Since Fritz hasn't started a thread on this yet, I thought I'd do him and everyone else a favor and post this.

Here is the little sister to the now-semifamous Ghostbusters Omnibus Timeline:

The New Ghostbusters Timeline

This timeline is a work in progress that has barely started. As you might have already guessed, it is centered around the new Ghostbusters comic book to be released by 88mph Studios.

Thusly, starting out, it's a load of pure conjecture - Based off lore established by RGB, EGB, and even the GBI role playing game, but it considers Year One as 2003, and thus dates affecting the biographies of the Ghostbusters themselves are advanced twenty years (Example: In the Omnibus, Egon's conjectural birthdate is November 21, 1957. In the New Timeline, it's November 21, 1977).

It presents a distilled essence of Ghostbuster history. Unless it's actually mentioned in GB1, it is NOT canon yet. Even the Ghostbusters' histories have been simplified - Only the non-supernatural backstory has been conjectured (In other words, as cool as the Boogieman is, he's not in there until/unless 88mph “re-establishes” him.). “Conjectural”, meaning “We consider this fact still valid until Sebastien and Company say otherwise”, while also subtlety (?) hinting maybe “Don't change this, Please?”.

Fritz offers it as a reference to Sebastien and company in the hopes that they will consider it as their comic launches, to minimize unintentional contradiction with what has come before.

And of course he offers it to all Ghostheads as a resource for the great new series to come. Enjoy! :-)

(Awkward chuckle)

I don't know how I missed this one when I recreated all my major threads for GBMB, and I thank Matthew for doing so. I'll have to remember to mention it elsewhere too…

A major difference in the New Timeline and the Omnibus is a slightly different format in the year entries pertaining to the Ghostbusters births and events in their lives. 1977, for example, is not just listed as “1977”, but as “Twenty Six Years Ago”.

The reason for this is that, if you notice, in most comic books time passses much slower than in the real world. Spider-Man's been published for fourty years–if things happened in “real time” he'd be in his late fifties and thinking about retirement. But he's not. The “rule of thumb” seems to be about four years of real time equalling one year of comic time (Marvel, at least, semi-confirmed that back in the “Return of the Spider Clone” arc in the mid-Nineties, with a reference to the original Clone story taking place “five years ago” when, in the real world, it was about twenty). So within the Marvel Universe, Spidey has been on the job for about ten years, which actually sounds about right.

Without knowing yet whether 88MPH is going to keep a “real time” progression (some companies have been known to do this) or be in the standard “slow time” mode, I've built in the option to the Timeline either way.

So by another rule of thumb or two, the stories published until the end of 2004 will be considered “Year One”; after that, the time scale will move on, with stories from 2005-2008 theoretically being “Year Two” and so on (I am, of course, presuming the book will be a raging success and survive that long :-) :p )–unless 88MPH clearly establishes a more “real time” progression.

THE BONDO BANDIT
am i the only one that doesn't think that egon should be 26 ??

Believe me, I understand what you're saying, Bondo…the ages DO seem to work out a little young…but I have to explain that I didn't pull those numbers out of nowhere (well, Winston's I sort of did, but I'll explain that…)

First of all, the birthdates in the New Timeline were created by adding 20 years to those I derived from the 1980's/RGB continuities and used in the Ghostbusters Omnibus Timeline

Ray: Ray was born in 1959 according to “It's About Time”. So Ray's conjectural new birthdate is 1979.

Venkman and Dana: Their years were derived from the Ghostbusters International rulebook, published in 1989 right after GB2. Since the book was written as though it were “after” GB2, I assumed the ages printed there were their 1990 ages, and subtracted accordingly. Then added 20 years for the new Timeline.

Egon: His age listed in GBI yielded a birth year of 1957. This was actually confirmed by the XGB episodes “Back In the Saddle” and “Sphinx”; in the latter he mentions he's 39, while in the former (made later) he was a birthday. Thus, Egon turns 40 in 1997…poof, born in 1957 once again. Add 20 years and you get 1977. Some people have found it strange that Egon is actually younger than Venkman, but Egon's a prodigy–in RGB's “Roller Ghoster” he mentions having his first degree at the same age other kids his age were in grade school. He's just more mature than Venkman in most ways; though being forced to grow up too fast also explains some of his social deficiencies (ie his problems admitting his feelings for Janine)

Janine: We see her high school graduation yearbook in “Brooklyn Triangle”, with the year 1977 on it. We narrow her birthdate down to October/November 1958 by the XGB episode “The Crawler”. So “new” Janine is conjecturally born in October/November 1978.

Louis: I originally used the GBI age until a poster on GBN, “Born2BustHeads” pointed out that Louis celebrates his third anniversary as an accountant in GB1. Assuming he graduated high school at age 18 and attended college for four years, he'd be 25 at the time of GB1–leading to the 1958/1978 birth dates.

Winston: I admit, on this one I fudged it–the GBI age would actually have him younger than anyone else, and that just didn't seem right. I arbitrarily added 10 years to his age, making him born in 1953/1973, old enough for the “original” Winston to have seen action in Vietnam