Sad news for Ghostbusters fans this week as IDW Comics has announced that Issue #20 of the on-going series, now in its second volume, will be its last. The conclusion of the highly entertaining "Mass Hysteria" storyline will bring the on-going series to a close and after 36 issues and 700 pages (according to colorist Luis Antonio Delgado), the doors to the firehouse are closing.
While this certainly means the end of the on-going series on a monthly basis, one can imagine that this absolutely doesn't mean the end of IDW Ghostbusters comics in the slightest. The franchise continues to gain momentum (in fact, I just saw a Google Play advertisement last night that boasts its service features Ghostbusters as a selling point). And considering how dormant the franchise has been over the past several years, we were lucky to be getting a monthly book from IDW for as long as we have. The mini-series approach might be the best route for the stories to go forward at least until a time that the momentum gains a fever pitch with a new movie or some other catalyst to be determined in the future.
Not knowing that this announcement was going to come, I actually re-read the on-going series from Issue 1, Volume 1 during a recent trip overseas. Much like an amazing run on a television series, this book plays so well when you "binge read" it in a sitting or two and benefits from reading issues back to back when you can identify the nuance and the detail that has gone into each and every issue. And what's staggering from issue to issue is just how great the quality has consistently been, without any dips and without any fillers. If this creative team would have been putting out this book back in the heyday of Ghostbusters in the late 1980s, it'd be among the top ten sellers on a monthly basis. Both kids and adults alike can enjoy this book and that was the beauty of the original films.
I'm sure more Ghostbusters goodness is in the future for IDW (and hopefully this same creative team), I just wanted to thank Erik Burnham, Dan Schoening, Luis Delgado, Tristan Jones and their editorial staff at IDW for putting out one of the best damn Ghostbusters series that fans could have asked for. I've seen them taking a lot of the usual Ghosthead heat via Facebook and Twitter (ie. "How dare you?!? On the 30th Anniversary? This is a slap in the face! Blah blah blah!") all of which is completely unmerited. They've put in extreme amounts of time, effort, and one can imagine sleepless nights to put out a book of incredible quality for over three years now. And if "Mass Hysteria" ends with the big bang that I think it will (either literally or figuratively), it will be a fitting close for an amazing run.