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[The Rookie]

Another fantastic issue, guys! Of course, loved the Rookie shout-out!

(So his name is "Whatshisface"? What is that, Scandinavian? )

Being that the conversation is on the Rookie(s) at the moment, I feel obligated to have some input: I prefer The Rookie to NOT have a name. I don't care so much about the stylized versions, but THE Rookie is my fave. Takes away from some of the mystery around him, not to mention the ability to make vague-but-not-really references to him (ex. Whatshisface), and I feel it takes away from his identity a bit. I personally feel that his nickname and "real" name are one in the same at this point because everyone calls him Rookie whether they know his real name or not.

(I know the feeling. I resemble the Rookie and actively cosplay as him, so I'm known as Rookie and called such by most of the GB franchises in the Southeastern US!)
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[T-Rex Jones]

[mrmichaelt]

[The Rookie]

[Tothenines]

[T-Rex Jones]

[The Rookie]

[T-Rex Jones]

I hear ya, mate, but then I've gotta answer to all the emails asking about his real name and what it says under said blotch/stain/scribble!

[The Rookie]

[devilmanozzy]

[devilmanozzy]

[mrmichaelt]

[Fritz Baugh]

The holidays and a bout of sheer laziness slowed me down, but here goes:

Fritz Babbles About Ghostbusters #4:

Things I Liked About Ghostbusters #4:

I gotta admit, I was a little skeptical about bringing Walter Peck into things here. I saw it as one more way IDW going to overuse stuff from the first movie. But they've convinced me--he's great as not so much a villain, but as a foil: kind of serving as the Ghostbusters' asshole boss role, one we've never really seen before in GB lore. (Yeah, I guess it probably continues his role from the Video Game, but I've never played that. I'm not a gamer). It's especially funny watching Venkman deal with it; since his previous comedic foil, Slimer, is stuck in a fishtank, we gotta see him get comedically frustrated somehow. He can't mouth off to Peck too much, and certainly can't blast him and put him in a ghost trap. Even better, on the other hand, Janine gets to treat Peck with same respect she gives her "real" boss, Venkman, which is not much at all. No wonder Egon loves that gal so much.

The injokes are sparse this issue, but has one of my favorites yet: Peck's office is adorned with newspapers telling of his days with "BUFO", which is assumed to be the Bureau of Unidentified Flying Organisms, a reference to the agency Peck worked for in his one (sadly lackluster) animated appearance, "Big Trouble With Little Slimer". All that was missing was one of the fast dial buttons on his phone to read "Callahan" (Peck's laconic henchman in that episode).

Idulnas, for a character grounded in a mythos that has been waaaaay overused lately, at least represents some new twists, creepily writing himself into existence.

Venkman: "Is it me, or is [Egon] getting a little snippy?"

The fact that Janine is getting Rogered on her days off is really getting to him. That's my story and I'm sticking to it no matter what Erik Burnham or anyone else says.

Things I Didn't Like So Much About Ghostbusters #4:

For all the success IDW has with the Idulnas story, please, for grife's sake, stay the sprock away from the Gozerian mythos for a while. One of the things GB2, for all of it's flaws, did right is have an enemy that didn't have a blessed thing to do with Gozer (Assinine Video Game retcon attempt ignored). It was a directive from J. Micheal Stracynski to the writers of The Real Ghostbusters to "forget about Gozer. He's history". But in recent years, suddenly everything has to somehow go back to Gozer: their enemies are Gozer's father, or his concubine, or Gozer worshippers. With all the mythology that the property can, and has, drawn upon even before making stuff up (Gozer, after all, does not appear in any real summations of Sumerian mythology) the constant dipping into this till feels uncreative and overdone. Quit now before IDW ends up like the Marvel UK comics and suddenly Gozer has a lumberjack relative named Horg. (Yeah, I wish I was kidding about that...) I realize Idulnas's return is practically inevitable, but hold off on it for a while, please.

I will also register a note of dissent to the prevailing opinion of "Whoa! You're gonna put in the Rookies from both version of the Video Game! Cool!" I won't say it's a bad idea; I'm going to wait and see what happens, but on the whole, stories that start with "Ray, Egon, Peter, Winston, and some character you've never heard of before get out of the ECTO-1" is the start of very many of the worst fan fictions.

Now, I will say I'll give IDW some rope on this one. I liked Extreme Ghostbusters, after all, and want to see if IDW can take these three ciphers and actually make them worth the affection they get despite not having any discernable personalities or even a word of dialog. But one word of warning: I enjoyed EGB because it really was about the new characters; the old guard guest starred to various extents, but it was the new guys' show. (The fact that RGB had been off the air for six years helped too). Throwing in a bunch of new faces into a currently running project when you already feature a perfect mix of four main characters and two strong supporting characters poses its own dangers. If I read a story with them in it and my new nicknames for the Rookies are "Jason", "Catharine", and "Donald", you'll know exactly what that means.

But IDW hasn't let me down in awhile, so I'm hopeful.

See you next month.
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"Sometimes I think the universe just waits for me to get cocky"--Dr. Egon Spengler

[Erik Burnham]

I can say I've said about all I have to about Gozer or Mr. Stay Puft (unless I come up with a brilliant idea. Or I'm instructed to come up with one.) (;

But I may return to Idulnas one day...

And rest assured, when #5 opens, you'll see no Goze.

There will, however, be clowns.
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[ILoveBeingATurtle]