Previous Discussion
Ghostbusters International: The Spirited Drizzlepuss
January 2007--Timeline Year Twenty Five
Winston takes the two newest members of the Ghostbusters West Coast, Jason Knetge and Aidan Munroe, on a bust that goes awry. As they deal with the watery entity, Winston has an encounter with an old enemy that threatens to topple the pillars of his faith.
--------------------
As I mention in the credits, the Drizzlepuss itself and some of the gags come straight from a Mickey Mouse story from the 50's (I have a reprint Gladstone did in 1988). In that story, Mickey and Goofy are chasing their kite and end up at a house that had been recently purchased by an unnamed guy who complains about the Drizzlepuss keeping him soaked. After some silly antics--Goofy gets his hat filled with water just like Jason's ectogoggles; Mickey and Goofy catch it in a sponge, then Goofy gets mad and stomps it, releasing the ghost--the story ends when Mickey leads it to the river, where it finds a female water spirit and they swim off together.
I told myself for years "The Spirited Drizzlepuss" could be adapted into a Ghostbusters story, and here I finally did it. There's one panel of art from the original story on the TOBIN page for the Drizzlepuss:
http://www.gbwc.net/tobin/drizzlepuss.html
Colonel Bassett is from another Mickey Mouse story, "The Seven Ghosts" plotted and penciled in the 1930's by legendary cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson. Loosely inspired by the animated short "Lonesome Ghosts" (which features Mickey, Goofy, and Donald as, **cough** ghost busters) Mickey, Goofy, and Donald are contacted by Bassett, who's pompous and overexaggerated devotion to "gentlemanliness" are transferred straight to the character I put in my story (though my Bassett doesn't have a dog nose and ears ). In a twist that would later be repeated in every episode of
Scooby Doo, the ghosts aren't supernatural, just crooks with some nifty tricks.
So yeah, I cribbed a lot of stuff for this one.