Posted on July 21, 2021

Extreme Ghostbusters, 1996-97

Other people went to college. I went ghostbusting instead.

Let me explain that. I didn’t go to college. I went directly from high school into my field (at the time, commercial art). Thus, I didn’t have the collegiate experience that I later heard about from others. I didn’t live in a dorm, didn’t hook up with a peer group, didn’t develop relationships with mentors. (I also didn’t rack up student loans, which was a pretty good tradeoff.) You can’t miss what you never had, but when I learned what kinds of experiences others had in college, I did feel like I missed out on something.

As it turned out, that something was waiting for me in a different kind of school: Extreme Ghostbusters Academy.

Extreme Ghostbusters was a direct sequel to The Real Ghostbusters, which was a big deal among some of my friends in the late 80s. It went out of production in 1991, and gears slowly started turning for a followup. As recounted in another article, my entry into the world of TV animation storyboarding began in 1996 with Wing Commander Academy. When that show wrapped in the summer, I went back to comic book and illustration projects with no idea where I’d go next. But now I had an agent looking for opportunities, and a few months later, he found one.

At some point in November ’96, my agent set up what we call a “meet and greet” with a guy named Audu Paden. He was a producer at Sony Animation (which I’d never heard of), and we met for breakfast at a restaurant outside of LA. I brought some portfolio pieces with me (which included Grease Monkey comics) and we synced immediately. His current show was something called Project Geeker, but he would soon be hiring for his next one. My ears certainly perked up when he gave it a name: Extreme Ghostbusters (herafter, XGB). Sure I’d be interested, I said. Let’s keep in touch!

In short order, my agent called me up and said a formal interview had been arranged at Sony. All I remember about that interview is that it got me hired. This was huge. Not just the chance to work on another TV show, but signing on as a full-time crew member. I hadn’t worked full-time anywhere since leaving Malibu Comics over two years earlier. I really liked working from home as a freelancer. I could take on lots of projects simultaneously and didn’t have to commute anywhere.

But…the freelance jobs were fading by this time. The whole comic book industry was in freefall thanks to a seismic shift in distribution, and the signals were getting clearer by the day: get out now if you know what’s good for ya! I could either take a full-time job with a horrible commute, or take my chances on having no work at all. With a wife and a 5-year-old daughter to support, the choice was obvious. I let out a big sigh and surrendered.

The commute was…soul-crushing. Up to an hour each way through some of the worst LA traffic. Two hours a day sitting in a car. Ten hours a week, utterly wasted. I could have done SO much with that time. At the end of the first week, my depression was overwhelming. I now had exactly the kind of lifestyle I tried to avoid for my entire career. It was early December 1996, and I had no idea if it would ever get better.

I say all this to get the negatives out of the way. Because not only did EVERYTHING get better (even the commute), I found what I needed most: a peer group.

The crew for this show was HUGE. We had 40 episodes to produce (for a syndicator named Bohbot), and it required an army of over 100 people at its peak. Crews that size are unheard of today, partly because of digital streamlining, but mostly because production budgets have been forced downward, and nobody will commit to 40 any more; these days you’re lucky to get 13. The show teetered from being top-heavy (and ultimately went way over budget), but that wasn’t my concern. I was there to draw, and for the first time since my days at Malibu, I was surrounded by others who were there for the same reason.

The first sign that I’d made the right move came when I met my cubicle-mate, Jeff Brennan. I decided to make a statement by putting up a Space Battleship Yamato poster on my side, and he practically fell off his chair. He was a huge Star Blazers fan too, and already knew about the comic book I’d been working on for the last couple years. Of all the people to be randomly stationed with, he was exactly the right one.

We had come from all over the country, and a few from overseas, to find our dream careers. We all had similar histories, drawing like crazy since we were kids, grabbing onto the same inspirations (comics, movies, anime, videogames, etc.) and distinguishing ourselves with our creativity. I can’t claim we were the “best of the best,” but it felt like we had all passed the same test and found ourselves on the other side of it an elite category. One by one, we all discovered our super powers as we fought the ghost wars. It was exhilarating.

Like I said at the start, this was what I got instead of college. I’d never been in a room with that much raw talent, and what we all learned together put most of us on track for lifetime careers. The show was a pressure cooker, and when it was over many of us emerged as diamonds. These days, there are XGB veterans on almost every show I work on, or in almost every credit list I read through. I always smile when I see them, especially when they appear at the TOP of those lists.

Audu Paden was our mentor and scoutmaster, working patiently with everyone to help us find our strengths and eliminate our bad habits. There were five directors under him, each with a team of five or six storyboard artists. We all had our chance to shine, especially when the entire crew would gather to watch a finished animatic together, once or twice a week as episodes came off the assembly line. Naturally, a few of us stood out early on. Since I already had the experience of Wing Commander under my belt, my training had started earlier. So when a sixth director’s chair opened up about three months in, I was promoted to occupy it.

The traditional production method was for individual board artists to thumbnail their segments and revise them with a director’s input. As a director, I felt like it was my responsibility to visualize the entire episode, so I pumped out the entire thumbnail myself. This raised a few eyebrows. It was never expected that any director would do that much work, but it was how I’d always operated as a freelancer, so I just adapted it into this new job. It made sense to me, and everyone above me saw that the work was getting done faster. On later episodes, I reached a level of confidence that allowed me to skip right over thumbnails and go directly to full storyboards, which was like supercharging the engine.

Nobody else followed my lead, but that’s kind of what made the show interesting. We didn’t all have to do everything the same way as long as we produced what was needed in the given time. Naturally, some of us were going to excel and climb the ladder; five other board artists were promoted to directors before it was over. No matter how hard, tedious, or frustrating the work got (and it most definitely did), our esprit de corps got us through it.

All of this led to an overhaul of my personal life, too. Comic book work finally trickled away in early 1997, allowing me to take a breather and decide on my new mission. That mission was simple: no more comics for sketchy publishers. No more waiting for approval from an ambivalent marketplace. My TV job would pay the bills and I would create whatever comics I wanted without needing them to make money. I’m still on that mission today, and it’s working out just fine. (And I’m still making TV shows with Audu Paden, BTW. That partnership is built to last.)

I worked on twelve out of the 40 XGB episodes, nine of them as a director, and I storyboarded the opening title. The series was broadcast in daily syndication starting September 1997 with the first run ending in December. Six episodes were released on VHS in 1999 (by Columbia Tristar), but DVDs only appeared in Australia, the UK, and Europe. The whole series finally started rolling out on the official Ghostbusters Youtube channel in January 2021.

See all the episodes here (new ones added every two weeks)

Ghostbusters Fandom Wiki page

Extreme Ghostbusters IMDB page

Extreme Ghostbusters Wikipedia page

Show review on Den of Geek

Fan-made documentary

Toy Galaxy documentary