Ghostbusters: Legion #3 - A Review

Written by: Andrew Dobb
Penciled by: Steve Kurth
Inked by: Serge LaPointe, Michel Lacombe
Colored by: Blond
Lettered by: Ed Dukeshire
Editor: Sebastien Clavet
Publisher: 88 mph Studios

This book, like many others, would be so much more enjoyable if it weren’t for the multi-month delays. Thankfully, each issue since the first has had a “Previously” page at the start of the comic to fill in late-comers on the story thus far. And speaking of the story thus far…

It is six months after the events of the original Ghostbusters movie, wherein four men became supernatural exterminators. Scientists Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and ex-military man Winston Zeddemore saved the world from invasion by an ancient Sumerian god incarnated as a fifty-foot high Marshmallow Man. Now, a series of increasingly deadly and strange ghost attacks have the team run ragged, with the boys in brown fighting ghosts that are much more intelligent than normal.

Things start to pick up in this issue as we get a look into the Ghostbuster’s past and we see the work that got Peter, Ray and Egon their doctorates, as a colleague, to use the language of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, “failed his sanity check”. We find out that said colleague, Michael Draverhaven, has recently escaped from the mental hospital he was kept in and that in the past he apparently attacked Ray, traumatizing him somewhat.

This book is a class act in all respects. The artwork is excellent, resembling a more heavily inked Mark Bagley or a less-chessecake driven J. Scott Campbell. The writing is dead on, with each character sounding like their counterpart from the movies and the long-missed animated series. The dialogue is spot-on and the whole thing feels like a credible continuation of the original movie. The one sore spot, apart from the chronic lateness, is that the story has been more concerned about the characters than the action and the plot. Of course, the original movies were guilty of this as well, but things moved so quickly that few noticed. The lateness of the book has only exasperated this problem and made us all too aware that only now in the penultimate chapter are things being investigated, much less explained.

Still, these are petty complaints and ultimately have no baring upon the book’s quality. Outside of these problems, it is one of the most enjoyable reads in recent memory. It would be well worth your time to try and pick up the first two issues as well as this one. There’s not a ghost of a chance you won’t enjoy it!