Official Image TMNT conclusion at IDW is HAPPENING -- "TMNT: Urban Legends"
 

It's happening. It's all colored, retitled "Urban Legends" and gets 3 brand new issues to conclude.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-long-unf...ing-1823171674

Cool, I guess IDW wanted a proper ending to put in the trades.

That's pretty awesome. Hope it doesn't make it too hard to consider canon to Mirage, as some of us like to do. :trazz:

As this is my favorite run of the comics, the prospect of more from the original team is pretty exciting. All the same, I feel like we had sufficient closure with the unofficial issues, so I'm not as hyped now as I would've been had those never come to fruition, admittedly.

If this comes in the form of one complete trade, I will definitely buy it.

Wow! This is so damn cool!

I really hope this will be released in hardcover as well!
Ecstatic.

I also wonder if this is Nickelodeon opening up the gates a bit on "adult-tmnt".

Edit: Apparently not. This has been in the works for a while. Perhaps high sales of this series can help enforce the message though!

Edit 2: Is it just me or is there a lot happening with TMNT lately? The DLC for Injustice 2 releases, new show premiered, now this announcement. I wonder if it's building up to a film announcement.

That's the most important take away from this, I think.

Though there's the fact that apparently they were asked to do this a few years ago. Before the 30th anniversary issue, unless I'm confused.
It could still be a sign, but we haven't seen anything else since then that points to this conclusion. As far as I can remember.

By who? Nick? Never happened. I mean, Gary and Frank were told kind of, "Be ready... this may be a thing!" by IDW years and years ago and I think Frank even did a cover for it he shared on his FB a little while ago when things were looking particularly grim. It's only ever been a strong interest in doing it from IDW, a push from Kevin, and a "No" from Nick. That it's a "Yes" now is very interesting.

So...are we just going to end up with a more brushed up version of what Andrew put together or will it be totally different?

No real connection to the version we did.

I now have renewed hope, maybe misplaced or maybe not, for a return to the Archie series for Forever War / some other concluding storyline with Chris Allan on pencils. Please, dear IDW! :) and, yes, awesome news for you Image fans.

Jesus, I'm on the internet literally all day long. The one hour I take a break online to play some videogames is when this is announced. Amazing how everything you want to see always gets announced when you're offline.

As everyone else has said, this is amazing, especially for those of us who followed Image when it came out.

Big question: Do the Image writers know how Volume 4 starts? I think it would be rather important for them to read at least the first couple of Vol. 4 issues so they know where Mirage picked up from. At the very least the Turtles need to be all fully healed.

I think it's great that they name-check ya, A.

So... are the Color Classic versions gonna make April black or white?
:tcouch:

It's great if this allows more people to see rare material, but my interest drops away precipitously due to the ugly color palette that's been featured on IDW's colorized TMNT issue re-releases thus far. I'll just buy #24-26 in 2020...

Oooo, boy, yeah. I was really tempted to pick up a used copy of the IDW deluxe hardcover of the first movie adaptation last week (great to see the Eastman layouts), but that tooty-fruity Shredder outfit just killed it for me. I might have to wait for the next store-wide sale.

From what I remember the coloring on the last batch of Tales trades that we got was pretty good. The coloring was really only bad oddly whenever Shredder showed up, but at least we have the black and white Ultimate Collections so it doesn't matter.

I think the Archie stuff and Forever War is a very different situation, one probably dependant on sales for the existing Archie reprints. If there's not even demand for the existing stuff, it's probably hard to justify new stuff of it. Are the Archie trades still coming out?

Though if "Urban Legends" is successful, completing long lost stories like that may be a go to.

Or hell... if it's really successful, I'm not even sure we can rule out even more Carlson and Fosco stuff in that universe. Why would they, if there's a demand (unless this was like a one off exception thing from Nick)?

I don't believe Frank or Gary have ever read any of volume 4, no. Though they don't really need to... the core "problems" separating vol. 3 from 4 will be addressed. Little stuff like Leatherhead might not be. Repositioning Karai, I'm not so sure.

Yeah, IDW is releasing the CyberTurtles Archie trade in a few months. They're almost done with the main Archie trades (although they never collected the specials and mini's)

Andrew how do you feel this canon release will overwrite your conclusion now in official canon? I see Gary paid mind to that in the interview.

Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. Hype rising.
What kind of push from Kevin? Is he just a big fan of the series?

Kevin pushing Nick. Kevin has always been a huge ally of the Image TMNT conclusion, even when we were shopping it around eons ago.

This is the best news I've heard since rejoining the TMNT community.

If we support this, we can only increase our chances of IDW doing the same for Volume 4 and Archie later down the road...

I'm really curious to see how the official conclusion differs from the almost-official conclusion Andrew put together. And also whether or not Gary and Frank care about dovetailing into Volume 4 or just go out with a bang doing their own thing!

Also, wouldn't it be great if IDW released this bimonthly? 2 issues a month, so we can get through this in one year instead of two?

I love this idea. You see DC and Marvel finding great success with this format lately. Might be a fun experiment for IDW to do it, and with a series that’s basically already produced.

Yeah. I don't know what's a good justification. I've bought every volume of the Archie trade for two reasons: it's Archie TMNT so I need it, and to support it with my $. But I imagine there are many who don't care for the trades (already have the single issues, don't like the format, etc) but would gladly throw their money at a new story.
Ah well, we shall wait and see, as we have for decades :lol:

This would be nice, as long as they aren't doing variant covers for every issue that comes out... blanks and Eastman covers and whatnot... just reprint them as they were, start to finish and then do the three new issues and done. Then trade collect it for those fans...

Then move to volume 4...

The problem with a Vol. 4 conclusion is PL just can't be bothered or motivated to finish it. He's the only writer of that series, nobody else can finish the series but him. He could have published new Vol. 4 issues through Mirage from 2010 till now...and in 8 years he chose not to.

If IDW came to him and said "we want to reprint Volume 4 and finish it... all you have to do is write it or even just tell Lawson and/or Eastman where the story goes", Laird COULD conceivably agree.

It's still a long shot. But I firmly believe we are now the closest we've ever been to a Volume 4 conclusion since Laird put #32 up on his site.

I will buy the **** out of this! Awesome news.

I think this means even less to a Vol. 4 conclusion than it does to seeing "The Forever War." Bobby has said they won't touch it without his involvement and he hasn't shown any interest in years.

Now, would this news about "Urban Legends" motivate Peter to do more vol. 4, make him even less interested in doing more vol. 4, or not even be on his radar? I have no idea.

Not a super fan of the name "Urban Legends," for the record. Maybe it's harmless but it could be construed as "these are just tales, not canonical."

Urban Legends is a name I'm fine with, aside from simply calling it "Volume 3," it's a name where fans can decide if they want it to be canon with the rest of Mirage or not. It bridges the gap fine, and assuming the last 3 issues don't do anything too crazy or contradictory with the start of Vol. 4, then it'll be ok.

Now if the finale shows us Leonardo stab Karai in the heart and die, then I guess these can't be canon. :lol:

Yeah I'd really hate it if they cemented this as an elseworlds thing when it was never intended to be that.

If it were going to continue indefinitely as its own thing, maybe... but otherwise, I like that you can choose whether or not it can be worked into Mirage.

On paper it's the fairest way to go. Let fans decide if it's canonical or not, not stepping on Peter's toes in definitively saying it is but not definitively saying it isn't either.

Wow. I had to spend a good 5 minutes determining today wasn't the 1st of April, Andrew. :tlol: The title including the term "Urban Legends" didn't help much either...

This is such awesome news! IDW is really making miracles happen lately. Trying to decide if I should wait to buy the last 3 issues & TPB or go all-in just to support more projects like this happening in the future. (Of course I finally completed collecting the original run just a couple months ago.) Kind of bummed it will be in color which won't match the rest but that's what sells I suppose. Still so hyped about this though, seems to bode well for the brand on so many levels!

I suppose Lady Shredder will be Karai then, and not Tang Shen's sister because Gary and co. know Andrew did that and Karai was the original plan.

I hope they can reconcile it that Karai still makes peace with the Turtles again. All I want is that, the Turtles getting healed (Raph and Don should be the easiest, I don't know how they can explain Leo regain a lost hand), and besides some minor stuff about wherever Leatherhead was teleported to on the transmat, I don't remember any other loose ends.

The "big" kicker is who Pimiko will be. I did go against the notes there. To serve the greater narrative (what Gary couldn't know would be written many years later in Tales V2, I mean), I thought. No idea if that's still the case and wouldn't say if I knew.

Been waiting for this announcement for years since the original run is so expensive. So stoked, love the image run.

Does that mean those of us who grew up with Archie's TMNT Adventures will get Forever War to conclude its run?

That depends on Murphy. The Archie trades IDW put out are near the end of the series, CyberTurtles is coming out. All they have left to collect is the Ninjara moon-eyes 4-parter, the Turtle toddler Turtles, and Year of the Turtle.

"More dramatic" or "less dramatic" Pimiko identity?

I'm drooling at the thought of having this is omnibus form. It seems that IDW collect most of the TMNT runs in hardcover, but I haven't seen any for TMNT Adventure, though it's possible they are waiting to finish the tpb`s.

Well, it's better than what IDW retroactively named their reprints of the Devil's Due GI Joe series once they started their own continuation of the Marvel run. "GI Joe: Disavowed".