HA!
Alright, I’m going to put a few cards on the table.
You probably won’t ever see me writing Ghostbusters. It’s Erik’s book. I would’ve loved to have come on and write TWO stories, but those two stories probably won’t ever happen. I’m working on a creator owned series with a very good artist named Doug Holgate – a great friend of mine – very talented gent. We’re cooking something up. We were shooting ideas back and forth regarding characters for story lines, and we both love Venkman, particularly PRE-Ghostbusters Venkman/Ghostbusters 2 Venkman, so it’s a character we’re feeling out and taking those stories I wanted to do for Ghostbusters and applying them to something else. I scribbled out that Venkman while we were brainstorming. I also drew a HEAP of other things, but revealing them would be too… revealing. I’ll have you all know I’m a huge Peter Cushing fan too… (HINTS).
Re-reading everything came down to catching up with the series. I’ve been pretty slack in my reading. I took two steps into The NEW Ghostbusters #1 and thought I needed to read it all. And the job? It was an illustration job before IDW. There was some stuff I’d worked on just after the written work on TMNT and an opportunity to illustrate another book years ago came up. It actually had nothing to do with comics or Ghostbusters, but it’s what got me drawing again.
The Spirit Guide thing was simply me looking back through my Deviantart file and looking back at things I had done, things I was happy with, things I could do better, etc. I haven’t really heard anything from IDW since I left the book. I was lined up to illustrate Silent Hill, but it fell apart. Now I’m illustrating Hoax Hunters at Image (which you should all be putting your orders down for – Burnham even did a story a little while ago).
Would I want to do more? Sure. Let me do some more covers. Let me write a story some time. But the likelihood of these things happening are pretty low. It ultimately comes down to you guys wanting it and actually doing something about it. I can ask and pitch to my heart’s content, but that doesn’t really make it happen. I pitched a handful of ideas while I was on that book and the only one that eventuated was “Who Killed Laura Parr?”. The Tobin story was canned pretty early on when plans for an annual evaporated, which was why I put that story into the back of #8. I don’t even think I told anyone what I was doing!
Would I want to do the Spirit Guide? Certainly. But I can’t do it on my own. Whoever has the rights to do it would need to get in touch with me and ask me to do it. I don’t know if that’s IDW or not (though their IDW Limited selection caters to different books I think…).
Like I said, I’d love to come back and work on Ghostbusters. I was a little bit gutted that I didn’t get to write Mars Attacks vs the REAL Ghostbusters, given it wasn’t a part of the ongoing continuity, but eh. I was offered a spot doing Real Ghostbusters 2 page stories at the back of each issue (ala PCOC), but I declined. I just felt I couldn’t get good stories across in 2 page chunks without it relying on simply being Titan-style gag stories. Erik’s done great on it, though, and having the quick character back-ups is great too – kinda like what PCOC’s aim was (develop more around the characters in a subtle way).
Honestly, I’d kill a man to write an EGB or RGB mini-series, or the Spirit Guide, but at the end of the day all the speculation points to these things above. I’d love to say I was doing any of these things, just so I could get something out there for you guys again, but unfortunately, you’ll have to make do with my creator owned stuff.
