"Waking up every morning for years with a layer of green slime all over me--that, my hyena friend, is scary...You are not."
Peter Venkman is, of course, an authenic Legend of Ghostbusting. He was raised by conman Charlie Venkman, but discovered the value of honesty and hard work via his meeting an intensely serious young man named Egon Spengler at Columbia University in 1973. Later, the energetic Ray Stantz would join their team, and they would work in the Psychology department until they were fired by Dean Yeager in 1983. Shortly after that, Venkman conned Ray into getting three mortgages on his parents house to found the original Ghostbuster team. Venkman, Egon, Ray, Winston Zeddemore, and Janine Melnitz would form a close surrogate family of sorts, and spend three years defending the world from supernatural menaces such as Gozer, Cthulhu, Proteus, Mee-Krah, and Hob Ana Garik.
In their first case, Venkman met celloist Dana Barrett and fell madly in love with her. Unfortunately, after the battle with Gozer she dumped him because he wouldn't commit to her. She married another man and gave birth to a son before divorcing him in 1988.
In 1986, the Ghostbusters were forced to disband as part of settlement of lawsuits dating back to the Gozer crisis of 1983. Venkman became host of a cheesy low-budget talk show, World of the Psychic, until the Ghostbusters were allowed to return to buisness in late 1988.
During the Vigo the Carpathian crisis, Venkman was reunited with Dana Barrett. Both had grown more emotionally mature since their first relationship, but their dating was derailed when Dana was offered a position with the LA Symphony Orchestra. After some soul searching, they decided she should take it, and she moved to LA with her young son, Oscar Wallance.
At the end of 1991, the Ghostbusters were once again forced to disband. Venkman took the opportunity to reunite with Dana in LA and made the ultimate commitment to her: the two wed in 1992. Peter and Dana had a daughter, Jessica, in 1993. Venkman became a successful Hollywood agent, and colluded with Dan Aykroyd for several years to get Ghostbusters 3 made, but by 1998 the project collapsed because neither Bill Murray or Venkman's second choice to play him, Brad Pitt, would sign onto the project.
The small Canadian publisher he was secretly funding, 88MPH Studios, had just announced that it would be publishing a new Ghostbusters comic book when fate would again intervene...at the premiere of Dance of the Skeletons...
Though Venkman does pop into GBCentral West from time to time still, for the last couple of years a lot of his attention has gone to the budding musical career of his stepson, lead singer of a rock band called "Mood Slime"--especially as Oscar adopted the stage name "Oscar Venkman". Mood Slime's first professional CD hit stores on Monday, September 17th, 2007, and was a smash hit.
