Titan TMNT RIP - Stories that could have been

[TristanHuwJones]

Hey guys! As some of you are aware, I was writing for the Fast Forward comics over in the UK. The comics, unfortunately, barely lasted a year, and included works by myself, Jake Black, and Simon Furman (I think Tom DeFalco may have been involved in one or two as well...?). Anyway, Ross May was also invited to pitch a couple of stories, and he's going to be posting his ideas up on his livejournal page, so go and check them out.

I remember there was a lot of interest in these, so in the spirit of idea thievery I have also posted my used, unused and rejected pitches. You'll find that most of the rejected pitches involved characters that were being used at the time -- namely Sho K'anabo.

It's a bummer because these comics were a hell of a lot of fun to write, maybe one day I'll be able to use them for Tales or something. Either way, take a look, enjoy, let me know what you think.

Check out Ross's story here at rossmay.livejournal.com, and then hit up my blog at the link in the sig!

PS. I've just finished one of my favourite images for the next issue of Cereal:Geek, so you RGB fans be sure to take a look.

[Andrew NDB]

Sorry to hear that, man. The whole mag is cancelled?

[Ninjinister]

I'm surprised you didn't know about it, Andrew. I started a thread on it back when Murphy first announced it.

http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=23670

[VaughnMichael]

While I know allot of members of this site hate Fast Forward I'm one of the Few people here who just can't enough of the brand new stories and direction.
Your ideas are great and I would have loved to see them as even episodes of the show had it gone on longer.
R.I.P. FF all over now...
I reallylove the idea of the Viral stories and the Savanti one!

[TristanHuwJones]

Viral was the ultimate villain in that world. A technovillain in a technologically driven future. She was one of those villains without limits... except that you could probably overuse her. I bet you anything she ends up in the next season!

[Hero]

I cant find the last issue ANYWHERE. This is bad.

===HERO

[ZariusTwo]

Sad to see you guys lose one of the only commercial TMNT magazines. I blame the industry more for the poor sales, there's no insenstive to make the magazines entirely strip-driven, which I beleive would have helped flesh out the storylines you were writing. Fun they were, but self-contained and minimal length thrown in with cliched puzzles and colouring pages can be a pain in the arse.

The UK comic market has been non-progressive for years.

I'm surprised Furman's TF movie-based comic is still around, seriously. As good as it is, I dont see it lasting much longer, the success of Transformers: Animated may mean they rebrand it to fit that series, and afterwards maybe you guys will get picked up and moved to that.

[VaughnMichael]

Viral was the ultimate villain in that world. A technovillain in a technologically driven future. She was one of those villains without limits... except that you could probably overuse her. I bet you anything she ends up in the next season!
That would make me so happy simply on the fact that I'd get to here people whine all season.:lol:

[TristanHuwJones]

Sad to see you guys lose one of the only commercial TMNT magazines. I blame the industry more for the poor sales, there's no insenstive to make the magazines entirely strip-driven, which I beleive would have helped flesh out the storylines you were writing. Fun they were, but self-contained and minimal length thrown in with cliched puzzles and colouring pages can be a pain in the arse.

The UK comic market has been non-progressive for years.

I'm surprised Furman's TF movie-based comic is still around, seriously. As good as it is, I dont see it lasting much longer, the success of Transformers: Animated may mean they rebrand it to fit that series, and afterwards maybe you guys will get picked up and moved to that.

Quoted for the truth! I'm pretty sure it will continue on as Transformers, but the focus will be split. I was invited to pitch for that way back when I started on tmnt, but it became dominated by Furman! :x
Back then it was going to be movie continuity for as long as they could get away with it and then g1 stuff. I'll be honest, while I loved the Transformers, and the movie, I hated Armada and everything related to it, and I couldn't even sit through a single ep of Animated. It just wasn't Transformers! I'm interested in seeing how it's recieved here in Australia (I saw it when I was in the US recently).

[Raph's Girl]

Viral was the ultimate villain in that world. A technovillain in a technologically driven future. She was one of those villains without limits... except that you could probably overuse her. I bet you anything she ends up in the next season!

Viral is one of my fave villians next to Karai. She'll definatly be in Back To The Sewers...especially considering the plot has Viral scattering Splinter's atoms across the digital realm.

[ZariusTwo]

Back then it was going to be movie continuity for as long as they could get away with it and then g1 stuff.

That's interesting. I can see your point since the UK are strongly rerunning G1 on several channels in conjunction with TF: Animated (which I beleive is the truest TF series in years), who knows if they will be eventually switch to G1 or Animated. Two extra original strips based on both would be nice, but again, Furman WILL insist on writing EVERY-BLOODY-STORY.

I liked the later portions of Armada, but that was generally because of some solid tie-ins to Unicron and that they stumbled on to a goldmine with Starscream and Alexis and never really explored it further.

[TristanHuwJones]

Yeah, unfortunately I think they'll bypass the G1 stuff though. With Animated being as successful as it is, I reckon they'll switch to that. And I'm pretty sure it'll all be Furman again. I like that the guy's committed and he is a very good writer, but I think he really missed the mark with a lot of the characters in the IDW reboot. That said, I dropped it after the fourth arc, so I don't know if it's picked up...

I just want to see a comic series that picks up at the end of the American series. Supergod Masterforce, Victory, Headmasters... they're all good and fun to watch, but I would love to see something totally new that picks up where it all ended with the original series.

My main beef with Armada was while some characters and arcs were really worth looking at, like Starscream, the rest were really shallow and not helped at all by the horrible voice acting. I liked the idea of it being this one gigantic story, but it just wasn't the Transformers I loved. There was a heck of a lot of talking without walking and even then the character development of a lot of the T'formers was minimal.

I'm rather dismayed by the state of cartoons these days. Granted, I'm in Australia and we either miss things or get them AGES after everyone else, but there really hasn't been anything truly worth watching in a long, long time (I think the last cartoon that impressed me was Clone Wars season 1). Looking forward to Spectacular starting here and TMNT getting off the ground again. I might need to give Animated another chance, but I really didn't like what I saw when I did.

[Hero]

I agree there. A primary focus on TF: Animated is the way forward. Plus having to draw ugly Movie style TFs is a horrible experience.

It is a shame that Furman did not get to contribute more towards TMNT.

===HERO

[TristanHuwJones]

Haha! It's bad enough having T'formers dominated by him, if Turtles writers got muscled out of Turtles by Furman I'd go mad!

[RossMay]

Hey Tristan, nice of you to advertise for me! I guess I should post in my blog again later today...

I don't read Transformers comics, but I recommend to everyone to watch TF: Animated. I know, some of the designs are pretty lousy and the vehicle forms can look like Tonka toys (which is oddly self-reflexive when you think about it) but the stories are fun for the most part and there are a lot of homages in there. There are a couple elements, including the origin of the Dinobots that I think are just perfect. And Tom Kenny as Starscream and Bill Fagerbakke as Bulkhead (Spongebob and Patrick Star respectively) are inspired choices.

PS
Trist, when are we going to do some Mario Karting?

[TristanHuwJones]

Hey Ross!

Just gotta move all my shiznit into my new room, shoulda had it done today but Uni assignments and writing gigs took priority!

I should start a Mario Kart thread here...

[ZariusTwo]

Hey Ross!

Just gotta move all my shiznit into my new room, shoulda had it done today but Uni assignments and writing gigs took priority!

I should start a Mario Kart thread here...

Now there's a whole different ballpark...video game comics. Mario had a few from Marvel years ago, but no real effort to make it distinct the way the Mario Bros 3 attemoted.

You'd think with game magazines everywhere, they'd try the old chestnut again for younger ages. Sonic The Comic was a master of this, even Mark Waid began his career on a Streets of Rage strip.

Still, it's a market that's barely represented well in the states, ARCHIE all but closed out the Sonic stuff with their "25 Years Later" arc (yeah it's a "possible future", but ARCHIE are known for non-progression) , anything in between I call a "bonus". I dropped it after Bunnie and Antwoine married and they decided not to reveal Eggman's computer was the SATAM Robotnik...

[Ninjinister]

You'd think with game magazines everywhere, they'd try the old chestnut again for younger ages. Sonic The Comic was a master of this, even Mark Waid began his career on a Streets of Rage strip.

Damn it.

Every time someone mentions Streets of Rage, I get the jones to play SoR2. Trouble is, I have 9 hours of work left :sleep:

Thanks Zarius >.<

Anyway, back on topic, the Viral possessing the Shredder armour (shades of things to come...?) and Savanti Romero ones sound like they'd be my favourites.

[TristanHuwJones]

In the script it wasn't so much Viral being in possession of the Shredder armour, more her energy combined reactivating it, combining with the CPU back up memory of the exosuit. I might adapt the Romero pitch for tales down the track. I'd love to tell a future Turtles story -- one eyed Raph, old Mikey...!

[NightwatchersOnlygirl]

It lots of cool posters and I loved the stories too

[Ninjinister]

In the script it wasn't so much Viral being in possession of the Shredder armour, more her energy combined reactivating it, combining with the CPU back up memory of the exosuit. I might adapt the Romero pitch for tales down the track. I'd love to tell a future Turtles story -- one eyed Raph, old Mikey...!

Well, I was speaking in Layman's terms.

And that would be cool, about the Romero tale. He doesn't get as much attention as he deserves, and it would make sense that he'd be able to appear randomly in a later part of the Turtles' lives (whether it be Fast Forward, or the Turtles' own future).

[Andres P.]

I was having fun doing the FF stories... :(

A!

[ZariusTwo]

Isnt the big rumour right now that Viral will become Cyber-Shredder next season, or is that Ch'rell, his exile retconned, taking control of cyber-space?

[TristanHuwJones]

That's the first I've heard of that :| Sorry dude!

The problem with trying to bring new people into the TMNT fold is that two things are generally expected - The Foot and the Shredder. Unfortunately (and I blame the old show) there's an expectation from people who aren't familiar with the comics that the Shredder is the badguy and the Foot are his minions, so I'm pretty sure the Shredder will be back in one way or another.

Something I'd like to see is a solid new villain established in the comics, one that can come back every now and then in the same way other comic book nemeses do. Someone who will really bring the fight to the turtles every so often. Most of the Turtles comic book villains are one-offs (because of the nature of Tales), although I have enjoyed the villains in Volume 4 so far.

Part of the fun of writing FF was using the lesser villains like Triple Threat.

[Andres P.]

Triple Threat vs Double Head! it was fun to do that story!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/Aponce/TMNT_FF5/TMNT_FF_5_08.jpg

A!

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[Buffy]

O wow, that looks so cool! Really wishing for a TPB with all the titan stories in it right now :(

[Jon]

O wow, that looks so cool! Really wishing for a TPB with all the titan stories in it right now :(


That would be great. If Titan could do that like they did with the UK Transformers comics stories in TPBs.