Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Ghostbusters: The Other Side #2

As this review points out, I'm a big fan of the original film, but the first issue of the comic book titled Ghostbusters: The Other Side was a real disappointment.

But hope springs eternal, so I'm back for the second issue in the series, which just proves that I should learn to take my own advice.

Not only is the second comic not any better than the first, it's actually, in some ways, worse.

The story so far: The Ghostbusters have been attacked by the ghosts of some gangsters who apparently escaped from an old movie. Venkman's spirit has been displaced by one of the gangsters, and the other three heroes (Ray, Winston and Egon) are gunned down - and now they're all ghosts, too!

This issue picks up with the latter three Ghostbusters exploring the afterlife. It's a boring place, with mountains and plains and some lost souls wandering around. That's about the size of it.

Once again, the art by Tom Nguyen and the writing by Keith Champagne is respectable and professional, but that's about the best I can say about it.

The original Ghostbusters movie was a success because it managed the rare combination of scares and laughs. That's an even bigger challenge for a comic book, and so far, this one isn't managing either one.

The other aspect of the original story I always enjoyed was the idea of using science to fight the supernatural. Hasn't been much of that on display, either.

If we were playing baseball, this would be "Strike Two."

Grade: C-

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