Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 6/17

Black Canary #1
Story: Brenden Fletcher
Art: Annie Wu

Brenden Fletcher flies solo this week with the debut of his new Black Canary series (yes, I went there with that pun). Black Canary has left Gotham and her regular super-heroing behind to tour with the band called, well Black Canary. Now know as the lead singer, DD (that's Dinah Drake), is doing her best to get her life back together, but her penchant for heroism and kicking butt is getting in the way; when you keep wrecking the club you're playing, you're not making a ton of money. We get to meet each of the members of the band: Lord Byron on drums, who seems the member working hardest to keep the band together; Paloma Terrific, who maintains an animosity to Dinah that isn't even veiled; and the mysteriously silent Ditto on guitar, a child prodigy who never speaks. After another disastrous outing, Dinah promises to not start a brawl, but when black oily demon things attack, that goes out the window. But the hook is this: they're not after Dinah, but another member of the band. It's a great set-up, and one issue in I already like the band, and there are interesting mysteries to solve. I also love connectivity in my superhero universes without it feeling like you need to read every book, and this book does a great job of tying in with Fletcher's other two books. Obviously, Black Canary and her band spin out of the first arc of the new Batgirl title, but I was pleasantly to see that the band's manager is Heathcliff from Gotham Academy. I've been impressed with how well Fletcher matches his books with the artists he's working with, and it feels like Annie Wu was made to draw this book. Her kinetic style works well with Dinah's martial arts and fighting, and the whole style feels like it fits with CD and poster art from the kind of band that plays the clubs that we're seeing. It's a great package and another win for DC in trying to do books that don't feel like they're all the same. Black Canary is vibrant, different, and exciting, with a good blend of super heroes and the life of a band on the road.

Ghostbusters: Get Real #1
Story: Erik Burnham
Art: Dan Schoening

Dan Grote wrote a piece a couple weeks ago about accepting change in our favorite properties. And I think outside comics, one of the examples or this is the upcoming female led reboot of Ghostbusters. Let's give it a shot, people! But before any of that starts up, we still have IDW releasing comics featuring the original Ghostbusters, and this time they're teaming up with the other greatest team of ghost fighters ever: The Real Ghostbusters! Yes, it's like a classic JLA/JSA crossover, where the Flashes and Green Lanterns of two worlds must meet, only better because it's the Egons of two worlds! The Greek god Proteus has decided he wants to get rid of the Real Ghostbusters before they can trap him (no comment on how the arrogant god isn't even on their radar; he's just that full of himself), but the help of a friendly witch's spell interacts with Proteus's and sends the Real team into the regular Ghostbusters world. And after interacting with the Slimer of that world, they realize something is very wrong just as the Ghostbusters show up. Firmly established as in the same continuity as the previous series and TMNT/Ghostbusters team-up mini, the Ghostbusters are familiar with alternate dimensions, and so it looks like things will work out fine, but a job comes up and Proteus is still out there, so I'm sure the boys have much more to deal with on the horizon. I've written plenty about the creative team of Erik Burnham and Dan Schoening, who have been the principle creators on two Ghostbusters ongoing, plus various minis and specials.so it goes without saying they know these characters inside and out. It's Schoening who blew me away this issue, with his ability to not only ape the style of the classic Real Ghostbusters cartoon, but to blend it seamlessly with his own style; it gives me flashbacks to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with two worlds that shouldn't interact working perfectly side by side. Oh, and kudos to Burnham for the callback of Janine mistaking Real Egon for her ex-boyfriend Roger, who's hair and looks were based on Real Egon; it's a little nod that rewards people who have been reading all this. Real Ghostbusters is one of the best cartoons of the 80s when it comes to plot and story, and so it makes sense it would work this well when interacting in a modern setting, and teaming these versions of the characters up with their movie versions works like a charm.

Lumberjanes #15
Story: Noelle Stevenson & Shannon Watters
Art: Brooke Allen

There's a lot going on in this issue of Lumberjanes, with wolf monsters, traps, and teases of mysterious secrets and the past of camp director Rosie.  But for me, the star of the issue is Jen, the cabin councilor for our usual cast. I want to talk about our Lumberjanes and their adventures before I deep dive into what's happening with Jen. The ladies of Roanoke Cabin are loyally travelling through the woods with Barnes, their friend from the boy's camp, searching for Jen, despite encountering the mysterious blizzard and the woods' usual array of monsters. Again, I can't stress enough how important the theme of friendship is in Lumberjanes, and how these girls would sacrifice anything for each other, and that includes the often flustered and frustrated Jen. But Jo is getting jealous of Barnes and how he's getting in the middle of her friendship with April. This isn't uncommon when a new person comes into a group dynamic, but Jo is freezing out Barnes as best she can. More than that, she is beginning to wonder exactly what is going on in Lumberjanes camp, that they are neither learning survival skills nor what is going on in the woods. But while Jo is a little bothered by this, it's the crux of what's going on with Jen at the cabin of the mysterious Abigail. I might be one of few people who would say this, but Jen is probably my favorite character in the book. She's responsible, she's flustered by all the weirdness, she does her best to keep to the rules; so basically how I would act in these situations. But she's also loyal to her campers and willing to do what it takes to protect them, which makes her all the more impressive. But after being told she was abandoned, and seeing the comforts, of and the library in, Abigail's cabin, it would be easy for her to decide to not go back. But she's still loyal. They're still "her girls" and she still needs to do what she feels she needs to. And I love that. More, though, when Rosie arrives and we see the confrontation between her and Abigail, we see exactly what has been going on with Jen. She's fed up with the secrets, with Rosie not telling the Lumberjanes what is really going in. The scene where Jen and Rosie are in Abigail's trap and Jen lets loose all these feelings is one of the best character scenes in any issue of Lumberjanes. But with Lumberjanes, there's not just the personal stakes but the supernatural stakes, and it looks like whatever Abigail is up to is going to lead to some major action next issue, and as ever the book finds its balance perfectly.

Secret Six #3
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Dale Eaglesham

Oh, what a difference an artist can make. The first couple issues of the new Secret Six, as enjoyable as the story was, were marred by multiple artists that muddied the waters. But this issue sees new regular artist, and artist on the mini-series Villains United that introduced Gail Simone's original version of the six, Dale Eaglesham, and it lets me feel like I know the characters. He already has a great feel for each of these oddballs. I've been a fan of Eaglesham since he worked on chapters of "No Man's Land" back in 1999, and his art still grabs me to this day. This issue juxtaposes the complete cast of lunatics with the suburban normalcy of Big Shot's house and neighborhood, and it's a thing of beauty. These characters are all severely broken, and they just stick out like sore thumbs. I like that Catman still has this sense of honor, as shown by defending a dog, something he hates, from a human who beats it, something he hates more. It's also nice to see him being kind to Strix, showing he isn't quite the sociopath as, say, Ventriloquist, who remains this volume's Ragdoll, the character you never know what they'll say. But the moments that really got me this issue were the ones with Big Shot and Black Alice. We see a tenderness that Big Shot has for the girl, something that made me perplexed how he wound up grouped with the rest of the lunatics that comprise the Six. And as we see more of Alice's background in the new world, she grows in sympathy too. I was happy to see this, and the fact that the group binds as a team for the balance of the issue. But it's the last page that knocked me over. Because we find out Big Shot's real name, and it's a name I've been waiting for since the advent of the New 52. What he says to Black Alice earlier about the wife he lost, makes so much sense now, and tears my heart a little. But I wonder if she's gone, or if her not being there has something to do with Mockingbird, whose identity is also revealed. It's another shocking reveal, but one that makes a lot of sense, especially in relation to that characters current disposition in the DCU. I don't want to spoil the twists, but they're satisfying and going to keep me guessing until next issue.

Stumptown #6
Story: Greg Rucka
Art: Justin Greenwood

Stumptown's back! The best dang P.I. comic I've ever read returns with a new case, and a different one than we're used to seeing Dex Parios involved in. Instead of searching for missing girls or guitars, or investigating who beat her friend, this time Dex has a simple job: pick up three pounds of coffee. The fact that it's designer Kopi Lawak coffee, unique in the world, designed by a brewmaster named Patrick Weekes, and worth twenty-five large, well that's icing on the cake. Almost immediately, things take a turn for the Hammett & Chandler when Mr. Dove, a creepy guy in white, shows up with a cell phone and ten gold coins, and his boos tells Dex over the phone that he will pay her twenty thousand dollars for a sample of the coffee, half of it in these coins now, and the other half when she delivers. And even more guys trail her when she picks it up! This is some desirable coffee, and Dex still has it by issue's end. But in Stumptown, the mystery is only half the story, as Dex is a character with a rich life outside of her casework.  Still on the outs with Grey, her neighbor, Dex picks up her brother Ansel from work only to find her seemingly wayward, and previously unknown, sister, Fuji, waiting at her apartment, let in by Grey. It's clear that the two sisters have certain problems, as Fuji seems more free-spirited, and Dex is annoyed by her popping up unannounced. Greg Rucka has done an excellent job fleshing out the world around Dex, letting you understand the personal stakes as well as the professional ones, and so each new character adds another layer. While I liked Justin Greenwood's art on the last arc, this issue seems even stronger, looking really clean and crisp, with some great character work on Dex as she's confronted with these new mysteries and hurdles. I'm sure things won't go as smoothly for Dex next issue as they did in this one because things never stay quiet for her for long, and it wouldn't be interesting if they did.

Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good: A Survey of the Ghostbusters in Comics in Honor of Harold Ramis

This past Monday, Hollywood lost one of its great comedic minds. Harold Ramis was an actor and director who appeared in, or was responsible for, many great comedies, including Groundhog Day, Meatballs, and Stripes. But for many like me, his greatest role would be in Ghostbusters, the 1984 classic about a group of scientists and their friends and allies fighting all manner of spook, spectre, and thing that goes bump in the night, where he plays Dr. Egon Spengler, my favorite of the Ghostbusters. It is one of my favorite movies of all time, one of those movies that every time you see it on you have to stop and watch,  and has spawned toys, video games, multiple animated series, and more than a few comics over the years. Today, instead of my standard recommended reading, we're going to look back on the history of The Ghostbusters in comics (apparently, there was a long running Marvel UK series, but the majority hasn't been reprinted here in the States, so I'll not be addressing that here).

Just on the outside chance you have never seen Ghostbusters and are unfamiliar with the characters and concept, the Ghostbusters started out as three professors and paranormal investigators who, after being thrown out of academia, start a business to trap and contain various ghosts. Peter Venkman is the mouth of the Ghostbusters, the public face, always with a smart comment, played by Bill Murray. Egon Spengler, played by Ramis, is a scientist and paranormal researcher, a big brain with not a lot of social graces. Ray Stantz, played by Dan Aykroyd, is also a scientist, responsible with Egon for making the Ghostbusters proton packs, PKE Meters, and various other ghost fighting tech, and is the heart of the team. Winston Zeddemore, played by Ernie Hudson, is the fourth man on the team; he is not a scientist, hired when the business picks up, but smart and full of common sense, something that Egon and Ray are often lacking, and Peter just doesn't care about. Along with Janine Melnitz, their trusty receptionist, and Slimer, a ghost they keep around for testing and who is a sort of mascot, they make up the Ghostbusters.

The Real Ghostbusters (NOW Comics)

The Real Ghostbusters was the animated series based on the film. Many a great voice actor appeared on the show, notably Lorenzo Music,best known as the voice of Garfield, as Peter Venkman, Frank Welker, best known as Megatron from Transformers and Fred from Scooby Doo, Arsenion Hall as Winston, and Maurice LaMarche, best known as The Brain from Pinky and the Brain and numerous characters on Futurama, as Egon. The show was very smart for its time, with some episodes written by the likes of J. Michael Straczynski, J.M. Dematteis, and Michael Reaves, and despite the animation not being as strong as modern cartoons, the stories hold up extremely well, incorporating all manner of world mythologies, as well as the Cthulu Mythos. With a successful cartoon, it was only a matter of time before the license was sold to comics. NOW Comics was a publisher in the late 80s and early 90s that focused mostly on licensed properties. The comic series did a good job of staying in the flavor of the animated series, with the same sort of tongue and cheek sense of humor and intelligent stories. Many of the comic stories were tied together by common antagonists; a personal favorite of mine was Nurtog, a freakin' ghost T-Rex. Let's be fair, aside from The Dresden Files, where else are you gonna find an undead T-Rex? NOW also published a three part mini-series adaptation of the film sequel, Ghostbusters II, done in the style of The Real Ghostbusters, which is a fun little oddity. With the exception of that adaptation and a couple annuals, this series was recently reprinted by IDW Publishing in two omnibus volumes.

Ghostbusters: Legion (88MPH Studios)

After a drought of many years with no real new Ghostbusters content, fledgling comics company 88MPH Studios picked up the license and presented a four issue mini-series called Legion. Set firmly in the continuity of the movies (although resetting the movies in early 2004 instead of the '84), Legion, set six months after the events of the movie, has the Ghostbusters dealing with a new outbreak of paranormal activity that they track back to Michael Draverhaven, a friend of Ray's who studied with Egon, Peter, and he in college, and who was caught in an accident that linked him to the spirit world and to a sort of hive ghost called Legion. It's a pretty intense story, very creepy, and has an emotional core of Ray dealing with what happened to his friend. 88 MPH was supposed to follow this mini-series up with an ongoing, but the company folded before it could. The series was collected in trade paperback, although that is long since out of print.

Ghost Busted (Tokyopop)

Ok, this is the one book discussed here that I haven't read, and simply discovered through research for this piece. It's a manga size/style book published by Tokyopop in 2008. It's an anthology of connected short stories, and it's something I'm going to have to track down for the completist in me, something none of my fellow comic book fans know nothing about, I'm sure...

The Other Side (IDW Publishing)

The same year Tokyopop released their one Ghostbusters related comic, IDW Publishing started releasing comics in what is by far the most successful run of Ghostbusters comics to date. The first mini-series published was The Other Side. The Ghostbusters run afoul of the ghosts of some of America's most famous gangsters, including Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel, who are running a pipeline to get spirits out of the afterlife, and wind up being displaced from their bodies and sent to the afterlife themselves. The Ghostbusters are on the run from beings on the other side who are after them because of them being, well, ghostbusters, but find a little help from some of America's greatest gangbusters; if you're a fan of gangster movies and true crime, you'll get a kick out of seeing so many legendary G-Men and Mafiosi tossed into one ghostly caper.

Displaced Aggression (IDW Publsihing)

Displaced Aggression is a story that, while using the classic Ghostbusters designs, hearkens back to some of the fun and over the top storytelling of The Real Ghostbusters. Written by Scott Lobdell, whose run on Uncanny X-Men you you might have read about here recently, the series splits the Ghostbusters up and sends them on an journey through time, with each one in a different era: Peter is in the Old West, Ray is in medieval times, Egon in the distant future, while Winston is in the present, fighting the good fight against Koza'Rai, the father of Gozer, the Sumerian god the Ghostbusters defeated in the first movie. This story is very much a comic book story, with big action scenes and crazy designs that you couldn't pull off on the budget of most movies.

The Miscellaneous IDW Ghostbusters

Before getting into the discussion of the main IDW ongoing Ghostbusters series, I just wanted to touch on some of the one shots and crossovers IDW has done for Ghostbusters. Aside from Halloween, Valentine's Day, Christmas, and Comic Con specials, the Ghostbusters have taken part in three of IDW's intercompany crossovers, throwing different franchises together. In Infestation, the Ghostbusters must fight an interdimensional zombie outbreak in a story that ties in to IDW's own Covert Vampiric Operations, or CVO, comics franchise. The Real Ghostbusters had to deal with Martian Ghosts in Mars Attacks The Real Ghostbusters. And just last month, the Ghostbusters met The Lone Gunmen of X-Files fame, finding there was something even the Lone Gunmen have a hard time believing, in X-Files: Conspiracy- Ghostbusters. None of these are essential reading (although Infestation does have some threads that play out in the ongoing I'm about to talk about), but part of the great fun  of comics are crossovers between characters you never thought would meet, and these definitely fall under that category, because lets be frank, whoever thought they'd see Frohike of the Lone Gunmen hit on Janine?

Ghostbusters Ongoing (IDW Publishing)

After two successful mini-series and some one shots, IDW decided to give the Ghostbusters their own ongoing. Two volumes in, the series is going incredibly strong. The series has been written by Erik Burnham and drawn, with only a couple of guest pencils, by Dan Schoening, along with other writers and artists doing back-up stories.

The series is set in continuity with the movies, set after the events of Ghostbusters II, with the Ghostbusters comfortably doing their ghostbusting with the unfortunate government oversite of their old nemesis, Walter Peck, now head of the Paranormal Contracts Oversight Commission, or PCOC for short. The use of Peck shows one of the huge strengths of Burnham's writing; he is clearly a huge fan of all versions of the Ghostbusters, and draws in characters and aspects from all of them. Along with the main cast and movie characters like Peck, Kylie Griffin of the spinoff Extreme Ghostbusters series shows up working in Ray's paranormal bookstore, The Rookie and Ilyssa Selwyn from the recent Ghostbusters video game both pop up, and Burnham takes characters from earlier comics, keeping Tiyah Clarke, a love interest introduced for Winston in the "Tainted Love" Valentine's Day one-shot, and deepens their characters. He has also created some new characters, including Ron Alexander, a sleazy scientist who is  Peter Venkman if he didn't have Ray and Egon to keep him on the straight and narrow and who has been forced to work with the Ghostbusters, and Melanie Ortiz, an FBI Agent who serves as the Bureau liaison with the Ghostbusters. Expanding the cast has allowed different aspects of the Ghostbusters to show that you wouldn't see when they're just interacting with each other, like Winston's romantic side with Tiyah or Ray's paternal streak when it comes to Kylie.

With Burnham having been working on the series now for nearly thirty issues, he has been able to really get a great feeling for the characters. Reading the stories, you can hear the dialogue in the voices of the actors who portrayed them on the big screen. The series is funny, having the same sense of humor as the films. It also maintains the stakes; while the comic can be fun and the characters get off plenty of zingers, the ghosts they encounter have an air of menace that could be lost if the writer decided to play the setting more for laughs.

Over the course of the two volumes of the Ghostbusters ongoing (the first one ran sixteen issues, the second is currently on issue thirteen), Burnham has set plenty of challenges before the Ghostbusters. The stories have included adventures that took them on a cross country good will trip to bust ghost in various cities, or dealing with the Ghost-Smashers, a team of second rate Ghostbuster knock offs with tech even more unpredictable than the Ghostbusters own. The first arc of the second series had the Ghostbusters trapped in another dimension; Janine had to fill in along with some of the supporting cast that had been built over the first series, allowing those characters time to shine. Egon had to travel into Janine's mind to save her from ghostly possession by one of her ancestors while the others were on a ghostly pirate ship. And the most recent arc took the team through the holiday season, as bogeyman activity in New York grew. The most recent issue, which was released just this past Wednesday, begins, "Mass Hysteria," an eight part story written to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, which will not only bring everything that Burnham has been plotting to a head, but reintroduce Dana Barrett and Louis Tully, two important characters from the films, into the comics.

Dan Schoening's style is perfectly suited to this comic. His characters are expressive, a bit quirky, and every page just exudes energy. His designs for the ghosts are genuinely creepy, with many truly terrifying scenes. Schoening is clearly also a fan of all eras of Ghostbusters, evinced by his design for Janine's new boyfriend, who resembles the animated Egon, down to his massive blond pompadour haircut. His art has just the right balance between comedy and horror to work on a property that treads that line so well.

IDW has been collecting the Ghostbusters comics in trade, so they should be easy to track down, with each mini-series in its own trade, as well as all of the holiday themed one shots, along with a new story, collected in a volume called Haunted Holidays; theer is also an omnibus edition collecting all those stories. The ongoings has been collected  in six trades, with a seventh on the way. However, all sixteen issues of the first volume are about to be released in a deluxe hardcover called "The Total Containment Edition."

And that's the comics history of Ghostbusters, one of the greatest pop culture franchises of all time. Harold Ramis was a great director, actor, and writer, whose work has touched legions. This final piece of art is from Ghostbusters artist Dan Schoening's DeviantArt page, and is one of the best tributes I've seen to Ramis. May he live the same day over and over again in the next life, and may it be the best day ever.