristanJones
#458119
Yeah, the Venkman thing was something I sent to Doug when we were back and forthing with character ideas. I thought GB fans would dig it (which clearly they did). Like I said a while ago, I had a few GB stories I was hoping to tell that probably won't happen, so Doug and I are reconfiguring some of them to suit stories we're telling under the "Associated Gentlemen" label.

I do love that you guys pay such close attention to things, but yeah, that "want" seems to override things sometimes! I'll have to be more specific in my cryptic messages! ;)

On the flip side, there's talk that I'll be hosting a screening of Ghostbusters and they're looking into a QnA with certain production members via skype or something, so that could be fun if it works out.
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By mrmichaelt
#458182
TristanJones wrote:Yeah, the Venkman thing was something I sent to Doug when we were back and forthing with character ideas. I thought GB fans would dig it (which clearly they did). Like I said a while ago, I had a few GB stories I was hoping to tell that probably won't happen, so Doug and I are reconfiguring some of them to suit stories we're telling under the "Associated Gentlemen" label.
Cool, hope all goes well. Just curious though, how many unused GB stories did you have?
TristanJones wrote:On the flip side, there's talk that I'll be hosting a screening of Ghostbusters and they're looking into a QnA with certain production members via skype or something, so that could be fun if it works out.
Very cool! It would be dope if you got to do a live commentary. If things advance and you need some names besides the more well known ones...
* Location Manager - Paul Pav
* Production Coordinator - Rita Miller-Grant
* Assistant Production Coordinator - Sherry Lynne
* New York Crew: Production Coordinator - Kate Guinzburg
* New York Crew: Location Managers - Lenny Vullo, Jeff Stolow
Just 'cause I still have some filming location questions, lol.
By Ghostbuster-Adem84
#458424
Tristan I gotta admit it's sad to know you've left the book, as I've really enjoyed your involvement from the start of it. The Laura Parr short story is one of my favorites to go back and re-read finding new bits here and there that you magically slid in. To date of all the artists who have worked on the one shots and arcs and monthly you are by far my favorite at drawing the Ecto-1! God man, the details and angles you out that car in are just amazing. Not knocking the other artists who worked on the franchise or anything but so far you take the taco pal. A RGB or EGB written and drawn by you? Wont lie my friend I would snap that book up faster then a frog on a hotplate. I honestly can't see why the RGB one shot hasn't gotten more attention then it did, I'll be the first admit that while the art wasn't my cup of tea it was wrote and read like any other episode of the series! I think we all need to go to IDW forums and start a thread about a trying a four issue arc with the cartoon series. Who knows it might sell well enough to go monthly son! All fan boy fantasizing aside I would really like to see a RGB comic come out again, even if it's a four parter.
By TristanJones
#458438
One thing I'd love to do is adapt the early draft of Ghostbusters 3. The Hellbent one. It'd take some work, and it wouldn't look much like the original draft at the end, but anyone who's read it would see the threads and the base material. It's a PERFECT Extreme Ghostbusters/Real Ghostbusters story. I would love to pitch it, but I just haven't had the chance.
By TristanJones
#468927
I should elaborate. The core problem is that it would need to be a big book. You couldn't do this thing any sort of justice at anything less than say 150 pages. That wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface, because you'd have 75 pages of art, and 75 of information. I'd need to be paid for each of those, writing and art. Different wages, but still requires a significant monetary output from IDW to make happen. I could drop my page rate completely to bedrock rates and hope that people would buy the original art to recoup some of that, but that would only make the assets cheaper.

The production of such a book would still be expensive (the second you take a book from black and white to color, the costs go up tremendously), and realistically, would only be purchased by a relatively small market. The folks buying the Ghostbusters comics would probably buy it, maybe a few other hardcore fans (supposing I make it look like a prop), but the buyers outside of that wouldn't be in high numbers. It would also be an undoubtedly expensive book, more so if it were a hardcover (which again, increases production costs).

At the end of the day, it wasn't deemed financially viable. Sales probably wouldn't outweigh production costs on a book like that. Believe me, no one wants to see this book happen more than me, but it's hard to ignore the costs involved. Even making it a high end book through IDW Limited, the price on it could scare off a lot of the general fan base.

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