TITLE: Ghostbusters International #2
AUTHOR: Erik Burnham
PENCILLER: Dan Schoening
PUBLISHER: IDW Publishing
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASED: February 24, 2016

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

Erik Burnham, Dan Shoening, Luis Delgado, and the folks at IDW have been doing this Ghostbusters thing for awhile now. And as I’ve said before, they’re the best comic book team to ever take on the boys in gray. That’s why I was surprised when Ghostbusters International #1 largely felt like…business as usual. Mind you, business as usual for this book is still pretty good. Perhaps they were simply setting the table before the twist at the end. Either way, there was seemingly no new element of intrigue.

Thankfully, Ghostbusters International #2 both ups the intrigue, and sends our heroes across the globe!

Erland Vinter, a wealthy Scandanavian businessman, wants to buy the Ghostbusters. But while the boys aren’t for sale, Walter Peck arranges for Vinter to have access to them in the short-term. Ergo, Peter, Ray, and Winston find themselves in Italy for a case involving the haunted island of Poveglia.

As usual, the star of this series is Dan Schoening. Granted, one can’t undercut the importance of Erik Burnham’s witty writing to the longevity of the Ghostbusters books. But Schoening’s art is always what has made them pop. Yes, it’s cartoony. But Shoening’s Ghostbusters have always resembled the real actors enough that you buy them as the characters. What’s more, Shoening has never gone too over the top with his renderings. So his work on these books has always had a certain animation-meets-pseudo-realism effect to it. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to look at, especially with all the ’80s Easter eggs he tends to toss in there for the sheer fun of it. You can tell he’s having fun, so you inevitably have fun with him.

Sending the Ghostbusters around the world is a fine concept. But I can’t help but wonder how long they’ll stick with it. A few years ago they relaunched this series as The New Ghostbusters, which saw the boys banished to another dimension, forcing Janine and a new team to take over. By issue #4 the boys were back, and the so-called New Ghostbusters would rotate in from time to time. I say this not because The New Ghostbusters was a bad story. I’m just wondering how the Ghostbusters will say “international.” As Burnham wrote in issue #1: “Everything about the Ghostbusters involves New York.”

Still, seeing the boys in Italy is fun thus far. Frankly, I’m just happy to have Burnham, Shoening, and this team writing the Ghostbusters again. These guys were seemingly made to write these characters, and if it were up to me, this series would have continued uninterrupted since it began. I suppose fans can take some solace in the idea that IDW would be stupid not to have a Ghostbusters book on the stands with the new movie coming out this July.

For more from Burnham and Shoening, check out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtes/Ghostbusters. 

Image from comicbookresourcescom.

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