Leo'Jet Ski Fuel'nardoEric Talbot, who's also on lettering this issue! It deals with the return of the Turtles friend Gosei Hattori, a samurai who channels and draws on the spirits of his ancestors to kick ass, and Raph has a throwing star in his head, what the hell?
Mike Hawthorn continuing the trend of the boys having things sticking out of them.
And that, sadly, is the end of IDW's colour reprints. They only published 8 volumes, maybe due to lack of demand. Still, it's always nice to see the TMNT in their old black 'n' white.
George Flint, depicting Donatello venting his displeasure with the Beast Machine's cartoon.
Michael Dooney. This is based around April's story in Vol 4, where Peter Laird tries to get around years of not really being sure what to do with a character in a way that's...high concept if nothing else. She's currently taken up the mantle of resident masked vigilante Nobody!
Andy McDonald. This set up for Raph taking advantage of the TMNT being able to go out in public (long story) by going to bars and rubbing elbows with Cha Ocho. Remember him? Guy with a scar, wants to kill Leo?
Sophie Campbell, current writer on IDW's TMNT series and creator of two of my favourite comics, Wet Moon and Shadow Eyes!
Diego Jourdan. Tales' frontpieces are always neat because they feel like stories in their own right with absolutely no context, or at least just look cool. Jourdan does both!
Robert Atkins. Mirage Casey is neat because while he's the crazed hockey stick wielding loon we all loves, Mirage managed to pull off taking the character to far more serious places in a way big two comics almost never quite pull off.
Jim Webb. This is for the second story in the C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Masa team up trilogy!
Cute trivia: due to being busy with the 2006 CGI movie press and tie ins, Mirage inadvertently forgot to credit Webb in this issue itself, making sure to give him his due in the next. Aww!
Christian Colbert. The issue itself is by Archie TMNT team Dean Clarrian and Chris Allan, a story of Splinter and the Rat-King inspired by a conversation they once had in an elevator ride during an Anthrocon. "Make of that what you will," indeed.
(Honestly, say what you will about Archie specifically, but c'mon, TMNT storylines being conceived in proximity to furry cons doesn't phase you. It's more surprising those circumstances apparently DON'T happen that often.)
Mike Lariccia. This is the first TMNT story from writer Tristian Jones, who is trying to be Brian Michael Bendis -so hard.-
Sophie Campbell again! What a perfect pissy teen Shadow.
(Christ, I can FEEL Corey Feldman's voice coming out of this picture.)
Michael Dooney, presenting Leonardo's Adventures in Babysitting.
Antonio Montavlo. Dig the idea of an enemy reflected in Leo's rear sword, it's a really good spin on that idea! This story is all about his love affair with Indigenous superhero Radical and her traumatising death at the hands of her archenemy Complete Carnage. It sure...happens.
Long time Mirage man Michael Dooney! He does the next couple and we're gradually approaching the point he'll do all of them until the series' final issue.
Lookit dat rowbit head. Whadda cool lookin' rowbit.
Dooney. This is Sid, Casey Jone's cousin and antagonist of the first issue of the first Tales series. Full circle, you see.
Dooney again.
Mirage Kari is weird because she's Important(tm), but in a very surface level way. She's kinda just there because of City of War. Where we learn she is a mother but only at the same moment we see her cradling her daughter's murdered body.
Michael Dooney again. This is a neat story, POV of a kid who signs up with the Foot, but it's set during City of War, which feels pretty arbitrary to me. Coulda just been it's own thing and you wouldn't change much.
Michael Dooney yet again, riffing on major Mirage inspiration Jack Kirby for an alt universe Super Turtles story.
Dooney again, and next issue we're in for a surprise treat from--
--Jim Lawson, in the first instance of the issue artist doing the frontpiece! This bare chested gentleman is Mr Braunze, psychic Doc Savage tribute, who debut in the Twin Peaks style vol 2.
#TMNT #DocSavage #Well,kinda
And from here on out Michael Dooney was on frontpiece duty until the end of the series.
The 2nd in the C.O.W.-Boys team up trilogy! It introduces us to Bixolo, renegade member of the Utrom version of the illuminati and also he runs around in a humanoid cow Krang suit and I love him.
♫gotta getta gift gotta getta gift
gotta getta gift for splinteeeeeer ♫
Huh. This might be the first and only time Fugitoid shows up in any of these.
It's a shame that (far as I know) Dooney never did interiors for Tales, but damn did the guy know how to put together these lil' pin up moments. I want all of these for my wall.
LOVE this one and the story it comes from. Frontpeice is full of character, and the story is one of Tales' several examinations of the TMNT's relationship to their niece Shadow, what having secret mutant uncles actually does to a child.
The third chapter of the C.O.W.-Boys trilogy! Yes, that's Archie's lovable/horrifying Cuddly Cowlick. They have to fight a Galactus vampire that sleeps in a giant coffin and looks like Annihlus and GOD, comics are great!
I both do and do not like this issue. It's an odd mix of things that don't quite go together, and it makes the mistake of being set in the ongoing vol 4 "present"...which I don't think had had an issue for a bout two or three years at this point. You know how a normal person trying to pick up an ongoing cape comic is going to be overwhelmed because there's all this unrelated tie in stuff going on from years ago? That.
New pfp maaaaaaybeeeeeeeee...?
Ooooh, wait wait. Could this be a 4Kids reference? Because they dubbed One Piece at the same time they were doing the 2k3 show?
"Sometimes they're just plain weird!" says the Ninja Turtle.
TMNT's general vibe is everything and anything, and the result is some real posters-on-your-wall/that-one-friend's-van-mural energy.
And that's where the police found their bodies five weeks later, frozen solid. The smiles on their faces. Forever...
Tales is nearly over now, and this would've made a perfectly fine ending. A Fantastic Voyage riff with the boys shrinking down to save April's sister Robyn from a disease.
Our penultimate issue, a sombre rumination on the potential future of Shadow Jones. Shadow's future and the influence the TMNT, isolated by their very existence, might have on it for better and worse has been a really well done and surprisingly low key running theme throughout the series. A fine last statement.
And here we are. Issue 70. The last Mirage Comics anything after the Turtle rights were handed over to Viacom. It's a short lil' story about what Raph got up to in between chapters of Return to New York. Would look great on your wall.
Pointless? Perhaps. Arbitrary? Maybe. But counterpoint:
Raph wears a dinosaur man's skull to trick another dinosaur man into being friends.
AND IT WORKS.
This is the last officially published in canon Mirage Ninja Turtles story.
Never let anyone tell you TMNT was not great.
Hope you enjoyed looking at these weird Ninja Turtle album covers as much as I enjoyed trying to describe them in alt text.