Would The Ghostbusters Demand Tax-Exempt Status As Payment?

The series of late night took their toll. By Monday night, I was under the weather, and I spent most of Tuesday under a heated blanket, drifting in and out of consciousness. At least there was no puking. Operation: Fence Builder is officially on hiatus, until at least the next time I come to visit.

Two nights ago, I was watching Ghostbusters II, and it gets to that sequence where things are going crazy, and the Mayor looks out the window to see an eerie purple light in the sky, and asks what it is. My thoughts went to Men in Black, the "light from Venus reflecting off swamp gas" stock explanation for weird stuff.

Which made me wonder if they've done a MiB/Ghostbusters crossover in the comics. The Ghostbusters had (have?) a comic with IDW, and I know they did some universe-spanning zombie crossover with the Transformers, Ninja Turtles, and maybe G.I. Joe? I didn't read it, I'm going off vague memories here. I guess it's more likely that in a universe where there's already a distinct government agency to deal with extra-terrestrials, there'd be a different agency to contend with supernatural problems, so the equivalent of that - Mages In Black? - would probably be the ones to meet Egon, Ray, Winston, and Peter.

But setting that aside, and sticking to known quantities, in the event the two groups were brought together to deal with some immensely powerful alien ghost, I doubt it would be a friendly meeting. Peter Venkman's too much of a disrespectful smartass to avoid getting them in trouble, and while Ray's a well-meaning goober, and Winston is usually the voice of reason, Egon can't always avoid explaining things in a hostile fashion to people he thinks are idiots. Plus, they haven't exactly had great experiences with the government sticking its nose into their business previously.

I'm sure the MiB guys have plenty of experience with hostile civilians/ enthusiastic amateurs (I know the Ghostbusters are about as trained as you can be, but I feel like Agent K would probably still look at them as being rookies), but that experience leads to them using the Neuralizer, which isn't the sort of action that builds trust. I feel like Egon, at bare minimum would somehow recognize his memories had been tampered with. He just strikes me as the sort of guy who has such a particular set of thought processes that, whatever story the Agents came up with, it wouldn't mesh well with everything else in his brain.

There is a chance maturity would rule the day, and the two groups would just do the work and go their separate ways peacefully, minus a few loud arguments. Egon and Ray would probably be itching for the chance to see some alien science, and MiB might see something useful in studying the Ghostbusters equipment. If Star Trek's taught me anything, it's that there are a lot of alien species that have transcended their physical bodies and exist as pure energy. Which doesn't mean they've transcended crime or mischief, and Ghostbusters do have a lot of experience capturing immaterial beings.