The Real Ghostbusters Spectacular 3-D Special #[nn]
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Spectacular 3-D Special served as the de facto launch pad for NOW Comics' second volume of The Real Ghostbusters, functioning as a Vol. 2 #0 that reintroduced the property to American readers after the publisher's financial collapse and hiatus. Its hybrid format — pairing a newly written multi-part serial with repackaged Marvel UK material rendered in anaglyph 3-D — established the template that the entire second-volume run would follow. The issue also kicks off the 'Tobin and the Maze of Time' storyline, the most structurally ambitious original narrative NOW produced for the title, threading through subsequent issues. As one of the only American comics of its era to source its back-matter directly from the British Marvel UK run, it offers a rare transatlantic snapshot of how the same animated property was being adapted simultaneously on two continents.
ComicBooks.com’s Estimated Value
Find on ebay
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
NOW Comics, founded in Chicago in late 1985 with its first publications shipping in May 1986, held a Columbia/Sony licensing arrangement to publish The Real Ghostbusters but saw its comics division falter; in 1990 the company was forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy by Quebecor Printing and the General Learning Corporation. After being acquired by General Learning it relaunched as NOW Entertainment Corporation in 1991, and the Spectacular 3-D Special was part of that relaunch push. Writer Barry Petersen and artist Norm Dwyer handled the original new content, while cover art was provided by John Stangeland; the back-up story reprinted in the issue originates from Marvel UK's Real Ghostbusters issue #27. The Vol. 2 run that the special inaugurated leaned heavily on Marvel UK reprints for its back-up slots, a production strategy that allowed NOW to fill pages affordably while re-establishing the line.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by NOW Comics; cover-dated October 24, 1986 (per GoCollect/retailer records), though the Vol. 2 relaunch context places its effective release during NOW's post-bankruptcy relaunch period — see Flagged.
- Catalogued by multiple sources as Real Ghostbusters Vol. 2 #0, making it the unofficial series-opener for NOW's second volume of the title.
- Written by Barry Petersen with interior art by Norm Dwyer and cover art by John Stangeland.
- Contains Part 1 of the original storyline 'Tobin and the Maze of Time,' in which the Ghostbusters enter a dream world to rescue Tobin — the human author of Tobin's Spirit Guide — from an entity called the Evil; the story continues directly into Vol. 2 #1.
- Also includes a separate story about a ghost haunting a roller coaster called The Screamer, in which Peter Venkman talks the ghost into remaining as a non-harmful attraction rather than trapping it; this story is a reprint sourced from Marvel UK's Real Ghostbusters issue #27.
- The issue came packaged with anaglyph 3-D glasses, consistent with the format NOW also used for the later Real Ghostbusters 3-D Slimer Special and the Vol. 2 3-D Annual.
- The second volume's structure — of which this special is the opening entry — ran four issues plus two annuals and relied on a combination of new original stories and Marvel UK reprints for back-up content.
- IDW Publishing later collected the NOW Comics Real Ghostbusters run in a multi-volume trade-paperback series called The Real Ghostbusters Omnibus, beginning in October 2012, giving the material a modern collected edition.
Cast · 6 characters
Full credits
Variants (1)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.