Plot
While busting a meeting between Japanese gangster ghosts and an American crime syndicate of ghosts, the Ghostbusters are caught off guard when Venkman's soul is knocked out of his body and a gangster ghost named Fred takes the body over. Back at the Firehouse, the others find Venkman's body alive but empty, and Egon Spengler fears Venkman's displaced soul has been sent somewhere bleak. Fred reports to his bosses, a quartet of mobster ghosts (Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Al Capone), who decide the Ghostbusters must be eliminated. The possessed body lures the team outside, where poltergeists with real tommy guns gun down Winston Zeddemore, Ray Stantz, and Spengler in the street.
The three dead Ghostbusters arrive in Purgatory, a rocky wasteland crowded with souls awaiting judgment, while Fred uses Venkman's body to dump the corpses into the East River in the Ecto-1. In Purgatory the trio is attacked by the dead, then rescued by Venkman, who turns out to wield strange powers there. Zeddemore is reunited with Janelle, an old girlfriend who had drowned. Venkman has also befriended the ghosts of three lawmen: Eliot Ness, Jelly Bryce, and J. Edgar Hoover.
The crime bosses are revealed to be bribing the demons who guard a Pipeline between Purgatory and the real world, smuggling escaped ghosts out in exchange for innocent souls. Stantz and Spengler theorize that Venkman's powers come from a loophole: he was displaced from his body but never actually killed. After Venkman saves a boy named Jiff from a border demon, the bosses send Fred, now armed with a proton pack and traps, through the Pipeline with an army of ghosts to wipe out the team.
In the final battle, Fred traps Venkman with the proton stream, stripping his powers, but Jiff frees him. Venkman knocks Fred out of his body and reclaims it, only for a two-headed demon to claim him under a deal it had made with the bosses. Zeddemore captures the demon in a trap, but without its power the now-human Venkman cannot survive Purgatory and collapses; angelic voices promise to help carry him through the Pipeline. A week later the four Ghostbusters, restored to their bodies, bust the crime bosses (who have just recruited John Gotti as a fourth member), and Zeddemore bids farewell to Janelle as she returns to Purgatory with Jiff.
Creative team
Keith Champagne wrote all four issues, with Tom Nguyen on pencils throughout. Moose Baumann colored the series, and cover art was handled mostly by Nick Runge, with issue #3 fronted by Fabio Mantovani. Lettering rotated between Chris Mowry and Neil Uyetake across the run, and editing was handled by Chris Ryall and Andy Schmidt.1342
Collected edition
IDW collected all four issues in a trade paperback, Ghostbusters: The Other Side, published in May 2009 (ISBN 1-60010-426-6). The collection was edited by Justin Eisinger and designed by Neil Uyetake.5
Continuity
The Other Side was IDW's first Ghostbusters comic. The publisher followed it with the Displaced Aggression miniseries, continuing its line of original Ghostbusters stories.
References
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Comic Vine, "Ghostbusters: The Other Side." Release date for issue #1: October 1, 2008.
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Comic Vine, "Ghostbusters: The Other Side." Release date for issue #4: January 1, 2009.
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Comic Vine, "Ghostbusters: The Other Side." Release date for issue #2: November 1, 2008.
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Comic Vine, "Ghostbusters: The Other Side." Release date for issue #3: December 1, 2008.
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Ghostbusters: The Other Side (trade paperback), IDW Publishing, May 2009. ISBN 1-60010-426-6.
