Ghostbusters (IDW)

In 2011, IDW Publishing got the license for the Ghostbusters property, and launched a line based on the original film.

Taking place some time after Ghostbusters the Video Game, Ghostbusters encompasses several series that focus on the ongoing adventures of the Ghostbusters as they fight new threats, recruit new members, go on outlandish adventures, and continue to overcharge people.

After eleven years, IDW lost the license to Ghostbusters in 2022, the mantle being turned over to Dark Horse Comics whose first comic came out in 2023.

The reading order is as follows:

• Ghostbusters: Year One
• Ghostbusters: Volume One
• Ghostbusters: Volume Two
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters
• Ghostbusters Get Real
• Ghostbusters International
• Ghostbusters 101
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters 2
• Ghostbusters: Crossing Over
• Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary
• Transformers/Ghostbusters

Tropes used in Ghostbusters include:

• Aborted Arc: As a result of IDW Publishing losing the publishing rights to both Ghostbusters and Transformers in 2022, any future adventures of Ectotron or the hints that the Quintessons might have some connection to Gozer seem unlikely to be resolved.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Ray's Spirit Guide is visually based on John Belushi's character from The Blues Brothers. Dan Aykroyd (Ray) was Belushi's co-star in that series.
  • Ghostbusters 101 references:
    • The Remake Cameos of Murray, Hudson, and Aykroyd. Erin is quite freaked out by it. At the end, Dr. Rebecca Gorin (played by Sigourney Weaver, the actress that played Dana Barrett) appears, much to Venkman's delight.
    • After Patty realizes that Winston looks like a younger version of her uncle, Ray mentions a time where they entered a universe where a doppelgänger of Venkman blew up a golf course.
    • The series also makes an oblique reference to Thor. The backmatter of Crossing Over even theorizes that Kevin is an extraterrestrial.
  • Jenny, Ray's girlfriend, is visually based on Donna Dixon, Dan Aykroyd's wife.
• Adaptational Wimp: Many of the ghosts are from The Real Ghostbusters but reimagined as feral creatures who don't have the brainpower to be the threats that they were in the cartoon.
• Alternate Continuity: The official stance on the comic's relation to the films and video game, taking place in a Broad Strokes universe. Even the Ghostbusters wiki considers these comics as "secondary canon."
• Anachronism Stew: Despite Comic Book Time hovering around the late 1990s, the Ghost Smashers get around using a 2011 Ford Explorer.
• Apathetic Citizens: At this point, no one cares about a giant Mr. Stay Puft rampaging down 5th Avenue. They're more concerned with who's going to clean up the huge chunks of molten marshmallow raining down on their property.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Egon. Ghosts, demons, parallel universes, and even gods are fine. Aliens? No sir. The Transformers crossover finally forces him to shed this.
  • Optimus Prime is also guilty of this in the Transformers crossover, accepting all the madcap things of the larger galaxy but dismissing the idea of ghosts until he sees one. He lampshades that, with everything he's seen, he should have known better.
• Art Shift:
  • Happens a lot in the Turtles crossovers. Usually relating to whatever universe the heroes are in this time.
  • The Real Ghostbusters are always drawn in the style of the cartoon.
• Audience Surrogate: Winston really slides into this role here. In crossovers, he's always the most eager to meet the other party and the most accepting of their explanations.
• Avengers Assemble: Every Ghostbuster from every universe comes together in Crossing Over.
• Back From the Dead: Egon and Winston.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Volume Two. Thankfully, Tiamat never wanted to destroy the world, just mess with Gozer.
• Bait and Switch: For most of the Transformers crossover, the audience is led to believe, via Starscream's Unreliable Narrator tendencies, that the Big Bad is really Mara-Al-Utha. But it turns out to really be a new incarnation of Kremzeek.
• Blue and Orange Morality: Averted with Poseidon. He really does just wants his stone tablet back.
• Brick Joke: Ray, in a dream that opens the first issue, tells Gozer that he is a god. Gozer calls BS on this.
• Chaos Is Evil: Tiamat in a nutshell.
• Comic Book Time: Hovering sometime around 1994-1998.
• Contrived Coincidence: What kicks off the Transformers crossover. Of literally any place on Earth he could have been in, Starscream just happened to be idling in the same park that the Ghostbusters were in.
• Cosmic Retcon: Tiamat leaves after making it so that Tiyah's marriage to Wintson never happened.
• Crossover: See the reading order, it happens quite a lot and it's always fair game to impact the plot.
• Crossover Cosmology: There have been Middle Eastern and Greek deities.
• Darker and Edgier: In general compared to the films, but the Mass Hysteria arc in particular. The Ghostbusters are played for chumps, chaos rains, and Winston even dies, albeit temporarily.
• Decomposite Character: Slimer is given the same "feral creature" treatment as the other ghosts in the comic. Slimer's usual role in the franchise as the Token Non-Human Sixth Ranger Non-Malicious Monster is instead given to Jenny Moran. 
• Demoted to Extra: Dana and Louis. Per Word of God, this was the result of Executive Meddling.
• Depending on the Writer: While the films treated Gozer as a genderless being, the Destroyer is consistently referred to with male pronouns here, likely to counter Tiamat's female ones.
• Friend to All Children: Winston and, underneath it all, Peter.
• Halfway Plot Switch: At first, Ghostbusters: International is a rather standard usage of Sequel Goes Foreign. Then Egon is kidnapped...
• Heaven: Winston ends up here after his Heroic Sacrifice. Then Tiamat shows up and drags him back to Earth, declaring that she wants a better sacrifice.
• Hero Insurance: The Ghostbusters are now registered with the city of New York.
• Hidden Depths: Venkman's psychology background is frequently displayed.
• Innocuously Important Episode: The first Turtles crossover. The interdimensional portal introduced therein proved vital to the plot of later issues.
• Interdimensional Travel Device: The Interspatial Teleportation Unit.
• Killed Off for Real: Jenny. But she comes back as a Class 4 full torso apparition.
• Life Energy: Ray describes the ghosts as being made out of it. In typical Ghostbusters fashion, it's given a scientific explanation. Energy can't be destroyed and usually goes elsewhere (the afterlife) but the ghosts are those souls who, for whatever reason, haven't moved on.
• Living Lie Detector: Venkman. He lies so much that he can instantly tell when someone else is doing it.
• Loophole Abuse: Peter promised to give Aibell the book. No one ever said anything about Jenny then blowing it up.
• The Multiverse: The boys in grey head to a variety of different universes. The list counts:
  • The main one.
  • The world of Filmation's Ghostbusters (though only as non-speaking cameos).
  • The world of The Real Ghostbusters (Dimension 68-R).
  • The world of Extreme Ghostbusters (Dimension 68-E).
  • The world of the 2016 reboot (Dimension 80-C).
  • The world of Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime (Dimension 50-S).
  • The Ghostbusters of Dimension 68-M are the "Penguin Hunters" from episode 3 of Tokyo ESP.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Ron Alexander named his company "Ghost Smashers", a working title for the first film.
  • Roger, Janine's boyfriend, is clearly patterned after Egon in The Real Ghostbusters. Leads to some confusion when Janine actually meets that Egon.
  • After getting taking on the Ecto-1 as his new alternate mode, Ectotron vaporizes a parking ticket, referencing a Deleted Scene from the first film.
• Named by the Adaptation: The Player Character from the video game is given the name Bryan Welsh.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The weirdest thing to happen to Egon involved an emu.
  • As said under Actor Allusion, the Ghostbusters going to a universe where the local Venkman blew up a golf course.
  • When the dimensions begin returning to normal, Kevin, the 2016 version, notes that he's becoming one with the universe again.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Walter "Dickless" Peck. He acknowledges that the Ghostbusters aren't frauds and do provide an important service to the city but will continue to antagonize them, simply because he hates them that much.
• Retcon: Extreme Ghostbusters was released as a Sequel Series to The Real Ghostbusters. This comic treats the two shows as taking place in separate universes, even if Extreme retains its Real Ghostbusters inspired backstory, probably to avoid having to deal with a Timey-Wimey Ball during Crossing Over. The same goes for Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime with relation to the main timeline.
• Seen It All: Very little, including anthropomorphic turtles from another universe, alternate versions of themsleves and polymorphic alien robots, phases the Ghostbusters or their friends.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Ghostbusters: International.
• Sequel Hook: Per Word of God, the line "Ectotron Will Return" was meant to try and nudge Hasbro to agree to a sequel mini-series.
• Shared Universe: Aside from Cybertron and the Transformers existing, it seems that Duel and Jaws also occurred.
• Shout-Out:
  • The floating car that Ray is examining during Mass Hysteria is a Delorean.
  • After finding a Bigger on the Inside structure, Egon compares it to a TARDIS. During his college days, he even dressed like the Fourth Doctor.
  • In the opening of Ghostbusters 101, the interns compare the interdimensional portal to a Stargate.
  • During Crossing Over, Time Travel is tossed out as an idea for how to solve the current crisis noting that it never goes wrong for anyone. Expect Barry. It's then said to be a show for nerds.
  • When Venkman is chatting with an Ecto-painted Optimus Prime, he notes that all they need is now is an Ecto-inspired Pontiac Firebird.
• Shown Their Work: The writers depicted Poveglia's gruesome history quite accurately.
• Start My Own: Ron Alexander and his "Ghost Smashers."
• Spanner in the Works: The Transformers crossover is really a Transformers story that the Ghostbusters happened to get caught up in. And by doing so, they comprehensively derail the villain's whole scheme. 
• Strong Family Resemblance: You can really tell that Cait is Janine's niece.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Egon is quite used to Venkman's quips by now.
• Toxic Friend Influence: As many characters comment on, the Ghostbusters, usually Venkman, seem to bring out someone's more snarky tendencies.
• Ultimate Universe: Designed as such.
• Villain Decay: The comic doesn't even pretend to take Gozer seriously.
• Villain Team-Up: The second Turtles crossover sees the Collectors work with Darius Dun, one of the Turtles' foes.
• Void Between the Worlds: Where all the Class 7 entities live.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Because the ghosts will reconstitute, drawing in even more Psychokinetic Energy and come back in a more monstrous form. As Peter tells the Ninja Turtles, shooting the ghosts is really more a way to get some breathing room.
• Worthy Opponent: Tiamat really grows to respect the Ghostbusters, Winston in particular, over the course of her introduction.
• Your Days Are Numbered: The ghost in the final issue of Year One tells this to Egon.