Fritz Baugh returns again for the beginning of the end (sadly) of IDW's Ghostbusters on-going run. As always you should be reading this book. So if you aren't, what's wrong with you!??!? Spoilers are abound below, ye have been warned. Here's Fritz:
Well, darn it, here I am doing it again. Knowing I only have one (or five) more to go after this is slowing me down again. Man, am I gonna miss doing these.
So where were we?
Ray has been possessed. Everybody else except the other four main characters along with Kylie, Dana, and Louis have gone home. This is a neat and surprising twist, setting up to end the story with only the core cast; we got the full action-movie full cast gang bang in #16, the real ending will be a little more focused.
I love the thought of Frank Welker doing the voice of possessed Ray. Even better when Gozer and Tiamat are basically arguing out loud with each other using Ray's voice box. We know how good this guy is--one of the best in the business--and I know he'd do a great job with "Ray, but evil."
Kylie's first call is to get Dana and Louis out of the situation; they've been possessed twice in this adventure already, and neither is going to be useful as far as doing Ghostbusting stuff anyway.
Egon, Winston, and Venkman get the three arm-mounted proton blasters--the two "Tainted Love" packs Egon and Kylie used last issue, and the two-gun device invented by Ron "And You're Not" Alexander a while back, and mostly used by Janine. Winston uses the two-gun, which makes sense since he's the best shot, but it would have been more fun symbolically for Egon to use that (since Janine usually uses it) and Winston to have a TL-pack (since it was his idea to create them in the first place)
(While we're at it, with all the people we've seen using proton pistols of one sort or another in this series, you know who we haven't seen use one, and probably won't it looks like? Kylie. Just kind of an odd oversight, if you think about it.)
So what's going on in Ray's head? Well, Gozer and Tiamat are having a loving sibling reunion. If by "loving sibling reunion" you mean "Adopting the form of various RGB monsters and beating the crap out of each other." Hob, Nexa, both version of Proteus, Quetzalcoatl, and ultimately their most "iconic" versions; Gozer as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Tiamat as a five headed dragon. Ray, of course, is unnervingly enthused about this for a brief time.
The little guns aren't doing anything, so the Ghostbusters go for the full proton packs. Kylie mentions how Sumerian gods could somehow be appeased by sacrifice... Winston seems to think that may be useful. Dana and Louis are left downstairs; the Ghostbusters aren't sure that sending them away entirely is a good idea. Janine looks like she's going to throw up being stuck downstairs with Louis, and who could blame her?
The three Ghostbusters who aren't hosting time-shares for Sumerian gods in their frontal lobes go back upstairs with full proton packs. They... don't do any better than the pistols did. Gozer is now clearly in control of Ray, and floats downstairs. Kylie shoots at him with a pack that was left downstairs; he just kind of shrugs and telekinetically hurls her into the ECTO-1 and continues his journey downstairs.
His target is the Containment Unit, which contains a big chunk of Gozer's energy in the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Gozer, having accessed Ray's memories, knows all about the palm biometric security lock.. But it appears that the biometric scanner has been improved since Wat tried to do the same thing by possessing Venkman- -it detects the presence of a non-native PK trace and denies him access. Gozer is furious. Tiamat laughs-- making sure he couldn't find Ray's memory of the "invalid reading" option was part of her latest game on Gozer. She basically eats the Goz, and thus completely takes him out of the game. He'll probably recorporate later, which is good because the last few years have taught us anything, it's that some Ghostbusters writers have trouble doing anything without dragging Gozer into it whenever possible.
So now Tiamat is in charge of Ray's body, and it's sprouting gargoyle wings. Gozer's gone, but things are looking really really bad.
Then Winston says he knows what to do, which somehow involves ripping wires out of the wall and offering himself to Tiamat as a sacrifice.
What does all this mean?
We know from Fright Feature Winston three issues ago that Winston would be the key to the situation. That Tiamat's role as a goddess of chaos was important, and Winston would "figure it out when the time is right"
I think we can be pretty sure Winston isn't going to die; Sony sometimes seems to forget Winston exists, but I doubt they'd approve that. Plus he’s in all the covers for the TMNT crossover.
Give Tiamat his marriage to Tiyah? I heard that offered as a joking possibility, and boy, would that solve the "IDW made a big change in the status quo" issue...but then again, you’d have to be insane and stupid to think that was a good idea, and Joe Quesada thankfully doesn't run IDW.
I guess we'll have to see, won't we?
Next time...
...And So It Ends.