Saturday, June 9, 2018

Ghostbusters: Crossing Over #1 Review



Writer: Erik Burnham

Art: Dan Schoening
Colors: Luis Antonio Delgardo
Letters: Robbie Robbins & Tom B.Long
Published By IDW
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: March 14, 2018
Reviewed by: Wheezy

From the minimal research, I have done on this, it appears this is the start of new 8 issue maxi-series. As this is my first foray into the world of Ghostbuster comics I am hopeful that this is a good jumping on point, not only had I heard good things about IDW Ghostbuster series, I am also a fan of the films (who isn’t really), to be clear I have still yet to see the latest iteration of the all-female Ghostbusters but hopefully these comics will leave me inspired to do so.


The first page is a summary page of what has been going previously in the Ghostbuster series and also features a cast of characters with a little profile of each of them. This is usually standard fare for the most part, but I appreciate that there was some effort made to pull in any potential new audience giving the impression this is new reader friendly.

Basically, it is summed up as the Ghostbusters of this comic (Ghostbuster Prime team) have access to interdimensional travel and have recently been jumping dimensions, meeting up with alternate versions of themselves and getting into general hijinks. Ron Alexander would appear to be our antagonist as he has been trying, with Jillian Holtzman (a Ghostbuster from another dimension) to get access to this technology, for-profit among other things, and he feels the Ghostbuster Prime team has been holding this back in sharing interdimensional travel.



Whilst this is ongoing between Ron and Jillian who share snappy exchanges and witty dialogue, we cut to Ray and Egon working on an experiment to monitor the activity in the ECU, its indicated that should an improbable set of events occur their experiment may have some consequences, but the chances of that happening are slim as someone would have to operate the ECU and open a dimensional portal at the same time, the experiment is left running and then we cut to Peter and Winston capturing a ghost. As you can tell by now the comic is leading to a certain sequence of events to ensure that the portal will be opened, which it is by Ron and Jillian, while Peter is trying to deposit the ghost they caught in the ECU and is involved in a blinding explosion which is where the issue ends.

There is a brief interlude where Janine is being offered a job by Walter Peck, sadly the significance of this is lost on me, without a history of reading the Ghostbusters I couldn’t be engaged in these pages as I would have liked, never the less it serves to place Janine as someone who will be reporting the Ghostbusters activity to Peck. The end of the book had a memo to Peck highlighting the Ghostbusters activity along with a report on another dimension Ghostbusters, looks like Janine took the job.



The Art is not really to my taste, but I think this grows on you, throughout the book the humorous dialogue and banter between the characters reinforce the cartoon style, so by the end, I had no problem with it, the colours of also do an awesome job of reinforcing this as well, everything seems to be vibrant and full of energy which is what I was expecting from a Ghostbuster book, so it didn’t disappoint.

Although I did enjoy the issue overall there was a couple of pages and a couple of characters that didn’t make sense to me, being new to the franchise, I am unsure if these will get explained along the way, but it certainly wasn’t a deal breaker, especially to those who are used to jumping into comics blind, which to be fair, is most of us. I think Erik Burnham did an excellent job of making this as new reader friendly as it could be while appealing to the hardcore Ghostbuster reader.
Bits and Pieces:
I look forward to reading the next 7 issues, especially as they capture the humor and the feel of the Ghostbuster so precisely.

7.5/10

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