Tim Lattie

So let's talk for a second about Annuals. The entire point of those things is to give readers more comics, which is something that I think we as comics writers can all get behind as a pretty good idea. The thing is, they've occasionally gotten a bad reputation because "more" doesn't always translate to "good." I've written about it before, about that tricky tightrope that they need to walk just by virtue of being bigger and more expensive comics that exist just slightly outside the main publishing schedule, leading to a tendency to work as weird offshoots rather than as stories that support the ongoing narrative. But the Annuals that IDW released this week sidestepped that problem neatly. With Jem, it was a matter of embracing that weirdness with a sci-fi take on the Holograms that exists as an in-universe fan-comic. With Ghostbusters Annual 2017, though, they've done it by embracing the concept of More.

Four of 2016's biggest movie heroes are finally making their way to comics in 2017. I'm speaking, of course, about the Ghostbusters Abby Yates, Erin Gilbert, Jillian Holtzmann, and Patty Tolan. IDW's new series Ghostbusters 101 will feature that quartet teaming up with the original team of Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston for the first time. The creative team is Erik Burnham, Dan Schoening, and Luis Antonio Delgado, who've already helmed a great many IDW comics about the original Ghostbusters.