A New Review

Yesterday, I received an email asking me how I would feel about hosting a review for my final Tales of the TMNT comic (#64). I'm always keen to hear what people have to say, be it positive or negative, so I responded saying "I'd love to"!

What I didn't expect was such a well written column. I want to thank John (CJJ) for the review and for getting in touch.

Scattered Thoughts: Tales of the TMNT #64 (“The Burning Man”)

A Review by CJJ

If you’re a hardcore TMNT fan, then it is highly likely that you’re familiar with the writing of Tristan Jones, who was responsible for coming up with several of the storylines used in Tales of the TMNT Volume Two. Jones, who participates on a semi-regular basis at the Technodrome Forums, one of the largest growing TMNT fan communities online, has accomplished several notable feats as a writer for Mirage—most notably, the introduction of Hunter Mason into the Mirage canon in issue #56. Hun is one of my own personal favorite TMNT villains of all time, and I was just as stoked over Hun’s appearance in Tales #56 as I was when Karai finally got her own action figure. Hun, as you, the reader, should know, was originally a TMNT cartoon character, and Jones (Tristan, not Casey) handled him extremely well in issue #56. He has since appeared in Tales in #59, which also introduces Lauren Stanton, a character who seems most likely to have been based off of Judith Hoag’s portrayal of April O’ Neil in the first TMNT movie, which hit the big screen in 1990.

While these are both amazing issues, I am writing this review to praise Tristan’s most recent feat, Tales of the TMNT #64, “The Burning Man.” Initially, I was not all that excited about this issue—the buy-out still had some of us quite confused and/or bummed, nor did I have the means to pick it up immediately after it came out. So I read “The Burning Man” the same day I read “Donatello: The Brain Thief” Parts 3 and 4. I also picked up yet another reprint of TMNT Vol.1 Issue 1, which I have read more times than I can count. I picked up four TMNT books in one visit to the comic book store, and of the four, “The Burning Man” was what made the trip worth it.

It seems to me that, for the most part, Paul Harmon’s visuals are most appropriate to Tristan’s writing style, but I actually think that Lawson was a better choice with respect to this particular issue. Usually Tristan’s TMNT stories are serious and dark with little humor/comic relief. This issue is particularly interesting because it deviates from Tristan’s usual projects in a number of ways. Instead of an extremely serious story illustrated by either Harmon or Ponce, we have what is a somewhat light-hearted story illustrated by Jim Lawson. Lawson’s style has changed and evolved significantly over the years, and while Lawson’s style can indeed work for serious, darker stories (“Sons of the Silent Age” by Stephen Murphy comes to mind), it is hard to imagine what this issue would look like illustrated by Harmon or Ponce. While both are extremely talented artists (Ponce’s visuals made #61 the great issue that it is, just as Harmon’s visuals did for #’s 56 and 59), I don’t think either of their styles would have been appropriate to a story such as this one. This story is enough like an acid trip as it is.

For those of you who have tried to write TMNT stories of your own (for fun, of course), you may have noticed that Michelangelo is EXTREMELY hard to write. I have no idea why this is. Michelangelo’s complexity as a character is one of the universe’s greatest paradoxes. Raphael, Leonardo, and Donatello are all relatively easy to write in comparison. Since these characters are archetypes, none of them should be all that difficult to write. Definitely not the case. Especially with regards to Michelangelo.

I think part of this story’s appeal is seeing Michelangelo in a situation that demands a certain amount of maturity that he may very well lack, and Jones presents us with an interesting internal struggle. Michelangelo went from being everyone’s favorite turtle back in the ’80s and ‘90s to being considered an annoying little shit by many fans. This is for the most part due to the way he has been portrayed in the more recent cartoon series and most recent TMNT movie. In “The Burning Man,” Michelangelo makes an earnest attempt to recruit the reader to his way of thinking in regards to the events that have transpired over the course of the crazy week he has just lived. He is frustrated with Leonardo, who seems to be acting more as a means of validating his own ego (Michelangelo even goes so far as to compare him to Raph, which is actually a very good observation), and criticizes Donatello’s communication equipment, which “never works when we need it to.” All the turtles have tendencies towards psychological vulnerability; I guess that’s what happens when you grow up in a sewer. This issue would do just as well if titled “The Blame Game,” since this story seems to be less about the burning man as a threat and more about the turtles’ inability to work as a team at whatever age they are in this particular story.

What really impressed me about this story was its complexity. You really have to read between the lines. I’ve read this issue three times now, and I notice something new/have some great new realization about Michelangelo or the turtles every time I read it. Michelangelo seems extremely aware of the reputation he has built over the years, and seems to be attempting to make a counter-argument in his own favor before the 25^th Anniversary runs out. He makes a decent attempt, but I also feel that most fans will be apt to question his sincerity on the basis of his own theatricality. He caricatures Leonardo as the stereotypical ego-driven vigilante type to the point that the caricature itself must be questioned. He also tells several small white lies over the course of the narrative, but goes on to rectify them immediately, almost as if we might find out he’s lying and no longer trust his narration, or as if he doesn’t want to manipulate the one person whose respect he might actually be able to gain—the reader’s.

It is always a relief to come across as writer as versatile and competent as Tristan Jones, and this reader can only hope that he receives more TMNT work in the future, which assumes that Viacom will do something remotely serious and/or geared to an older audience with the turtles. It will be a pity if this story arc meets the same fate as Murphy’s “Forever War” (it will also be ironic, considering that Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2 is ending after issue #70; since the Archie TMNT series ended after issue #72).

The Time Has (Unfortunately) Come

Life's a bitch sometimes, and you gotta do what you gotta do. I am selling my copy of TMNT Vol.1 #1. All the info is here: http://tinyurl.com/ycebv2r

Yes. Today is a sad day.

TMNT #64 Review Round-up

Well, I knew this one would probably be the most divisive when it came to the reviews, but Tales of the TMNT #64 -- my last Ninja Turtles comic (with Mirage at least) -- has hit the comic stores around the world and reviews have finally started hitting the web.

I was most interested in seeing how this one flew, as it's substantially different to all my other stories so far. A good friend of mine, and fellow TMNT writer Will Tupper told me it was my best book out of the lot(as have a few other people), which I was really pleased to hear, as I probably had the most fun writing this one and was worried I may have had TOO much fun along the way.

Anyway, here are the first lots of reviews.

The best place for all TMNT news - GoGreenMachine.org.

Mark Pellegrini's TMNT and Comic Review blog.

Mechanistic Moth's Comic Review journal.

Walt Kneeland, of ComiXtreme.com's review.

WednesdayInReview's Ian Perez's review.

Hopefully there'll be more, be they good or bad.

Untold Tales of the TMNT: Eye of the Dragon

Okay, so my last issue of Tales of the TMNT hit the shelves yesterday at all the good comic shops, and I couldn't be happier.

...

....

Okay, that's a lie, I'd be happier if it weren't my last, but who knows what the future brings, right? Anyway, now that the issue is out, I'm going to post the last of the stories I was asked to put forward to Mirage, should Tales have continued beyond #70. I've already posted the other three, so check them out, and the reason I held back on this one was because it dealt with the events of #64, and I couldn't really post it without spoiling certain elements of that story. So, now that the book is out there, go and get it, read it, and then check this out, but ONLY read this if you've read #64, because there are some massive spoilers in this story.

Without further ado, here is...

“Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Story Proposal

“Eyes of a Dragon”

This story takes place not too long after Tales of the TMNT #64 (“The Burning Man”), and is a sequel of sorts to that issue. We will again delve into Chinese mythology, this time drawing on the popular myth of the Jiangshi (or kiang-shih) -- the hopping corpse, along with other forms of Chinese mysticism, but we cannot forget the trademark TMNT action and humor. This story will also touch on a number of threads begun in some of my previous stories, such as the ambiguous Chinese crimelord Li Xiao Yao and his rivalry with the renegade Shredder loyalists, and continue lightly tracking Hun’s movements throughout the underworld.

We open with Leo spying on a gathering of Shredder loyalists, apparently the same ones responsible for unleashing the Burning Man in #64, stealing what appears to be a piece of a statue from a shipping container. Suddenly, a new group of warriors burst into the place. The Foot put up a decent fight, but there doesn’t seem to be any stopping the warriors. Even mortal wounds fail to put them down. They are Jiangshi, but Leo doesn’t know this yet. He witnesses them slaughter of the Foot cell, and take the statue piece but when he tries to follow, he finds that the Jiangshi warriors have vanished.

Leonardo returns to April’s apartment and fills Donatello in on what has occurred and the two try to come up with an explanation for the warriors. Don (half) jokingly reasons that they could be Karai’s men on PCP or even super-zombies.

As they joke, someone knocks on the door. Don checks the new closed circuit micro surveillance system he installed in the building and sees an ancient looking Chinese man on the other side of April’s door. Leo and Don try to shake him off, but the old man is persistent and tells them that he followed Leonardo (Leonardo is shocked -- we all know how skilled he is) and that he must speak with them urgently, begging for their help.

The let the old man in and he tells them that both the Foot Clan and the Jiangshi are racing to collect the “Eyes of the Dragon”, three gemstones that, when placed in a statue of an ancient dragon, will unleash a power that could prove devastating if harnessed by the wrong people. Don backs up what the old man is saying, having read something about all this when he was researching the Burning Man curse (in Tales #64). The old man believes that one of the eyes is being held in a sarcophagus that is being transported from New York to Boston via train, but warns them that if the Foot or the Jiangshi try to steal the gem, they will unleash the eye’s guardian, an ancient dragon warrior. Don also knows about these. There were supposedly three of them and that their swords carried a great power, or something along those lines. The old man tells them that this is correct, and that the dragon warriors can only be truly defeated if their swords are destroyed. The old man says that if the Foot and the Jiangshi both knew about the statue piece from earlier, then they will certainly know about the eye being on the train. It is just a matter of who gets to it first. Leo and Don agree that neither should be allowed to obtain the stone and agree to help the old man retrieve it.

We cut to later, where all four Turtles have met up at the train yards. They witness the Foot Elite with the metal arm (from #59 and #36) commanding some men as they board a train. Logic dictating that that’s their train, they sneak aboard. The train leaves and the Turtles try to make their way as quietly as possible to the carriage containing the sarcophagus. One of the turtles discovers that a Foot Mystic is leading this particular group.

Before long, the Jiangshi appear, and the Turtles’ stealth mission goes to the fan. The Foot and the Jianshi start ripping into each other, and the mystic starts using magic to fight off the Jiangshi. The Turtles, of course, find themselves involved and reveal themselves. The Jiangshi don’t care, but the Foot Mystic becomes worried and commands two Elite to hold off the Turtles and the Jiangshi while he gets the Eye. Leo tries to stop him, but it is too late – by the time he reaches the carriage with the sarcophagus, the Mystic has the eye, and something else is happening… something is materialising inside the sarcophagus.

The Mystic tries to escape, but both the Jiangshi and the Turtles prevent this from happening, and all three groups suddenly find themselves confronted by a Dragon Warrior. It’s almost like a Chinese samurai – elaborate armour with intricate and horrifying designs etched into it. The Jiangshi attack the warrior, but it cuts them down easily, and this time they don’t get back up either. The Foot escape, and those who can’t are forced to fight.

What follows is an intense fight where this one dragon warrior manages to seemingly defeat all who oppose it, and as Leonardo now has the gemstone, it comes for him like the Terminator! Raph tries to take it down, but it tosses him aside. Mikey slams on the emergency brake, which puts the Dragon warrior off-balance and Leo takes this opportunity to strike. He turns the Dragon warrior’s sword on itself and defeats the beast with its own blade.

We cut back to NYC where the Leonardo returns the gemstone to the old man from earlier in his shop. We see him place it in a stone box where it shall be safely kept, and Leo leaves…

…however! Once Leo is gone, we cut to an epilogue, where the old man takes the gem to Li Xiao Yao – the "villain" from #64 – and we discover that the Turtles were actually doing the dirty work for Yao, and that the Jiangshi were also his minions, but he knew that the Dragon Warrior would be able to slay them. He tricked the Turtles into going as a back-up, knowing that if one of them could defeat the Burning Man (from #64) then they would be capable of defeating the Dragon Warrior. We end on that rather sinister note!

The Good with the Bad

I'm about to have a very unappealing day involving a two hour trip to a place I don't really like all that much to do something I don't particularly want to do in what I'm hearing is going to be 40 degree (Celsius) heat, but two cool (one ridiculously, the other pretty) things were also brought to my attention this morning.

The first, my final TMNT comic is going to be in stores. If you can't get your hands on it, let me know and I'll see what I can sort out. There's a new review for it up as well, which can be found my clicking right about... here!

WARNING: There are a couple of pretty epic spoilers, so if you want, just skip down to the review bit!

Secondly, and this is the ridiculously cool thing in my mind: REEF, my favorite band of all time, are finally getting back together to play some gigs after breaking up in 2003! Anyone want to donate me some cash so I can see them...? ;)

Untold Tales of the TMNT: Biohazard

Here's another:

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Story Proposal

“BIOHAZARD”

Quick notes:
The aim of this story, at its core, is to shed some light on the nature of the chemical compound that mutated the turtles into what they are today. I’m going to be reaching right back to the early days of the comics in this one, but also keeping it fresh and in line with the more urban, street level stories currently being told in Tales.
This story again features Hun, along with criminal “ally” King Cobra as the masterminds of this piece, but the core antagonist is something not yet seen in the comics (or the cartoons… at least, not as horrifyingly as I envision here!). Over the course of this tragic story, we will gradually learn more and more about the nature of the mutation the Turtles underwent, and the substance that changed them. It’s a horror-action story, with a touch romance and a twist of intrigue…

We open to find that Hun has been sending Purple Dragons into the sewers in search of the Turtles’ old lairs, based on information he recently received from “The Network” (I’ve included The Network in another story, but obviously this is something we would need to discuss the presence of. The alternative in this situation would be Lin, the Shredder loyalist who freed Hun in the first place)

Until recently, they were unable to turn anything up, but as we learn in the opening sequence, the Purple Dragons have discovered the Turtles’ original lair.
Devastated by the initial wave of Mouser attacks, and further rocked by all that has happened to the city over the past few years, the Dragons fear they won’t find anything of use in the caved in abode. That’s until one of them finds a locked, beaten box containing the remains of the T.C.R.I. canister that transformed the Turtles and their master years before.

King Cobra recognizes the T.C.R.I. initials from the news coverage of the bizarre incident that took place when the Turtles returned from D’hoonib, and is intrigued by the connection between the company and the Turtles. He demands the canister be analyzed, and this is essentially where our story really takes off.
After having crooked forensic workers analyze the canister, they discover trace elements of the mutagenic compound inside the remains of the canister. Both Hun and King Cobra are intrigued and have the compound be synthesized (maybe an NYU hostage situation?).

A test batch is produced and Hun cruelly uses one of his own lackeys as an unwilling test subject. Now, this is where things start to get interesting. The Turtles and Splinter gained human biological traits through their mutation, but when a human is exposed to a similar substance the effects are horrendous.
The ganger becomes a horrendous monster. The first stage of the mutation sees him become a fleshy distortion of his former self, as though several changes were trying to occur at once inside the ganger’s body but none work in conjunction with the other. It’s almost Lovecraftian, or like Francis Bacon colliding with H.R. Giger.

The girlfriend of the ganger, also a Purple Dragon is horrified, and although once an enemy of the Turtles goes in search of them for their help. Hun just assumes she doesn’t have the stomach for it and laughs at her as she runs away.

They try to subdue the monster for containment, but its mutation continues and it proves too strong for any of them. It breaks free. Hun initially starts commanding his men go after it, but King Cobra nonchalantly tells him to let it go. “The cops can deal with it… or the freaks!” and points out that the discovery they have made today is far more important…

The girlfriend of the ganger (let’s call her Megan for now) manages to get in touch with the Michelangelo, who contacts Raph and Don (Leo is momentarily unreachable), and she fills them in on what has happened. Leo then contacts the others and tells them that they’d better get to where he is ASAP.

They find Leo with Miller on a rooftop overlooking an alleyway near a meatpacking warehouse. Down on the street, the cops have cordoned off the alley. Media and general public have started gathering to see what’s going on. Deep inside the alleyway, the constantly mutating creature appears to be in some sort of catatonic state, having fed on raw meat from the warehouse. It looks different, but it’s definitely him.

The Turtles advise Miller to keep his men away from it, but someone taking photographs gets too close and agitates the creature, sending it on another rampage. It seems to be perpetually hungry, consuming what and who it can, and the constant state of mutation seems to be tearing it apart. The Turtles track it and try to come up with a way of beating it (of course, they try things the dirty way to begin with, but the creature brushes them aside with ease).

Don hypothesizes that the biology of the human involved might not be “chemically clean” at the time of the mutation, and the off-balanced body chemistry may be accelerating the mutagen’s affect on the human physiology. Donatello reasons that the chemical waste from the transmat experiments might have contained biological waste from when the Utroms began developing “skins” for their exosuits, hence their particular mutations. The human biological elements in the waste would normally cause animals to start adopting humanoid characteristics, as seen with the Turtles, Splinter and Leatherhead, but there’s no telling what it would do to a human, and there’s no telling what OTHER batches of waste might do, because the balance of radioactive transmat waste and human biological waste would have to be EXACTLY right. Here we see what happens when a human is exposed, but Don says that it might not even be exact, as he knows that Hun and King Cobra have “copied” the chemical compound.
Don tells Miller that he needs some form of coagulant, as it may be the only way to slow the creature down.

The Turtles realize they’re going to have to stall the creature as long as they can, keep it occupied and away from the public. The creature continues to get larger and more dangerous, and eventually Miller gets back with the coagulants. They try loading them into a tranquilizer and administering it that way, but the effected area isn’t large enough, and they need the creature to ingest them. Eventually, Megan tries to reach whatever is left of her boyfriend inside the monster, but there is nothing left. The momentary pause allows them to take this opportunity to force feed the creature the coagulants and it starts to slow down. We can see it as the blood starts to slow down and thicken, killing the creature from the inside. Megan is distraught that she ultimately had a hand in killing her loved one, but Leo offers her a different perspective, telling her that the evil ones here are the people that did this to her, she helped release him.

Miller helps get the Turtles and Megan away from a gathering public, but in the final scene, a large convoy of ominous black vans arrives on the scene and government agents converge on the body of the creature… could these be the same agents that took the body of Razorback at the end of #61?

First Last Review!

GoGreenMachine.org has posted the first review of Tales of the TMNT #64!

Check it out here ---> OBAMA-RAMA!

I have no idea why I just wrote/thought that, but I like it.

The End

This here's a preview for Tales of the TMNT #64. My last story with Mirage. It's amazing to look at, but there's a touch of sadness in reading it knowing it's the last. It's in stores VERY soon!