TokyoPop American manga Ghostbusters: Ghost Busted written by Nathan Johnson and Matt Yamashita and drawn by a multitude of artists. The graphic novel has six chapters. The first and last chapters are stand alone stories, mostly comedy, with the middle chapters being interconnected and less comedic more dramatic.
I like the Ghostbusters and pretty much always have. I've watched the movies several times and like the cartoons. I did not see them in the movie theater though (the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater came out later than Ghostbusters did). I had watched some of the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters on television prior to seeing the movies (and I have not watched the Extreme Ghostbusters ever; did not even know it existed until sometime last year). This book supposedly comes directly after the two movies (the first movie being significantly better than the second) but feels more like the cartoon series than the movies (which is a good thing).
Chapter 1 titled The Theater of Pain has the Ghostbusters called in to deal with a haunted theater that has the latest musical attacked by ghosts. This leads to the cast and crew members quitting and Ray, Egon and Peter take on the roles of stage manager, lead actor and director. Reading this particular story made me wonder a few things. Mostly what did people do about ghosts prior to the Ghostbusters (since there are a lot of ghosts in this particular story) and if ghosts were getting jobs would they have to pay taxes?
The middle chapters are interconnected with a few short storylines. I don't really know how to (or more accurately don't care enough to bother trying too; which amounts to the same thing) give a synopsis of them without giving too much away (not that I really care if I do give away the entire plot since I'm not being compensated for writing this in any way). The most important part of a review is the reviewer's opinion but to adequately discuss something all the people involved need to know enough details to do so hence at least a small summary is needed since chances are any reader of this post will not have read the book. The reviewing I do is not what I would consider to be good and often is secondary to something else I want to discuss. If I were planning on reviewing something I'd keep things in mind while reading/watching it. Anyway I did like that it showed a boring day for Ray in which he got fake calls (one from a spirit medium who wanted to buy ghosts from them, another from an old lady who just wanted someone to talk to, and another from a best man at a wedding who was convinced that the person his friend was marrying was a ghost).
The last chapter is called The Devil Wears Nada. In this chapter the Ghostbusters must stop a fashionista from turning everyone who wears her clothes into unwilling slaves of Heel, the Sumerian god of deception. Two things I want to comment on: This story illustrates the main reason I am against the transgender behavior that is cross-dressing namely if it becomes too common place it loses the humor value (women cross-dressing in the majority of Western society just does not have the humor value as a guy doing so because most of the traditionally men's clothing such as trousers, men's shirts, and even underwear have become socially acceptable for both genders to wear and has therefore lost the majority of the humor value). The second comment I want to make is: In the story it is extremely, and I mean extremely, easy to convince large groups of mostly women to change clothing outside in broad daylight (and by change clothing I mean remove it entirely and put on some other type of clothing, in this case beige coveralls).
While I generally do not pay much attention to the art style of graphic works (I really do not give artists their due); I do not like the art in this book. It changes some with the different artists, not maintaining an overall consistency, but that in itself is alright. Some of the artists are better than others but overall the art work is not that good. Though there is at least one page I did like to a pretty good degree, and it is not so much the drawing as the idea pictured that is good. Here is the part I'm talking about:
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