There's a lot that could have gone wrong with IDW's X-Files: Conspiracy, an unlikely story that teams the Lone Gunmen (but also Mulder and Scully, where it counts) with the Ghostbusers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Transformers, and the Crow. Not in the least one of the worst outcomes -- when you imagine Mulder and Scully leaping rooftops with the cartoon-era Turtles, shouting "Cowabunga!" -- is that all involved would come off looking pretty silly.

But, happily, both good writing and good art save the day here. For me, the book worked; even when the story strays far enough into the guest-characters' territory to perhaps stretch the X-Files's more realistic ethos, some element of voice or depiction still smoothed it out. For a wacky premise, X-Files: Conspiracy was as much fun as I could have hoped.

[Review contains spoilers]

Had I been writing X-Files: Conspiracy, I probably would have played it all a little straighter than main writer Paul Crilley and crew. X-Files was often as much about what you didn't see as what you did; as such, in an X-Files team up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I would have kept them mostly in the shadows; the Transformers would have been mysterious vehicles in the dark night a la X-Files's ever-present black helicopters, and so on.

Crilley and the others run the story a bit more on-the-nose, with actual scenes of the Lone Gunmen face-to-face with the Turtles and with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Rachet. What might be absurd is redeemed because the writers have the Lone Gunmen's voices down pat, and indeed putting the Lone Gunmen in the book's "cartoonier" situations and keeping Mulder and Scully on reserve for the serious stuff helps downplay that absurdity a lot. Also the result is some fairly hilarious visuals in the spirit of this bizarre adventure, like Langley and Leonardo having a meeting of minds in the back of the Lone Gunmen's van or, equally, Langley taking a joyride in Bumblebee.

Which leads into the second thing that makes Conspiracy work: the art choices. Some were not as sanguine as I am about the art, but for me -- someone who does not regularly read any of the series into which X-Files crosses over here -- all of the art choices surprised me positively. The Ghostbusters issue by Salvador Navarro is very restrained, presenting the Ghostbusters as people rather than as the more animated figures in their own book, which worked well with the inclusion of the Lone Gunmen. The Turtles chapter, perhaps the trickiest, is drawn by X-Files Season 10 artist Michael Walsh. Walsh has a style that's "animated with an edge," kind of like Cameron Stewart or Michael Lark's crime noir work, fitting both the Gunmen and the Turtles; Vic Malhotra achieves a similar effect in the Crow chapter. The Transformers issue is by sometimes-Transformers artist Dheeraj Verma, but here again I found the art more realistic than what I might have expected from a Transformers comic.

I also appreciated that Conspiracy contained a number of major and minor continuity notes that rooted the story both in X-Files Season 10 continuity and some of the continuity of the crossover books, which gave the stories additional weight. The Turtles book, especially, seems to fall specifically between Turtles issues, and then at a particularly outlandish moment, it also turns out to be a sequel to an X-Files episode. The Transformers story, too, seems to be in medias res of other problems the Autobots were having.

Even without being familiar with the individual series, this added to the experience for me; on the flip side, regular Ghostbusters writer Erik Burnham's Ghostbusters issue referenced mainly bits from the first movie, such that I as a casual Ghostbusters fan could still enjoy it. And at the same time, Crilley leaves an out for readers in the end who might want to dismiss X-Files: Conspiracy as a dream, so in essence everybody wins.

Among the crossover issues, Denton Tipton's Crow issue is probably best, if only because it takes a seeming throw-away scene from earlier in the book and builds an unexpectedly moving and engaging Crow story out of it (though indeed I was expecting a Crow that looked more Brandon Lee-esque). The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters stories were right up there, though; the Transformers story only loses some points from me because the art gets funny late in the issue with characters talking off-panel or where their speech doesn't match their actions. Crilley's conclusion, which features Mulder in an action-sequence, felt believably X-Files to me.

The key question of X-Files was whether there were or were not aliens out there; the audience knew there were, but the evidence for the characters was so far apart and fleeting as to be almost impossible to prove. When the Lone Gunmen stand right next to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and then especially next to the Transformers and accept them as aliens without much question (or "manphibians," in the Turtles' case), I felt X-Files: Conspiracy lost a bit of its X-Files cred in the pursuit of expediency. Still in all the book could have been a mess and instead it's a delight; if the outlandishness of the concept interests you, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend picking the book up.

Established Ghostbusters fans will no doubt be enthused by IDW's newly-relaunched title, the first issues of which are collected in Ghostbusters: The New Ghostbusters. As someone who's mainly been familiar with the movies and some half-remembered cartoons, I found this trade tougher to get in to (my misplaced expectations, perhaps, more so than anything the creative team does wrong per se). Despite that these Ghostbusters are "new," new fans will be better off picking up trades of the earlier Ghostbusters series first.

[Review contains spoilers]

Ongoing Ghostbusters writer Erik Burnham's new story starts out well. In the first pages, a crew of ghosts kidnap the "old" Ghostbusters, leaving a crew of associates to fill the void. The "new" Ghostbusters, as I understand it, are characters who've appeared in Burham's stories before, but he does a seamless job of introducing them and the "New Ghostbusters" story gets rolling quickly. Burnham makes the new Ghostbusters interesting and likable as they fumble through their first ghostbusting attempts; Burnham also easily establishes the voices of the original Ghostbusters, too (though I heard Lorenzo Music for Peter Venkman more so than I did Bill Murray).

New fans for the Ghostbusters comics will find plenty that they recognize here. Not only do the original Ghostbusters factor heavily into the story, even in absentia, but there's also appearances by Walter Peck, Jack Hardemeyer, and Janosz Poha, all characters from the movies (played by William Atherton, Kurt Fuller, and Peter MacNicol respectively). There's also plenty of Easter Eggs, including references to the events of the movies and one page chock full of some of the most notable Ghostbusters toys.

As a new reader, however, one thing I found just slightly off-putting was that in the end, the original Ghostbusters do return. Without much background knowledge, I approached this book as if it was the story of new Ghostbusters taking over for the old guard, but it's barely three chapters into the book before the original Ghostbusters return, and by their own means rather than by anything the new Ghostbusters do. This is not unprecedented; basically New Ghostbusters seems more of a branding like "Reign of the Supermen" or "Death of Bruce Wayne." Maybe established Ghostbusters fans knew this going in, but I didn't, and so I didn't quite herald the return and immediate return to prominence of the original Ghostbusters quite the way the characters did.

Also, while the Ghostbusters movies were a good mix of horror and comedy (I still rate the attack of those demon dogs pretty high on my "scary" list), I was surprised the extent to which sitcom-level humor took over the comic. The new Ghostbusters really don't bust all that many ghosts in three issues, and though it's a challenge it's never too much of a challenge -- the reader is never really worried the Ghostbusters are in danger. The most striking parts of the story really are the ones with Peck and Hardemeyer discussing the political and media aspects of the new Ghostbusters, while the rest is the Ghostbusters cracking wise or setting up for other stories (like Janine and the ghost of Beowulf) that don't resolve in this book.

I would also note that, as much as is familiar or reader-friendly in this story, there's plenty that's not so easily cracked. Kylie Griffin, arguably the breakout star of the group, is apparently an existing character from another (alternate?) Ghostbusters story, newly integrated to IDW; knowledge or lack thereof of this won't necessarily affect your enjoyment of the story, but I have the sense that "New Ghostbusters" presents the overlapping of a certain amount of Ghostbuster lores I wasn't familiar with. There's also references to "the Rookie," who's apparently a video game chacter, but again the book didn't quite illuminate these things and I couldn't find overly clear answers online.

But irrespective, the upshot of New Ghostbusters is to essentially double the title's ghostbusting cast, and if the story goes the way I expect, the old and new Ghostbusters will now bust ghosts together, in new and different pairings. I've no frame of reference, but I imagine this offers new opportunities as compared to the traditional Ghostbusters stories. It can't be overlooked that New Ghostbusters also significantly evens the group's gender gap by adding three active female Ghostbusters to the mix. In all I think the book is a positive step for the Ghostbusters comics, even as the spotlight shifts in the book in a way I wasn't expecting.

Ghostbusters: The New Ghostbusters will again no doubt be a nice rejuvenation of the series for long-time fans; new readers might want to go back to the beginning. The book is perhaps more child-friendly than I expected; to an extent this makes it "not for me," but at the same time I appreciate that the enjoyment that I had of Ghostbusters in years past carries on for a new generation. Now if they could only get that third movie made ...