Aw, look. Melanie Ortiz, who appeared in "Haunted America" is in New York. Apparently, she decided she wanted the Doctor V after all. And since she's a breathing human being with two X chromosomes, Venkman's not going to dissuade her, right? And like I said when she was first introduced, she's a little bit of a Dana Scully in-joke and we all know how Venkman is around tall women named Dana.
So they're walking around on a date, and then Venkman gets kidnapped by Peoplebuster Venkman.
In short order, glittery off-camera entities snag Egon, Ray, and Winston. All of a sudden, New York has a massive shortage of professional paranormal investigators and eliminators.
Did I say things were getting back to "normal"? Hah hah. I lied.
We shift to three months later, and three people in flight suits with the names "Spengler", "Venkman", and "Stantz" are on a bust. They do catch the ghost, Jail Jaw, but not before "Venkman" gets slimed. Seems an oddly familiar setup...
But it's not Egon Spengler, Peter Venkman, and Ray Stantz--it's Janine Melnitz, Melanie Ortiz, and Kylie Griffin, respectively.
On the one hand, it's kind of disappointing to have completely skipped the immediate aftermath of the Ghostbusters being abducted. I mean, good grief, in #14 Janine has an argument with Egon, the implications of which hadn't sunk into her yet (at least not on camera) and then he disappears? How bad did she freak out about that? On the other hand...she IS the one wearing the "Spengler" flight suit...
Our old friend Wally Wick, the Ghostbusters' resident Asshole Boss figure, isn't happy about the whole thing, but he's working an angle: accept new agreements with the city, and Janine, Kylie, and Ortiz can be the official New Ghostbusters. The Ghostsmashers were a big hit with the general public because they were 3/4 leggy women kicking ghost butt, and Peck sees an opportunity to replicate that success. He doesn't like them, granted, but Janine is knowledgeable about the Ghostbusters operation--and has access to the Containment Unit and other GBI systems; Kylie is knowledgeable about the paranormal; and Ortiz is a Federal Agent, after all. All three also just happen to be leggy women, to boot. There's just one catch: they need someone to maintain the equipment. With the two top experts currently vacationing in another dimension, ironically enough, the only one left who knows the tech...
...Disgraced Ghostsmasher founder and leader Ron "Jake Kong, and You're Not" Alexander.
Now, as everyone who's read much of my postings and fan stories knows, I'm a big Janine fan, and one of the appeals of this story arc is her new status as the experienced veteran. And yeah, even though the cover has her in Venkman's colors, I much prefer the implications of her choosing Egon's flight suit in this issue.
Kylie is another great character, generally regarded as the best of Extreme Ghostbusters' additions to the franchise, and it's good to see her coming "full circle" just a little bit. Why, she even had an EGB PKE Meter on the cover, and everything. She's been brought into the property in this version through a connection with Ray, so it makes sense that if she has to wear any of the original Ghostbusters' colors, it'd be his--though having her wearing Ray's darker GB2 suit in the book itself fits even better (I can't help it--I went in the direction of her in a
dark flight suit myself.
Melanie Ortiz is still kind of a blank slate, this only being her second appearance, so we'll see where it goes. She wears Venkman's flight suit presumably because, again, he's the original Ghostbuster she's most strongly connected to, though the cover illustration has her in Winston's colors. Since her training as an FBI agent makes her undoubtedly the best one of the New Ghostbusters in a fight, it does parallel her with the former Marine Winston is.
And Ron? Well, that jerk's gonna have a long way to go to make up for all the trouble he caused. I guess he got Egon's colors by process of elimination, and being the resident techie by default, though he's really more like Venkman with even less scruples.
And after all of that, we begin our new cartoon-flavored backup strip this issue. It starts with Venkman and Ray dropping off a ghost in the Containment Unit, and Venkman makes a hilarious joke about Egon's long-windedness. Inside the ECU, the new occupant meets one of the heavyweights: Samhain, the spirit of Halloween, and we don't mean the stage magician either.
Boy, if this was coming out closer to October, I'd be really really worried about that fact...
- By timeware
- By prodestrian
- By RiverofSlime
