--Bishop, who's supposed to be as complex and compelling as all of these other assholes (and like EVERY character Tom Waltz ever wrote, if you believe some circles), who is THE EXACT SAME KIND OF MUTANT RACIST HUN IS...is supposed to be so bad he -deserves- being ended by Slash stepping on him.
THAT'S supposed to be complex? "This racist got his, but this one over here is tragic."
And by contrast, Sophie Campbell made Wet Moon and Shadow Eyes. Both about growing up different, both about your body, both about the question of identity, both about the uncertain future the 21st century is dragging us into, whatever our role in it is.
You do not get "But the child abusing one is okay" from either of these, and I highly recommend reading them wherever you can. Iron Circus had the reprint rights, last I heard.
Also, just saying right now, Campbell handles Alopex, the only character in IDW to put their money where their mouth is, the best, including having her leave the group for a spell when they decide to partner up with Shredder, the guy who kidnapped her, killed her family, and mutated her.
Because TMNT editorial really, really wanted redeemed Shredder to be a thing.
(Do not expect anything flattering about the Armageddon Game, outside of Campbell's last tie in issue for it, to show up in this thread.)
Also it seems to have vanished from the web, but if you can, absolutely check out Campbell's "Secrets of the Ooze" fancomic, it kicks the shit out of Waltz run so hard and it's not even finished.
Skipping ahead to the (hundredth and) fourth issue to present the first half of the thesis statement. "We've never had a night out in our entire lives."
And page 2. I like how tempered and quiet the mourning is, not overwrought (which so much of the previous 100 issues were, -especially- when it came to death, y'know, that thing the reincarnation concept neuters immediately), while still being like, yeah, Mikey WOULD be the one taking it this hard.
And we end on a beat that's going to pop up over and over throughout the run: for better or worse? Raph's the one who knows when it's time to leave.
Great, subtle character moments that are good And Wanna Do Other Stuff Good Too!: Leo being the only one keeping his mask on, plus he and Jen, the older siblings, being the ones to watch Raph leave.
Oh nothin', just Ninja Turtles depicting the US government building a wall for the express purpose of isolating and denying the diffrent, in 2019.
"bUt iT uSeD tO bE sUbTlE" The future of Archie TMNT, which began life as the tie in comic to the toon so heavily censored my nation called it HERO Turtles, depicts the future as a flooded, apocalyptic wasteland due to global warming and had a (poorly thought out) issue about Splinter as a Hiroshima bombing survivor.
"Subtle" doesn't work when Eastman and Laird did an issue about a right wing militia so dumb they don't realise their organization's anagram spells "C.R.A.P."
And because there's never a bad time to post this panel:
#TMNT
And so here's the new status quo. Old Hob, bastard mutant cat-man, mutant revolutionary, and Snake Pliskin cosplayer, tricked Raph into helping him construct and detonate a mutagen bomb, turning an entire section of Manhattan into mutants. Baxter Stockman, now mayor, has quarantined this "Mutant Town". Mutants are now public, social tensions are rising, and the Turtles have separated from the grief over Splinter's death.
This is a neat page because it does what it does well while kinda breaking one of comic's rules about efficient story telling (which comics break all the time). Our new status quo is established by someone talking an awful lot...and at the same time it's on one page, the third of the book, and in context it makes complete sense. Baxter's a politician now, laying out terms like this is literally his job.
'Nother unofficial rule of comics this one pulls off: establish a story within the first three pages. We've had loss, separation, and now Campbell's cemented the setting. The Turtles have been traumatically changed forever and so has the world around them.
NOTHIN' RELATABLE ABOUT THAT, HUH?
Gonna have to check later down the line but this miiiiiight be an early sighting of Wanda, one of Leo's eventual martial arts students.
Also this as good a time as any to bring up Campbell's two main inspirations for her run: the future Archie stories, where the TMNT have a dojo and students in a devastated setting, and the Mutant Apocalypse/After the Bomb RPG books.
So anybody claiming she doesn't know her TMNT is talking out their ass.
Me returning to a TMNT thread after "just resting my eyes for a bit."
The most Sophie Campbell panel ever. (I am going to be saying that a lot.)
#TMNT
Yeah, I got next to nothing. So much of the panel speaks for itself, the textures of Donnie's clothes, the walls around him, you can practically -hear- the wind outside. And his face! Campbell's expressions are so great, humanity, personality on an inhuman face.
Y'know what, stick the Scarlet Spider logo on that shirt and that's my fursona.
What's a melancholy song that'd fit Donnie, wanna set this to something.
Next to being a badass long shot followed by a badass close up, I like this Raph moment because it's another one of Campbell's themes. So much of TMNT -talks- about family, and she isn't afraid to offer the possibility that maybe being family doesn't inherently guarantee anything. When things get bad you -won't- always rise above them. And sometimes that's okay.
Plus Raph brooding off on his own, c'mon. 1990 programmed your brain to love that.
Wanna tell how an artist wrote this comic/how atmosphere works in comics?
Because these sequences work separately but their composition is also based around being one big page, so you go from Donnie's hangdog but cosy farm set to Raph's bitter, freezing cold urban cesspool.
More establishing stuff (in only two panels! Not bad!)
-Raph is patrolling Mutant Town on his own, still grieving Splinter's death and wracked with guilt over his role in the mutagen bomb
-The innocent of Mutant Town are being "protected"/preyed on by the Mutanimals, Hob's gang of self appointed mutant police
-As Don points out, this is similar to the start of the series, but -emotionally- different. This isn't a family desperately trying to reconnect. Things are colder, more uncertain.
(Because we -did- a lot of the overwrought/kinda creepy "Family is eternal" stuff already, and Campbell is ready to say sometimes that stuff fails.)
That's the biggest thing for me, y'know? I get why some of this stuff isn't gonna connect with people, but we're not going to get a story where Leo is brainwashed into being evil or Raph runs off because trauma about Bishop experimenting on him. Sometimes people can -just- fail and -just- be angry and -just- make the wrong choice at the worst moment. That feels emotionally real to me, even though yeah, the run is gonna get rocky.
Raph using the handles of his sai to bash the fash is also nice to me because Campbell -would- know that historically sias aren't stabbing weapons.
That's what I like about the Mutanimals here too, because Waltz has a real creator love affair with Hob where his paranoia and rage are supposed to be complex and sexy, and Campbell unambiguously address what his version of the Mutanimals actually are for the first time since that spin off they got.
"The pet character of the first run finally gets what's coming to him" would be a good summary of the strengths of Campbell's TMNT. And while I wanna be intellectually honest if not objective, you do have to wonder how much of what trips her writing up has to do with trying to work within what IDW had already done with the brand. (Which included telling us how great Hob was an awful lot.)
Honestly wish IDW TMNT was more like that Bebop and Rocksteady mini where they're starting to change back to humans and Rocksteady cuts his human ear off on the assumption this will make it stop.
What's nice about Campbell's Raph is that she doesn't depict his angst or being on his own as an inherently unhealthy thing. There's a well defined line between "Raph's being an asshole because of his temper" and "Raph just can't be around people right now".
Case in point, at the same time Donnie's flat out admitting the fam have no energy to go looking for him, and as much as he's butting heads with Al and Jen, Raph's actually doing a lot of good in Mutant Town. Could do -more-, but.
That's another part of Campbell's thesis with TMNT, I think. Family -can- be great and strong, but it's OKAY if you're not ready/don't want to be part of it.
(And speaking from lived experience, people who really, really like the reincarnation origin are -not- equipped to deal with the implication of Raph's anger being an inherited/inherant trait.)
Leo'Jet Ski Fuel'nardo
Euan