Turtle Turncoat by Tony Day - My Review
 

http://www.trydowave.com/turncoatpt2.web.htm

A fan made comic by the brilliant cartoonist Tony Day.

I actually found this comic online a few years ago at the Technodrome forums. I saved the link, but stumbled upon it today. I gave it another read and thought I'd give my opinion on the comic. Overall, the illustrations are brilliant. They are better than professional. The dialog is a bit weaker; it has a few misspellings and some bad grammar. I am not sure if this was the intention though...to give it a NYC style and feel. (eg "enuf" instead of "enough" or "there" instead of their")

The comic carries a much darker tone than any mainstream turtles tv show or movie. Think of it as TMNT meet Pulp Fiction. The characters are all from the 1987 tv series: Casey Jones, April (as a reporter), Splinter, 4 Turtles, Shredder, Krang, Foot Soldiers (robotic), General Traag. The characters seem to represent their personalities; Raph is serious and rebellious, Spliter wise, and Shredder and Krang constantly bickering.

The story is pretty serious. April gets caught by the Foot, Casey is nearly killed rescuing her, and Raph and Leo come to a battle, leading to a 3 v 1 on Raph. The story doesn't really focus enough on the Foot or Shredder; that battle is very minor. The humor is pretty absent with only one or two jokes by Mikey. There are a few references to the 1989 TMNT Arcade Game...see if you can find them, they made me smirk a little. The violence is extremely gory - including blood and torture.

I could only read through a few pages of Part II since nothing else has been posted yet, but it looks to be more of the same, picking up a year later, Raph having gone on his own.

So overall, I think it is worth a read for any TMNT fan who feels the series is too "light hearted" or PG rated.

My question to everyone reading this is, are more parts of this comic series coming out? I would love to continue reading, but it seems nothing new has been posted in over 9 months.

Tony usually plans out the plot in advance, draws the pages up as he goes and then finishes each page up by coloring them. He has been working on this project page by page since at least 2001 (when I first saw it).

I try to check up with Tony every now and then, to encourage him and ask how he is doing.

The last I heard from him, he was in the middle of a move across the Atlantic from England[?] to somewhere in Indiana.

I guess he is still too busy to get around to updating. If you are reading, Tony, know that I wish you well.

It's Kind of like "Of Mice and Mayhem", a very well illustrated, continuity heavy, and drama ridden 24 style "conclusion" to Chip'N'Dale: Rescue Rangers, whilst that did'nt betray the show, it took it far from it's innocense and charm.

Turtle Turncoat is different, it's trying to establish it's own identity within a familiar context, but not flat out saying where and when it takes place, so it can not take place if those who want the original series to be maintained the way it is, and can for those who appreciated the original series, but wanted it to go that extra distance.

Shredder's whole torture of April is boarderline hysterical, not terrifying (maybe this was intentional),

Maybe it's the more subtle parts I liked, like Shredder and Krang's hostility, Raph and April embracing before he left, things like that that add to the touch of humanity that the original series lacked, and that should have been included.

I would so pay to see that!

Well, it's free you know...:)

http://www.electricfishmusic.com/001.html

Enjoy. It's everything that's right and wrong about fanfiction for older shows, be prepared to be scared and slightly aroused

Thanx soccerstud652
 

Thanx for the review soccerstud652 your very kind:)

Just wanted to give u my new web address its:

www.trydowave.com

I've been very busy with the move to the US but things have started to settle down. So, hopefully i'll be able to get on with some new pages soon.

Laterz

Tony

That was an awesome fancomic...it's a shame the link doesn't work anymore.

Yeah it does, I just tried it. You've got to click on the arrows at the top of the page.

:D Hey, Tony, good to hear from you.:D I was beginning to think that you'd fallen off the face of the Earth, or something. (j/k)

Anyway, good luck with the move, stay safe, and be happy. Nice to know that one of my fave TMNT artists will be right here in the U.S. soon. Hope ya like it here! And I hope that I get to meet you in person some day.

Be well, bro.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot! (Silly, absentminded me!) I MUST remember to bookmark your new URL when I get back online at home later. Keep up the rad work, btw! The site looks great!

Tony, looking forward to some new pages.

I just re-read most of TMNT Volume 1, and I feel your comic is the 1987 series equivalent to a serious and realistic version of that show. It is nice to see since I grew up on the show, not the comics.

You call "there" instead of "their" and "enuf" atmosphere-enhancing? I call those typos. And while the comic might be full of good ideas and has fantastic art, those exact typos spoil it for me.

I did not call them "enhancing." I said, maybe they are typos OR maybe they are meant to be like that to set the mood. I did not know the reason, that was only speculation on my part.

About the typos
 

I'll be the first to admit that my grammar is terrible. As for the Dunno and c'mon stuff, thats intentional.

All that should be ancient history and part two will address this as my friend Alan Peters is now writing it. Not only is he a much better story teller than me he can actually spell.

Laterz all

Tony

P.s. i know i put a z on the end of later:D

Not for me.

When I click the link, I get a "504 Gateway Timeout" message.

It must be my internet connection, stinks too because I read this fancomic a couple of years ago and loved it. I had begun to re-read it a few months ago and was saving it on a disk so I could read it offline when it stopped working for me.

Sounds good Tony, I'm excited to read it.

Tony any updates coming soon?

Tony, any news on updates?

Hello all
 

Yes soccerstud652. Just finished a page today. It hasn’t got much dialogue and I was thinking of posting the next 3 at the same time but since it’s been a year I thought Id get it up there quick. (This comics gonna take me a decade if I keep going at this pace, :lol: )
Even though getting hold of Alan (the writer who lives in the UK) is more and more difficult these days I do have the script for the following 2 pages.

The new page can be
found here: http://www.trydowave.com/turncoatpt2.web.htm
Anyways, talk soon
Tony
P.s. Does anyone know how to get flash uploaded using Dreamweaver Cs3? I’ve upgraded from dreamweaver 4. I’m doing exactly the same thing, but it doesn’t seem to want to upload?? Very annoying!!!!

Any updates Tony? When can we expect the next installment?

We all love Tony's updates, but the official thread is now here:
http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=13544

Cheers!:)

I intially liked it, but it's becoming a little strained by it's attempts at being serious. I think it could do with at least another co-writer who can handle the comedic portions so it maintains it's dark storyline, but has dark humour attached to it.

For example, and I dont know if this was deliberate or not, but April having Raph's photo on her desk cracked me up when she's meant to be flirting with Casey. Then again, there might be a love triangle building

The first issue did have some nice bits of comic relief (mostly the Casey and Raph scene) but I haven't sensed many opportunities in the second issue when humor could have aided the story. I did chuckle at Casey's leap onto the couch in the middle of Mike and Don's late night poker. They really look ticked off at him. But the story seems to be reaching its dramatic and tragic conclusion so humor would just seem a little out of place when Raph is being trained as Shredder's apprentice.

Just now read both parts. I must say I really enjoyed it. The art is incredible, the mixing of universes is well done.

My only complaints would be some of my typical complaints when it comes to fan fiction. Raph being the super bad ass, gets old with me. The first scene where he basically beats up Mike, seemed forced.

I highly enjoyed the near nude April being tortured, it had such a classic fantasy anime charm to it. Amusing to the point I thought any minute now it was going to take a turn into some kind of Hentai, but I was pleased that it didn't. It just towed the line very well.

My major overall complaint though is the dialogue. It's good, but I counted at least 57 uses of the S word (Can we cuss here?) anyway that took a lot away from me. Some of them fit with the tone and others just seemed like the word was being pasted in at times.

I have half a mind to erase all the text and clean it up just to see how it would read.

Anyway, I want to give Tony major props as I love it. It's very nice, very well done and he's doing his own thing. I think there are ways it could improve, mostly with some minor dialgoue re-writes, but for the most part it's a fun piece of fan fiction with some of the best TMNT art work I've seen in comic form.

Even though I didn't particularly enjoy the profanity and the April torture scene (after which I took the opportunity to talk with Tony about the fact that true beauty is about more than erotic portrayals of women, to which he seemed awarae), this is his comic and we shouldn't try to alter it to suit our tastes in a manner which the author did not intend. There was some hurt feelings a few years back when some of the Drome members started talking about editing his work to make it better. Tony has made efforts since to improve the dialogue with a writer and tone down the sexuality of stuff like the April torture scene. He's been working hard over the years to make his work the best it can be, so let's not suggest anyone here would to try to edit it without his permission.

Meh, I never suggested that I'd go in and "fix" it and re-release it or anything. I simply said for my personal reading, I thought about re-writing the dialogue.

Anyway I don't think I could have been more complimentary then I was. I enjoyed it a lot. There are things that I think could have made it better. The end.

Yeah, I didn't think your comment implied that necessarily, but seeing as this has been an issue before I just wanted to remind everyone of Tony's perspective on the matter. If he were here, I think he'd same something similar.

Off the subject now, it's really great to see Tony's work still getting such great recognition and compliments around the boards. He's one of the few fan artists that really capture the look of the Turtles with his own unique style.:)

Actually I'd be willing to donate to the cause if he could crank these out in any kind of timely fashion. Which I'm sure isn't plausible.

Of course you can't directly pay for him to do TMNT comics, but donations to keep his artwork afloat might could be done. It might help get him to work on it more or whatnot.

The stuff is very well done.

Hi all
 

Just wanted to say thanx to u all for reading my comic, some of u who have stuck with it for YEARS!!! i appreciate it.

Just wanted to answer a few points. I have taken on board the suggestions regarding swearing and (semi) nudity. In part two there will be none of the latter and as u can see the swearing has all but gone. (gonna use it when necessary though).

I think Alan's doing a great job at scripting so I passed a few point over too him. About the comedy. He said ,and I agree, that comedy will not have a major role in this chapter because of the nature of the story (dealing with dark issues than the first part) and because its drawing to a close... (however long that takes!!:lol:)

That brings me onto the last point. I will be trying to churn alot more out from now on, so hopefully the pages will become more frequent.

...mmmm donations, i like the sound of that...:P, kidding, its a labor of love.:)

Btw page 18 is up for viewing....

http://www.trydowave.com/

Laterz
Tony