A bit of a rarity has been preserved this time around. On the Ghostbusters II Books page you can now find the Ghostbusters II UK Theater Campaign Book in PDF ebook form. This was a book given out to theater owners in the United Kingdom to help them maximize the exposure of their showings of the movie. It has suggestions for newspaper features (dig those crazy faux ads), contests for the kiddies, and prize giveaways (no balloons or thermal mugs, sadly), plus a list of merchandise producers and various theater accoutrements (posters, standees, etc.) that could be ordered. Obviously, this book was never given out to the general public, so I highly suspect that most of you have never seen it before. I certainly haven't.

Mucho thanks to Lee Taylor for providing the scans from his book and, as always, Matthew Jordan for the clean-up and restoration of the scans. Oh, yeah, for those playing along at home... Richard Roy now has up to issue #24 (TWENTY-FOUR!) of NOW's The Real Ghostbusters comic books in the Ectocontainment's Comics section. So go check that out when you're done here.

IDW just sent along the following solicitation for the Ghostbusters monthly comic series, issue #11, which comes out in July. Below that is the solicitation for the Volume 2 trade paperback. which also comes out in July. You can pre-order any of the regular issues at Ghostbusters Fans (though not all covers are available), and you can order the Volume 1 trade paperback (containing issues 1-4) and pre-order the Volume 2 trade paperback (containing issues 5-8) at Amazon.

Ghostbusters #11 (July 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Schoening, Tristan Jones (c) Continuing west on their cross-country caper, the Ghostbusters head from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Chihuahuan desert, and the city of Roswell. Ray's in heaven with the proliferation of ET attractions in the UFO capital of New Mexico, but will he have time to enjoy it while the ghosts of little green men attack? Haunted America, the Ghostbusters event of the summer, continues here! FC * 32 pages * $3.99 Variant Covers: Variant Mike Henderson cover! Bullet Points: • Each issue contains a back-up Ghostbusters story by Tristan Jones! "Who Killed Laura Parr?" will run in all 4 issues of Haunted America! • The Ghostbusters leave New York! On the road for the first time in comics! • Four Dan Schoening covers connect to make a unified National map, each featuring a different Ghostbuster! Four Tristan Jones covers featuring a haunted tourist postcard theme!

The four Dan Schoening map covers can be seen in their connected form over at Proton Charging and Ghostbusters News. As for the four Tristan Jones postcard covers, issues #9 (Detroit), #10 (New Orleans), and #11 (Roswell) have all been released by Tristan on his Deviant Art account, but not #12 yet.

Ghostbusters, Vol. 2: The Most Magical Place On Earth (July 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Nick Runge (c) The smash-hit ongoing series continues in this second story arc! Thanks to the contract they signed, the Ghostbusters are temporarily barred by Walter Peck from taking any work (without his express permission) in New York City. The Ghostbusters skirt the edict by taking a job in Schenectady. It's a simple haunted amusement park upstate - what could possibly go wrong? TPB * FC * $17.99 * 104 pages * ISBN 978-1-61377-279-9 Offered Again! Ghostbusters Ongoing Vol. 1 * FC * $17.99 * ISBN: 978-1-61377-157-0 Ghostbusters Displaced Aggression TPB * FC * $17.99 * ISBN: 978-1-60010-610-1 Ghostbusters Haunted Holidays TPB * FC * $17.99 * ISBN: 978-1-60010-778-8 Ghostbusters The Other Side TPB * FC * $17.99 * ISBN: 978-1-60010-426-8

Comic artist Tristan Jones, who designed the rotating series of Spook Central banners you see atop this site, has let me in on a little secret. Dan Aykroyd's Ghostbusters 3: Hellbent script will be adapted into comic book form starting in Ghostbusters issue #13, and continuing to issue #16. The details are still being finalized, so there isn't much to report right now, but he did tell me that the first issue will have a whopping THIRTEEN variant covers. A rather unlucky number for those of us with small wallets. Expect a formal press release from IDW in the coming days, but in the meantime, if you don't tell anyone, you can view a preliminary rough of Tristan's variant cover by CLICKING HERE.

IDW just sent along the following solicitation for the Ghostbusters monthly comic series, issue #10, which comes out in June. You can pre-order any of the regular issues at Ghostbusters Fans (though not all covers are available), and you can pre-order the Volume 1 (containing issues 1-4) and Volume 2 (containing issues 5-8) trade paperbacks at Amazon.

Ghostbusters #10 (June 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Schoening, Tristan Jones (c) It's one haunted hotspot down and three to go as the Ghostbusters head south, leaving the Motor City for the Big Easy. But ain't nothin' gonna be easy down Louisiana way for the boys in gray - Marie Laveau is back in the Quarter and lookin' to stick around! Join us as Haunted America continues... in New Orleans! FC * 32 pages * $3.99 Variant Covers: Variant Mike Henderson cover! Bullet Points: • Each issue contains a back-up Ghostbusters story by Tristan Jones! "Who Killed Laura Parr?" will run in all 4 issues of Haunted America! • The Ghostbusters leave New York! On the road for the first time in comics! • Four Dan Schoening covers connect to make a unified National map, each featuring a different Ghostbuster! Four Tristan Jones covers featuring a haunted tourist postcard theme!

The four Dan Schoening map covers can be seen in their connected form over at Proton Charging and Ghostbusters News. As for the four Tristan Jones postcard covers, issues #9 (Detroit), #10 (New Orleans), and #11 (Roswell) have all been released by Tristan on his Deviant Art account, but not #12 yet.

A nice vintage magazine has been preserved this time around. On the Ghostbusters Books page you can now find a PDF ebook containing all of the Ghostbusters articles from the December 1984 issue of Starburst magazine. All of the "Making of Ghostbusters" articles were written by Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier. If those names sound familiar, that's because they would later write The Real Ghostbusters episodes "The Headless Motorcyclist" and "The Ghostbusters In Paris".

Mucho thanks to Lee Taylor for providing the scans from his magazine (it took me three years and four months, but I finally got it on the site) and, as always, Matthew Jordan for the clean-up and restoration of the scans. Oh, yeah, for those playing along at home... Richard Roy now has up to issue #11 (ELEVEN!) of NOW's The Real Ghostbusters comic books in the Ectocontainment's Comics section. So go check that out when you're done here.

Finally, there are four images from this issue of Starburst magazine that I thought were worth uploading separately from the magazine to the Spook Central Facebook page. Some of the old-timers will recognize some of these from when Bill Emkow had them on his site. Yes, that's adult film legend Ron Jeremy on the left in the second image. Yes, a pornstar appears in an official Ghostbusters production photo :-)

When I started the Ghostbusters PDF eBook Preservation Project, one of the books I most wanted to preserve was Sholly Fisch's novel Ghostbusters: The Return. Even though it isn't a very old book (it came out in 2004), the publisher, iBooks, went out of business two years after it hit the market, thus ensuring that the very limited supply of books that were printed would become instant collectibles. Copies on eBay and Amazon Marketplace currently go for $100 or more. I bought my copy back in 2004 and have never read it or cracked the spine, It is as 100% Mint as 100% Mint can be. I bet that I could get a nice amount of money for it, but as hard up for cash as I am, that will be one of the last things I will ever sell. I might sell a kidney before I sell that book. Hey, I have two kidneys, but only one copy of the book :-)

It gives me great joy to announce that Ghostbusters: The Return can now be downloaded in PDF format on the Ghostbusters Books page. It was a true group effort in getting the book to be part of the preservation project, so be sure to check out the notes/credits link under the book cover for all of the gory details. The Ghostbusters 2005 DVD Movie Scrapbook has also be added to the Ghostbusters Books page.

I scanned in a bunch of the Kenner The Real Ghostbusters toy advertisements and "Action Toy Guide" booklets (just The Real Ghostbusters pages), which can all be found on The Real Ghostbusters Merchandise page. Almost all are PDFs, though the poster at the end is a singular image. This is actually the smaller of the two Kenner posters that I have. I didn't scan in the large poster/calendar because it is WAY too large to do without some careful planning first. It's the source for some of my holiday images that appear throughout the year on the top side of this blog.

Over on the Ghostbusters II Books page you can now find the junior novel by B.B. Hiller and a coloring book. With the coloring book, I made an exception to my rule about not adding children's books to the project. Not because it is exceptionally well done, but rather quite the opposite. It is the "Troll 2" of Ghostbusters merchandise. It is truly "so bad, it's good". Just take a look at the book's depiction of the four guys:


Yes, Ray has a mustache that would make Tom Selleck jealous, and Egon has lost his glasses (an essential element of the character) but gained poofy hair (for lack of a better description). I know that they can't draw the guys to look exactly like the actors, due to likeness rights, but they couldn't have drawn them to look more different if they tried. There's a way to make them somewhat resemble the actors without being exact likenesses. Just look at what the comics have done the past few years. Anyway, if there's one positive to the coloring book, it's that it was written up based on the script and not the final cut of the movie, so a lot of deleted scenes are represented in it. Also note that Kenner's The Real Ghostbusters toys are being used as the Ghostbusters' equipment (PDF page 50), and the Gigameter looks nothing like it does in the movie (PDF page 22). I can only guess that the artists were not shown a single photograph of the equipment from the movie set (and didn't think to look at photos or videos from the first movie), so they drew the equipment for the book based on what they could find from the animated series and their own ideas. And yet, the slime blower looks fairly accurate to its movie counterpart (PDF page 101).

Finally, I scanned in and made into a PDF ebook the Biltmore Hotel brochure I got back in 2004. You can find it on the Sedgewick/Biltmore Hotel page at the top of the Fun Facts section.

A big round of thanks to the tireless efforts of Matthew Jordan for helping to make a lot of these ebooks possible. Without your help, a lot of these books would have been forgotten decades ago. Richard Roy is also helping to preserve vintage Ghostbusters books. He just uploaded high-resolution scans of NOW's The Real Ghostbusters #1 and #2 comic books to the Ectocontainment's Comics section, and moved The Real Ghostbusters in Ghostbusters II trilogy from his old site to that page, too. You'll definitely want to check all of that out, and keep an eye on the Ectocontainment's Comics section for future updates.

[UPDATE - 2/25/2012]
I want to give a quick bit of thanks to the guys at the Ghostbusters Wiki for mentioning the eBook Preservation Project (and this update, specifically) on their site. Those guys understand exactly what the project is trying to accomplish.

The reason behind all this is because in most cases, the materials that are being covered are becoming harder to find and costly to get. This project is to help fans that don't have the funds or came along late in the game so to speak. The Preservation Project is just for that, to keep the history of ghostbusters available for future generations.

Although I'm the one to give the project a name, it is not my project, per se. It belongs to all Ghostbusters fans. Richard Roy is doing his part to preserve the past by scanning in the NOW comics. Matthew from the Ghostbusters Wiki has been helping with scanning, cleaning-up images, and providing materials that I don't have. I still have a LOT more work to do with my collection of items directly related to the movies and animated series. I'm hoping that other webmasters will put some out-of-print books and materials in high-quality formats on their sites as well. Maybe one of my fellow webmasters will want to start archiving all of the old West End Games RPG books. I may not be interested in them, but I'm sure that a lot of folks are, and would love to have the opportunity to read some of them.

IDW just sent along the following solicitation for the Ghostbusters monthly comic series, issue #9, which comes out in May. You can pre-order any of the regular issues at Ghostbusters Fans (though not all covers are available), and you can pre-order the Volume 1 trade paperback at Amazon. Besides that, a Volume 2 trade paperback is also now available for pre-order over at Amazon. No information has been released by IDW on TPB Vol. 2, but I would imagine that it will contain issues #5-8.

Ghostbusters #9 (May 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Schoening, Tristan Jones (c) New York City doesn't have a monopoly on the supernatural, and it was only a matter of time before apparitions in other areas were enhanced by the expansion of psychokinetic energy! HAUNTED AMERICA finds the Ghostbusters venturing out far beyond the comfortable confines of the Empire State. So grab some snacks and get ready... it'll be the most spirited road trip of the year! FC * 32 pages * $3.99 Variant Covers: Variant Mike Henderson cover! Bullet Points: • Each issue contains a back-up Ghostbusters story by Tristan Jones! "Who Killed Laura Parr?" will run in all 4 issues of Haunted America! • The Ghostbusters leave New York! On the road for the first time in comics! • Four Dan Schoening covers connect to make a unified National map, each featuring a different Ghostbuster! Four Tristan Jones covers featuring a haunted tourist postcard theme!

The four Dan Schoening map covers can be seen in their connected form over at Proton Charging and Ghostbusters News. As for the four Tristan Jones postcard covers, issues #9 (Detroit), #10 (New Orleans), and #11 (Roswell) have all been released by Tristan on his Deviant Art account, but not #12 yet. Come on, Trist, let's seen #12... PLEEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSEEEEE!!!!!!!

IDW just sent along the following solicitation for the Ghostbusters monthly comic series, issue #8, which comes out in April. You can pre-order any of the regular issues at Ghostbusters Fans (though not all covers are available), and you can pre-order the trade paperback at Amazon.

Ghostbusters #8 (April 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Schoening, Nick Runge (c) The spotlight is on Egon Spengler as he tracks down a paranormal entity - one that has ties to his past - to discover the true source of the city's abnormally high PKE levels! The grand finale to the second arc of the hit ongoing series! FC * 32 pages * $3.99 Variant Covers: Variant Gabe Eltaeb cover! Bullet Points: • Each issue contains two pages of behind-the-scenes Ghostbusters extras, by Tristan Jones!

Here is the A or B cover, along with Gabe Eltaeb's RI cover that I got directly from IDW.


Also, issues #9-12 will have some sort of cross-country "epic" event. The teaser/cover collage has been posted over at Proton Charging and Ghostbusters News.

For most of the 2000s, Chris Buchner ran two sites: the NYGB Tourguide and the NYGB ComicGuide. The former focused on the New York City filming locations from both movies, while the latter focused on all of the Ghostbusters comic books ever published. When I say "all" I mean ALL! All of NOW's books, all of 88MPH's books, all of Marvel books released in the UK (and their derivatives), and even all of First's Filmation books! Not only did the site cover all of the issues, it even went very in-depth with each one, giving you the credits, story synopses, trivia, bloopers, character photos, and more!

Unfortunately, on October 31, 2008, AOL shutdown their AOL Hometown web hosting service, and thus both sites left the internet, along with other AOL members' websites. Luckily for the Ghostbusters Online Community, I had saved copies of both sites. With Chris' permission, I've incorporated a lot of the Tourguide information into Spook Central's Filming Locations pages, though you can find some archived copies of the original site on the Internet Archive.

A few days before the shutdown, on October 28, 2008, I downloaded all of the ComicGuide files. Due to the way AOL handled their web hosting service, the site was actually split across a few different user accounts. I attempted to merge all of the download files into one computer folder... and let's just say that the results weren't pretty. Because there were a lot of files with the same names, they couldn't all be put into one folder "as is". I had to rename almost all of the files, which also meant that I would have to go in and edit every html file so that all of the new file names are referenced in links and the such. I didn't have the time to do the task, so the files sat untouched on my hard drive for a few years.

Around this time last year I saw a post by Fritz Baugh on the GB Fans forum where he mentioned the ComicGuide site by name and lamented over the loss of the invaluable information it contained. Seeing that he had an interest in the site, I contacted him to see if he'd also be interested in fixing up all of the files I saved a few years prior, with the intention of making it all available to the public again. I figured that he'd turn me down, as the files required a lot of work, and it would be a very tedious task. Surprisingly, and much to his credit, he accepted my offer.

So, now, three years and two months after AOL took it down, I am proud to present... The Resurrected NYGB ComicGuide (last updated September 10, 2008, archived October 28, 2008). FYI: Don't expect to find any of IDW's books on the site, as they all came out after the site went into hibernation.

MAJOR THANKS to Chris Buchner for creating the site and giving me permission to host the old copy here on Spook Central, and especially to Fritz Baugh for doing the time-consuming and labor-intensive task of fixing up all of the files and making the site whole again.

IDW just sent along the following solicitations for the Ghostbusters monthly comic series, issues #6 and #7, along with a trade paperback that collects the first four issues (the first story arc), all of which come out next year. You can pre-order any of the regular issues at Ghostbusters Fans (though not all covers are available), and you can pre-order the trade paperback at Amazon.

Ghostbusters #6 (February 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Schoening, Nick Runge (c) Thanks to the contract they signed, the Ghostbusters are temporarily barred by Walter Peck from taking any work (without his express permission) in New York City. The Ghostbusters skirt the edict by taking a job in Schenectady. It's a simple haunted amusement park upstate - what could possibly go wrong? * Retailers: See your order form for incentive information. FC * 32 pages * $3.99 Variant Covers: Variant Tristan Jones cover! Bullet Points: • Each issue contains two pages of behind-the-scenes Ghostbusters extras, by Tristan Jones!

Ghostbusters #7 (March 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Schoening, Nick Runge (c) It's a nasty case of possession by a greed-driven ghost, and one of the Ghostbusters is its new vessel! It's a battle of wills on the mental plane in this latest issue of the hit ongoing Ghostbusters series! FC * 32 pages * $3.99 Variant Covers: Casey Maloney variant cover! Bullet Points: • Each issue contains two pages of behind-the-scenes Ghostbusters extras, by Tristan Jones!

Ghostbusters [Volume 1] (March 2012) Erik Burnham (w) * Dan Schoening (a) * Nick Runge (c) Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? Have you or any of your family ever seen a spook, specter, or ghost? If the answer is yes, call the professionals! Psychokinetic energy is on the rise again, business is booming for the boys, and Ray is troubled by what could be a prophetic dream... Is this an ill omen of an upcoming apocalypse, or just a little indigestion? TPB * FC * $17.99 * 104 pages * ISBN 978-1-61377-157-0 Bullet Points: • "If you're a fan of the movies then this will definitely hit all the right buttons. The charm, humor and witty banter that made them such a treat is here in full effect." - IGN • "The story has a bounce swagger to it quite like the first movie. This is a new story that has the feel of the original, and it's quite a wonderful tale." - Comic Book Resources