Ghostbusters: Dead Man's Chest #4
With all the main team and guest stars in this arc, David Booher manages to give everybody a fun beat and some one liners. Booher also came up with a fun gimmick for the Ghostbusters in the mansion but due to the 20 page format, it is noticeable he had to get to stopping Captain Kidd as quick as he could. The idea of his mansion as a focal point of the issue would have been an interesting exploration of an anachronistic 'haunted house' phenomenon in the mainline movie canon (the Wander Hills Orphanage was a fun study of temporal displacement hauntings in the IDW canon) but alas this is only 4 issues and 20 pages each. It was relief that no one was really left out and everyone had a cool moment, some maybe more than others. Lucky got to blow away the Kidd Mansion with a ghost ship, the Ghostbusters' tech undergoes a transformation and they have to quickly adapt, and Ray traps Kidd with the Drone Trap (good thing he thought to bring that along). I was happy to see Ray get an action beat at last. And his quip of not getting on a boat anytime soon, lol. Dug the banter between the Ghostbusters in the siege of the mansion and really just them talking things out before they head into the mansion helps with that slow build of watching them become a solid team. But I'm hoping the next comic hands the big focus over to Callie and/or Gary. Give Phoebe a rest.
Story-wise, I think Dan and Sammy's issues got wrapped up a bit too abruptly. Not that I found it too interesting to begin with. It turned out to have no bearing on the main story, I thought it was somehow going to connect to Kidd's daughter looking like Sammy and become important in the final act battle i.e. the ghosts of Kidd's family shows up. Nope. On one hand, probably the finale got cut down in length due to the rigidity of a 4 issue, 20 page each format which is a common business decision of comic book companies. If only it was 5 issues instead (or really just 2-4 more pages), I think there would be more room for certain things to resolve in better detail and pacing.
It's no secret if you've been reading these reviews that I want more detail in the art. The character art was an improvement in this series but the equipment and locations still need more.
Captain Kidd just, irrationally, wanted his life back and sorta just was that angry ghost to trap in the end. That was a letdown.
And this is probably old man yelling at the sky talk but Frozen Empire, Back in Town, Dead Man's Chest - can we ever have a story end with just the OG packs trapping the big bad instead of some variant neutrona wand showing up at the end? I don't know, the novelty of that approach is losing its luster to me.
The only thing that really really irked me was the anachronism of an Engineer Corp patch on Lucky's khaki flight suit in one panel. I hope that was meant as an easter egg and not intentional or a mistake. The Spengler Team knows nothing about Engineer Corps at this point and don't find out until Frozen Empire. We don't even know when Winston establishes the group. If anything, I was hoping this incident would end with Ray becoming curious about cursed objects and wondering if he could somehow taking preventative action, seeding Repossessed and the Ionic Separator. But at least we did get some insight into another aspect of this era of ghostbusting: the Zeddemore Foundation. It makes perfect sense, Winston's wealth comes into play in the aftermath of the more destructive of cases and his not-for-profit being the tool he uses to resolve things is an obvious choice in retrospect.
Overall, I'm grateful for these new stories to fill in the gap between the recent movies and to have new material in the interim years before the next big media projects release but I want to be floored and these two mini-series so far have been "okay." Looking ahead, I look forward to the possibility of another mini-series heading into Year Two/2023 for the Spengler Family and I'm always hopeful we may see something a little different like maybe a 5 issue series or a one-shot special or annual or an ongoing series. We'll see. It took awhile for this second title to be announced, something like 7 months. So we may not hear anything until March next year! The sooner the better. Dead Man's Chest #4 was an entertaining melee that brings our second Dark Horse mini-series to its end with a couple fun surprises. While a couple more pages or an issue would have helped plus the story, it was a satisfying enough conclusion but there's still room for improvement.
Trivia, references etc.
With all the main team and guest stars in this arc, David Booher manages to give everybody a fun beat and some one liners. Booher also came up with a fun gimmick for the Ghostbusters in the mansion but due to the 20 page format, it is noticeable he had to get to stopping Captain Kidd as quick as he could. The idea of his mansion as a focal point of the issue would have been an interesting exploration of an anachronistic 'haunted house' phenomenon in the mainline movie canon (the Wander Hills Orphanage was a fun study of temporal displacement hauntings in the IDW canon) but alas this is only 4 issues and 20 pages each. It was relief that no one was really left out and everyone had a cool moment, some maybe more than others. Lucky got to blow away the Kidd Mansion with a ghost ship, the Ghostbusters' tech undergoes a transformation and they have to quickly adapt, and Ray traps Kidd with the Drone Trap (good thing he thought to bring that along). I was happy to see Ray get an action beat at last. And his quip of not getting on a boat anytime soon, lol. Dug the banter between the Ghostbusters in the siege of the mansion and really just them talking things out before they head into the mansion helps with that slow build of watching them become a solid team. But I'm hoping the next comic hands the big focus over to Callie and/or Gary. Give Phoebe a rest.
Story-wise, I think Dan and Sammy's issues got wrapped up a bit too abruptly. Not that I found it too interesting to begin with. It turned out to have no bearing on the main story, I thought it was somehow going to connect to Kidd's daughter looking like Sammy and become important in the final act battle i.e. the ghosts of Kidd's family shows up. Nope. On one hand, probably the finale got cut down in length due to the rigidity of a 4 issue, 20 page each format which is a common business decision of comic book companies. If only it was 5 issues instead (or really just 2-4 more pages), I think there would be more room for certain things to resolve in better detail and pacing.
It's no secret if you've been reading these reviews that I want more detail in the art. The character art was an improvement in this series but the equipment and locations still need more.
Captain Kidd just, irrationally, wanted his life back and sorta just was that angry ghost to trap in the end. That was a letdown.
And this is probably old man yelling at the sky talk but Frozen Empire, Back in Town, Dead Man's Chest - can we ever have a story end with just the OG packs trapping the big bad instead of some variant neutrona wand showing up at the end? I don't know, the novelty of that approach is losing its luster to me.
The only thing that really really irked me was the anachronism of an Engineer Corp patch on Lucky's khaki flight suit in one panel. I hope that was meant as an easter egg and not intentional or a mistake. The Spengler Team knows nothing about Engineer Corps at this point and don't find out until Frozen Empire. We don't even know when Winston establishes the group. If anything, I was hoping this incident would end with Ray becoming curious about cursed objects and wondering if he could somehow taking preventative action, seeding Repossessed and the Ionic Separator. But at least we did get some insight into another aspect of this era of ghostbusting: the Zeddemore Foundation. It makes perfect sense, Winston's wealth comes into play in the aftermath of the more destructive of cases and his not-for-profit being the tool he uses to resolve things is an obvious choice in retrospect.
Overall, I'm grateful for these new stories to fill in the gap between the recent movies and to have new material in the interim years before the next big media projects release but I want to be floored and these two mini-series so far have been "okay." Looking ahead, I look forward to the possibility of another mini-series heading into Year Two/2023 for the Spengler Family and I'm always hopeful we may see something a little different like maybe a 5 issue series or a one-shot special or annual or an ongoing series. We'll see. It took awhile for this second title to be announced, something like 7 months. So we may not hear anything until March next year! The sooner the better. Dead Man's Chest #4 was an entertaining melee that brings our second Dark Horse mini-series to its end with a couple fun surprises. While a couple more pages or an issue would have helped plus the story, it was a satisfying enough conclusion but there's still room for improvement.
Trivia, references etc.
This Post Contains Spoilers
Statistics: Posted by mrmichaelt — September 3rd, 2025, 1:17 am