Inkspot Fancy

I admit to being a sucker for nostalgia. It's bad enough that I spent a couple hundred dollars to go to a convention just to meet the voice actors and one of the original writers of the comics, Kevin Eastman. And since Ghostbusters and TMNT were huge parts of my childhood, this comic was basically like someone at IDW said "How can we get Liss to give us money? This? Would this do it?"

It absolutely would, and to be perfectly honest, this book was well worth the money to me. It would have been worth buying in a hardcover to me. I don't know if folks coming at this without the nostalgia will have the same attachment that I do, however.

Let's start with the plot - the Turtles are messing around with a new device Donatello and co have created that's meant to teleport them from one place to another in an instant (Mirage comics readers, yeah, it's what you think it is). Except when the turtles, along with April and Casey, give it a try, something goes wrong, because otherwise where would the story come from?

This is the excuse for getting the two together - the Turtles appear in the same place as a major ghost and when the Ghostbusters get there, they naturally think the guys are something supernatural. (I mean honestly, it makes perfect sense, right?)

So now we have our crossover set up, and I want to give it a piece of praise right up front - everyone is absolutely in character. All the turtles, all the Ghostbusters, all the supporting cast. Some get more of an opportunity to show off than others, but everyone is clearly recognizable, and I swear there are times you could cover up the pictures, jsut read the dialogue, and still have a pretty solid idea who's taking to who.

Additionally, it gives pretty much everyone something to do. Some have more, some less, but everyone does something to affect the plot. It can be a little hard sometimes with crossovers with huge casts to make sure everyone gets at least a corner of the spotlight. They made the effort here, and I think it really paid off.

In the end, there is a lot of standing around and talking in this book, and if I wasn't obsessed with the characters and the backgrounds of the franchises, there might be times when I found this to drag a little. But because I loved the way even the slow moments painted the characters, I couldn't hate on it.

This is going to have a place in my rotation of often-reread stories, along with such titles as the original Young Avengers run and Booster Gold. SO enjoyable and so very well presented.