Ghostbusters West Coast: Intermission
By Fritz Baugh and Jeremy Hicks

2004–Timeline Year 22
The Ghostbusters have mourned the loss of one of their own, the resignation of their most experience member, and the addition of two new members to replace them. But now, something dark begins to surface in the mind of Jeremy Hicks…

This story bridges the gap between “Curtain Call” and “Chronicles of Gozer” (speaking of Gozer, I have the rough drafts for two more chapters in hand, and hopefully they'll be out very soon)

It also features guest shots from Peter and Dana Venkman, Winston Zeddemore, and even Vincent Belmont and Jill Valentine.

Ooops…it's been this long since I updated this?

Ghostbusters: Nodus

1993–Timeline Year Eleven

Egon Spengler can't catch a break. Ten years ago he'd helped found Ghostbusters Inc. Today he's living alone, dealing with a shock of a personal nature, and now somebody wants to “test” him…and in the process the agenda of Josiah Nodus becomes just a little clearer

Warning: A rather intense flashback is part of this story. This means you, Sara.

Act Two, Part One

2005–Timeline Year Twenty Three

The Ghostbusters West Coast are back and all brand new. After the trials of the last year, a smaller but more determined team comes together as a monster is stealing eyeballs all over LA.


Children of Zodiac; An Epilog to Ghostbusters: The Zodiac Imperative

1991–Timeline Year Nine

A circle of mysterious beings discuss the effects of the coming of the Zodiac Lords…and what it means to the future of the Ghostbusters, and their own enigmatic “Ascension”…

That was excellent and keep up the good work, Frtiz. (*peter)

Ghostbusters International: Con-Fusion
By Fritz Baugh, with Vincent Belmont, Kevin Kemarly, and Greg Justis

2005–Timeline Year Twenty Three
August 20. GenCon is the world's largest gaming convention, and just happens to be held in Fritz Baugh's old home town. But he, Vincent Belmont, Kevin Kemarly, and Greg Justis are in for more than they bargained for, and I'm not just talking about being insulted by Adam Sessler…

A couple weeks ago I started uploading some mock comic covers to my deviantart site…the first is this one, which I dubbed “Ghostbusters No.0”

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/23294443/

I drew Ray, Egon, and Venkman in the same poses as Aykroyd, Ramis, and Murray had in one of the famous Gb1 promo pictures (though of course they're in the animated likenesses). I added Janine, Winston, Dana, and Louis at the bottom, taken from the profile pictures I use at various places on my site. Composited it all together into a comic book cover type format (complete with upc box lol)

The picture used for the main part is a couple of years old, which is why you might notice some of the more RGB-style details on the equipment. And all are wearing the tan suits they would've been in Gb1 (and Winston has his mustache)–think of this as, if somebody'd ever done an RGB style adaptation of GB1 (the way Now did for Gb2), this could've been a cover for it.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/23591364/

Continuing the series of mock comic covers, this one being a companion piece to Ghostbusters No.0–Ghostbusters 2 No.0. Of course, there really was a GB2 comic…but my picture, like the GB1 one, uses the actual movie poster as inspiration for the character poses.

I used to use a marker-colored version of the main picture on the main page of my website, and it's currently on the GB Reference page ( http://www.ectozone.com/omnibus.html ) though in the computer colored version I've tweaked some of the details to make the drawing fit more into my current style (ie Egon with a nametag)

Janine, Dana, and Louis are represented, as they were in the GB1 drawing, by profile pictures…Dana and Louis, in fact, by the exact same ones (what can I say? They still work. It was Now's GB2 adaptation that introduced the RGB style Dana) though Janine is shown in her GB2 Full Hooker Action look.

Now, here's the real point of all this…

Some of you may remember the idea floated around for Ghostbusters: Professional Paranormal Investigators, the fan comic project spearheaded by ECTO-1 (who would've been the writer). The project fell apart due to various problems of the creative team; I provided a total of seven cover concepts for the project, which I'll be posting at Deviantart one at a time every week (and in addition to the “#0” covers, I have three more “extra” covers in a similar format)

The concept for the #1 cover came from ECTO-1; the first version only had the four Ghostbusters, but ECTO asked me to add some background. I did; he in turn wanted there to me more detail in the buildings–but before I got around to it the project died.

Adam Bestler was originally slated to be the colorist, but for my Deviantart posting I did my own color.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/23852941

The next PPE cover was actually the first one I did for the project–a nice shot that includes the four Ghostbusters, Janine, ECTO-1, and the Firehouse (and if you look closely you can find Slimer and a couple other familiar faces, even though Slimer was not going to be part of the series)

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/24092757/

The first version of the picture I drew had the Ghostbusters and backgrounds higher on the page, more in the center, with more of a dead space at the bottom. Per ECTO, I adjusted it to set the characters lower in the scene, and of course extended the Firehouse accordingly (though I missed one line across if you look closely. Oops) In addition, some background elements he thought were overdone and distracting were removed–a half size black and white of my first version can be found in my scraps section.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/24092330/

This picture final was actually mostly colored by ECTO-1–in his version, as would've been standard for the series, the Ghostbusters all wore tan flight suits–for my version, being maybe the only person left who prefers the different colors, they're sporting the flight suits seen in the animation. Another half size picture can be found in my scraps, this time as ECTO-1 colored it.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/24092604/

Next up down the stretch is the PPE cover I've marked Ghostbusters No.3, and it's the first of five portrait covers: This one features Dr. Peter Venkman, played in the movies by Bill Murray and voiced in the cartoons by Lorenzo Music (who was great at it) and later by Dave Coulier (who did a lame Bill Murray impression and sounded about 30 IQ points dumber than either Murray or Music)

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/24395676/

The profile cover has two parts: the large portrait of the character in civilian clothes (this being the sweat shirt and pants Venkman often wore in the animation) then an action scene. The next three profile covers will also be in this format.

Venkman, being a bit skittish around bugs (ie “Drool the Dog Faced Goblin”, “Janine You're Changed”) I thought the fun thing to do would be to have him facing off against some giant bugs. I don't have the best photo processing programs (something called ULead Photo Express that came with my cheap scanner) but I think the proton beam came out pretty decently.

And if any of the giant bugs happen to look familiar, that's a complete coincidence

Ghostbusters No.4 is the portrait cover of Dr. Ray Stantz, played in the movies by Dan Aykroyd and voiced in the animation by Frank Welker (it's easier to name the cartoons Frank Welker hasn't done, but I'll say probably his most famous role was Fred in Scooby Doo and leave it at that)

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/24632078/

The large portrait features Ray (as with Venkman) in an off-duty outfit used often in the animation. In the action shot, he's throwing a trap and facing off against some ghosts that, if you think are familiar looking, you must be mistaken (lol). It was this picture that made me most think about not putting on the spots where UPC codes would go on a real cover–the trap came out so well (I haven't drawn a movie style trap all that often) I hated to cover it up with the box, but there was nowhere it could go that wouldn't work any better.

As usual I got Ray in with work gloves and ecto-goggles. I realize that between the gloves, the tucked-in pants, and the tan flight suit, the only way to tell if it's supposed to be GB1/“Citizen Ghost” Ray or RGB Ray is the brown collar. And I do like to draw him with a cigarette–it's a bad habit, but he smoked like a chimney in the first movie.

Ghostbusters No. 5 features Winston Zeddemore, the too-often “forgotten” member of the Ghostbusters. He was played in the movies by Ernie Hudson, and on TV by Arsenio Hall. When Arsenio left to start his talk show, he was replaced by Buster Jones (by far the least inferior replacement, as Dave Coulier and Kath Soucie sucked ass at their roles)

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/24899551/

Winston is seen in the shirt and jeans he often wore in the animation, and in his action shot he's fighting some sort of grabby eyeball thing. Unlike some of the previous monsters, this one's pretty much something I threw together just for this picture–there's no in-joke that nobody's guessed yet.

Ghostbusters No.6 is the final member of the famous team, Dr. Egon Spengler. Played in the movie by Harold Ramis, and voiced brilliantly in the cartoon by Maurice LaMarche, he ended up becoming my favorite of the four. LaMarche's performance combined with (what I percieve anyway) as some regard for the character by RGB's first and best story editor, J. Micheal Straczynski, took the broad outlines from the movie and moved him far beyond the “mad scientist” cliches.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/25182958/

A major part of that was the decision not to have Dana Barrett in the cartoon: since Egon's love interest, Janine Melnitz, was in the cartoon, it made Egon, in a weird way, the show's romantic lead. More on some of that stuff next week, when cover #7 comes out, featuring Janine.

Egon's portrait is a little different from the other three Ghostbusters in that it's an outfit that doesn't come directly from the animation–it's my own little whimsical look, which I “establish” for the present day Egon in my fan fictions, a bit of a combination of the anachronistic look Egon had in the animation, the more formal outfits favored in the movies, and just a dash of..well, what I can only call, “What if Doctor Who regenerated into Egon Spengler?”

The action shot features him looking at his meter, as usual, with a particullarly unusual monster following him; a creature I sort of “re-imagined” from one seen in the animation, The Master of Shadow (“Slimer, Is That You?”) to make him a little, well, shadowier.

The Story:

Extreme Ghostbusters: Hearts In Eclipse, Part One

1998–Timeline Year Sixteen

Tensions are rising in GBCentral, as conflict begins to build between Team Extreme and their two newest members…and the return of a long-absent member of the supporting cast threatens to spread the tension into their predecessors' ranks.

The Art:

Ghostbusters No.7 completes the set of portrait cover designs with the Ghostbusters' ever-efficient secretary and the most worthy holder of the “Unofficial Fifth Ghostbuster” title (since the other contenders are Slimer and Louis Tully, she wins easily). Played in the movies by Annie Potts, she's the only one to have had three different animated voices: Laura Summer, who kicked ass in the role; Kath Soucie, who sucked ass in the role; and Pat Musick, who did the part for Extreme Ghostbusters, and did almost as well as Summer (the character was older and more mellow that Laura Summer's version, but still had ten times the personality as Soucie's).

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/25448423/

A big part of the problem were the vast difference in the portrayals: at first Janine was like no other female character in American cartoons at the time: gutsy, abraisive, and not afraid to insult or fight with her bosses and the ghosts if necessary. At the same time, her awkward budding romance with Egon Spengler was by turns touching and hilarious…I simply consider them one of my favorite couples in all of fiction. (I've been getting ready for quite some time to tell the story of their wedding in my fan fic universe; that story will be released very soon)

Then the ABC executives stepped in and had the character lobotomized into just another dime a dozen “Mommy Figure”, and Harold Ramis added insult to injury by turning her into a desperate ho in Ghostbusters 2…thank goodness for J. Micheal Stracynski and James Van Hise, who fixed both problems as best they could in “Janine You've Changed” and the RGB comic book.

The main profile part is, like Egon, an outfit not directly from the animation, but used in some of my fan fics–it's an attempt to make her look just a tad more professional without sacrificing her distinct sense of style. Unlike the actual Ghostbusters, the “Action shot” doesn't feature her in uniform busting ghosts, it's a nice work pose (with an outfit and jacket that were in the animation, though not together)

If it was an action shot, Janine would be in the flight suit seen in Now's RGB#22: it's the same blue as Egon's, but with orange trim. I sure as hell wouldn't use that vomitous pink thing.

That was pretty good kee up the good work!

Thanks. Nice to see somebody still like what I do…

I've gotten so few comments lately I sometimes wonder why I bother.

Doc Fritz
Thanks. Nice to see somebody still like what I do…

I've gotten so few comments lately I sometimes wonder why I bother.

Heh, you and many of the artists and writers who still ply their trade.


The covers are great Fritz, only a shame they never got to be used.