Welcome Back, Childhood!
Like many people my age, I grew up with a love for the ghoul capturing adventures of The REAL Ghostbusters (not that gorilla crap). These four characters were part of my childhood obsession along with He-Man, Thundercats, and a show no one has ever heard of, but I would watch religiously as a child in Puerto Rico, called Bravestar.
Well, with the exception of Bravestar, each of these titles have had a reboot in recent years. Sadly, I haven’t been into any of them. The He-Man reboot happened a while ago and aired while I lived without access to tv. You can say that it was my “hippie” phase; I call it being broke. Though I’ve heard awesome things about it, I never got a chance to check it out. Thundercats is having a good run on Cartoon Network. Just like He-Man, I haven’t had a chance to check it out and really can’t offer up an opinion.
So, knowing that two franchises that I loved as a child were back and I haven’t had a chance to enjoy them, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check out the Ghostbusters video game when it was released.
It was everything that I had loved about the movies and so much more! Playing through as if I were an actual Ghostbuster brought back all the memories I had as a kid, running around, pretending that my book-bag was a proton pack and a ruler was my ‘gun’. This game was everything I would have wanted from it. If anything, it left me wanting more from this title.
Now, step back to September of 2011. I had made a choice to get back into comic books and would check out all the new titles, most of which I had never heard of. See, the last time I collected comics, Carnage was rampaging through the Spider-Man comics and the X-Men were on TV. So, you can imagine how excited I got when I saw that IDW was putting out an ongoing series of Ghostbusters.
I thumbed through the pages and immediately fell in love when I saw the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the first pages. I put it with my stack and read it that night. Everything about this book was perfect; Venkman’s cocky attitude poured out of the pages and the art was almost perfect. There are even hidden gems in the panels that any true fan of the original movies and cartoon would love. Every page had my full attention and had the same effect the video game gave me.
To say that I enjoy this book would be an understatement. It stood out among all of the books that I was consuming at that time. Week after week, I’d buy new comics, but when I knew the latest issue of Ghostbusters was about to hit the shelves, I’d actually get excited about picking up my comics that week. To be honest, if they relaunched the cartoon series, this would be the best way it could comeback. All they would have to do is lift the panels off the page and animate them and watch as a new generation of kids fell in love with this great franchise.
