Dead Man’s Chest #1
Back in Town as the first comic tie-in had to do some heavy lifting of setting up the world, characters, and arcs, establish the team dynamics, and just getting into the groove of writing this franchise for the 1st time and as I hoped, Dead Man’s Chest opens smoothly in medias res with the family out on a job dealing with a ghost and they have drawn a crowd and news reporters. #1 gets right down to business and looks like we’re getting 3 issues of a more direct threat whereas Madame Malveaux was a bit cat and mouse until the very end.
The first issue does convey David Booher is a lot more confident in writing these characters. He already had a strong grasp of Phoebe in Back in Town and he continues to build on her arc of being a Ghostbuster and becoming a teenager that really enriches her ongoing struggles in Frozen Empire of trying to find her place and identity in the grand scheme of things and to find real friendship. It felt evident Booher is having fun thinking of new Phoebe jokes as well. What Frozen Empire didn’t have the space for that Back in Town and now Dead Man’s Chest is thankfully exploring is Phoebe off-duty and more importantly at school. In Back in Town, she was for the most part invisible but now because of her connection to the Ghostbusters being well known, everyone wants a piece of her.
Phoebe makes a new friend in Sammy Velez who really could be a genuine friend but in typical Ghostbusters fashion, a ghost is on the loose and we have the new big bad, the ghost of Captain Kidd. Trevor, on the other hand, it remains to be seen. He had a small role in this issue and continuing a thread from Back in Town, Trevor remains overly obsessed with hanging out with Lucky and making sure they don’t drift apart. Gary seems to be treated as the most static character of the team, nothing phases him and he’s always optimistic to a fault. Callie’s arc which like Phoebe’s has the potential to enrich what she’s going through in Frozen Empire. As Phoebe and Trevor get older and hang with her less, she’s unsure what that means for her a a parent. They’re a strong team while they’re on the job, but off-duty not so much.
In terms of critiquing this comic, there’s not much I find fault with but, like Callie, I’m concerned with the kids. I’m hopeful but like with Back in Town and Frozen Empire, I am a little concerned Phoebe will continue to have a monopoly on the spotlight while the others fall into a supporting role when they all deserve some character development especially in this tie-in material. With Trevor, his writing is still too surface level. What the heck is going on in his head? Is he still in love with Lucky? Has he accepted being friendzoned but still frantically trying to preserve the hope he’ll get a shot eventually? It feels like Phoebe’s not the only one having problems with making more friends.
Let’s talk about a white elephant in the room with this comic. Knowing what happens in Frozen Empire, will local law enforcement and government have a role in the proceedings? The writing on the wall seems to be Mayor Walter Peck pounced on the Ghostbusters in Frozen Empire because of the collateral damage caused by the Sewer Dragon chase but will we get to see the police and politicians’ initial reaction to the return of the Ghostbusters in these comics? 6 months have passed between the two comic series so they must have already racked up a lot of property damage. If they are mirroring mayoral terms from the real world, Peck is already mayor during this comic’s timeline. He would have started his term January 2022 so he’s almost done with his first year. The police and the mayor always had a presence in the original movies and continued to in lauded releases like Ghostbusters: The Video Game and the comics by IDW Publishing. It stands reason the police and Mayor’s Office should pop up here as well.
It stands to reason, Ray Stantz will be the guy that schools the team on the lore of the new threat. Similar to his role in Back in Town. Should he do more? I don’t know. Will or should Winston Zeddemore, Janine Melnitz, and Peter Venkman show up? Maybe? I wouldn’t be against a story putting in the mileage on developing the new team but the originals having a small role doesn’t hurt either. Like Back, Winston and Janine showing up wouldn’t be a surprise. The real one would be Peter. As of yet, we don’t know when he starts to maintain a presence back in the city at the engineer corps’ base since he’s been living upstate teaching for years.
Sammy seems like a good match to Phoebe so far. Got the feeling Sammy was upset because Phoebe used “him” when Sammy likely identifies as “they/them.” Sammy being pretty interested in the supernatural could be a red flag or not. Too soon to conclude anything about Sammy as the series just started but how a haunted saber from a historical figure got in Sammy’s backpack should be an interesting story.
Let’s talk about the art. Big, big improvement. I like Aviv Or’s style but a lot like Blue Delliquanti, locations and the equipment tend to be too simple in detail. Yes, Dan Schoening and Luis Antonio Delgado set a really high bar when IDW Publishing had the license for comics and we can’t expect Or to emulate Schoening 1:1 but we need “more”.
As I mentioned above, feels like Booher picked up some character threads from Frozen Empire for Phoebe and Callie. One of the later scenes got me curious if Booher is seeding (retro-seeding) another or it’s a coincidence. Sammy accidentally summons/frees the ghost of Captain Kidd with a saber at the end. Could this be patient zero and what leads Podcast and Ray (and in turn the engineer corps) to keep tabs on spirit-loaded objects and form their partnership that we see in Frozen Empire? To a smaller extent when Phoebe mentioned looking at photos of a Poltergeist in Hell’s Kitchen, I immediately wondered if that was meant as a reference to Sewer Dragon or not. Probably the latter.
One neat detail that adds to the canon is Ray saying his piece about choosing the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as Gozer’s Destructor Form. Pinning some blame on the Stay Puft Corporation for an aggressive ad campaign that year makes sense. We see the billboard when the ECU gets shut down. I get some would prefer to be just some random memory that popped in there but I liked it. Another was the reveal that the Drone Trap was indeed invented in 2022 and Phoebe’s been tinkering with it since.
One note about the timeline. I noticed a contradiction between the two comic book series and double checked with Dark Horse and my contact in turn checked with the editors and David M. Booher. So the synopsis for Back in Town that mentions it starts one and a half years after Afterlife is no longer valid. Back in Town actually starts one year later. Dead Man’s Chest is 6 months after the ending of Back in Town so as Trevor says, it’s the day before 18 months since he met Lucky. So Afterlife takes place in June 2021, Back in Town in June 2022, Dead Man’s Chest in December 2022. I did some minor googling and some if not most private schools in NYC end in late June. Kinda odd Callie didn’t just wait until the school year was over but not a deal breaker though I’m sure Trevor’s had a harder time. And yeah, no snow in DMC #1 but IRL, snowfall didn’t start until mid-month. So all good.
List of references, easter eggs, callbacks etc. [spoiler]
*Regular Cover
**Captain Kidd and his ship Adventure Galley are featured on the cover.
**The roof rack of Ecto-1 sports the Drone Trap dome, first seen in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
*Variant Cover
**Captain Kidd and his ship Adventure Galley are also featured on the variant cover.
*Credits page
**Lucky Domingo is mentioned.
*Page 2
**Gary alludes to an act of God, a phrase used in insurance claims to describe uncontrollable forces of nature.
*Page 3
*The layout of the museum interior is loosely based on the interior of the Guggenheim Museum, also located in the Upper East Side.
**Trevor means to reference Auguste Rodin, a famous French sculptor, but instead names Rodan, the flying kaiju from the Godzilla franchise.
*Page 4
**Phoebe uses the Drone Trap, first seen in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
*Page 6
**Trevor mentions Lucky.
**Phoebe mentions a Poltergeist sighting in Hell’s Kitchen.
**Phoebe refers to Ray as “Dr. Ray” like she does in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
*Page 7
**The Zeddemore Academy first appeared in the previous comic book series, Ghostbusters: Back in Town.
**Phoebe indicates to Podcast it has been six months since she enrolled at Zeddemore Academy.
**A boy tries to get Phoebe to say the famous motto, “I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”
*Page 8
**The trio of mean girls from Issues #1 and #2 of Ghostbusters: Back in Town return.
*Page 9
**Sammy jokingly refers to Satan.
*Page 10
**Phoebe alludes to Podcast’s podcast, Mystical Tales of the Unknown Universe, mentioned in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
**Phoebe mentions not knowing Podcast’s birth name. Logan Kim is privy to it.
*Page 11
**Callie is wearing the pink shirt and blue jeans she wore when she first appeared in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Chapter 2.
**Trevor’s Spinners Roller Hop shirt is on the wall.
*Page 12
**Trevor mentions it will be 18 months since he and Lucky first met in Summerville in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. This contradicts a synopsis for Back in Town Issue #1 stating that series starts 18 months after the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
**A drawing depicts the Charging Bull statue near Wall Street.
**A drawing of a tombstone references the Trinity Church Cemetery.
**Two tickets on the wall reference the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
**Another note mentions Leo’s Bagels, located at 3 Hanover Square.
**A pink note reads “MOMA”, the abbreviation for the Museum of Modern Art.
*Page 13
**Gary mentions the microwave broke again. It previously broken in Back in Town Issue #3.
*Page 14
**Gary refers to his previous job as a substitute science teacher during the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
**Callie brings up moving to New York which was depicted in Ghostbusters: Back in Town #1
**Gary alludes to the talk about Phoebe and Trevor he had with Callie in Ghostbusters: Back in Town #2, page 9. Callie is correct that she didn’t mention coming face to face with murderous ghouls but Gary did add, “fighting ancient Sumerian gods to stop them from destroying the world.”
*Page 15
**Callie mentions Janine Melnitz.
*Page 16
**Ray and Phoebe are guests on Podcast’s podcast, Mystical Tales of the Unknown Universe, mentioned in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
**Ray is dressed like he was in Ghostbusters II, Chapter 5: Investigating Oscar.
**Ray talks about choosing Gozer’s Destructor form, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, during the events of the first movie. He blames it on Stay Puft Marshmallows advertisements being everywhere. One was seen near the Firehouse in the movie during Chapter 21: Out of Biz when the Containment Unit was turned off.
**Phoebe mentions Gozer and alludes to Godzilla.
**The hammer later called Hammer of Truth in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is on a shelf.
*Page 19
**One of the mean girls does a take on the infamous line “I see dead people” from the movie, “The Sixth Sense”.
**The same mean girl calls Phoebe a “Ghost Girl,” the same nickname given to Erin Gilbert in the 2016 Movie)|2016 movie.
[/spoiler]
Dead Man’s Chest #1 was a solid read. David Booher did his job: set up where Phoebe, Trevor, Callie, and Gary are at, we got to see a bust in progress, by issue’s end we clearly know what their struggles will be this series, and we unveiled the new threat. Now, we got 3 issues to see how the Spengler Family is going to solve this one. The potential for greatness is always at its zenith with a #1 and we shall see what happens, good or bad. Aviv Or is a welcome addition to the crew and the art is amazing so far, though with some reservations about not getting too detailed in some aspects. The stage is set, now let’s see a city in peril, let’s see destruction, let’s see ramifications. Fingers crossed but not the streams.
edit: Tyler Crook’s process making the regular cover:
https://www.mistercrook.com/blog/ghostbusters-and-a-ghost-ship