Future Tense TPB
 

Didn't see a thread for it (I looked but if I missed it...sorry). Anyways. Midtown is listing this as coming out next week!! That's Wednesday July 22nd.

For those that don't know. This collects the Future Turtles stuff from the Archie book. Issues 42 - 44 and 62 - 66. It's being released by Mirage as a lead into Forever War. :D

Looks like I'll be dropping quite a bit of money on TMNT in the next few weeks. What with this, the Mirage TPB and of course the latest Tales issue. I'm excited because I've only read two issues from the future Turtles stories.

I just went to Barnes and Noble to pre-order it. It'll be available thru them July 28th. Regular price is $20 but since Im a member I only pay $13.46. :D

So B&N will have it in stores on July 28th?

No. With BN it's just an online thing. I've never seen any of the TMNT TPB's and comics (they sell Tales of the TMNT on their site) in the physical stores themselves, just online. It's one of those special order things.

I have however seen the kiddy storybooks in their stores.

They only had one copy at my comic shop, so I snagged it! I am pleasantly surprised by it so far...

Mine shipped today :D

I'm Jealous!

I picked up mine today. Great story so far...

Oh BTW.. I've been told that there's a Mighty Mutanimals story in this TPB. Now to me including the Mighty Mutanimals means they'll be involved in Forever War somehow! :o

Got it, great read. I like the b@w in this trade.

Question: Is page 65 duplicated for anybody else? My copy has that page twice, with the proper page 66 missing. It bugs.

Aside from that, I have to say I'm not terribly satisfied with the TPB; while it's definitively worth the $20.00 price tag, it all feels terribly bare-bones.

Random comments/complaints:

• Where's the covers for the original stories? I thought something like that would be a given.
• While I suppose it doesn't fit the collection's theme, I'm really sad that the TPB didn't include the April "The Angel of Times Square Story" that backed up "Dreamland", since its one of my favorite TMNT stories ever.
• In retrospect, I wouldn't have minded if they'd had cut the Mutanimal story and included the Black Stone of Mecca story instead--it has just as little relevance as the Mutanimal arc, and would probably fit the rest of the TPB better. Heck, better yet, why not include all of them? I'd have paid the extra coin.
• The Pin-ups/unused art, while nice, seem a bit random--as if they were included solely to fill in the pages. Why only one A.C. Farley pin-up, when there were originally five included with issue #62?
• I also really wish we'd seen something from Laird, Clarrain, or Allen about how these stories came about. Context is always nice.

All in all, it's a good buy for anyone who hasn't read the original stories. For anybody who has, not so much.

ETA: I just noticed that the blurb on the back states that the collection includes "9 complete issues originally published by Archie Comics!", which is just not true by any stretch of the imagination.

ETA2: Thanks, Will.

Mine had that repeated page, too.

Which would lead one to believe it happened on the whole run of 'em.

The Mighty Mutanimals are fu*king dead.

Wishful thinking... But, it's fiction. Anything is possible.

I find it most strange that Mirage doesn't really show the Mirage logo or name on the spine or back cover of the book. Why 'cause the issues weren't published by them? Why not even the TMNT 25th anniversary logo? Come to think of it wasn't even on the TMNT Vol. 4 #30 issue either. Again aestheticly Mirage doesn't seem to want to put out the TMNT anniversary on their own publications. I mean the 25th logo only shows up on issues of Tales. Thats just odd. Still look foward to reading it soon. Time is not always available for me.

Well they DID appear in that issue of Tales of the TMNT. :P Sure it was like one panel but they were there. Forever War deals with time travel so anything is possable.

Maybe they replaced the MM with robots lol

what happens if thats the case, a reprint? missing page posted on the web for download? or nothing?

I spoke to Dan about the duplicate/missing page, and asked if the missing page can be posted on ninjaturtles.com for download and printing. He says thats definitely doable.

And as for the Forever War, the latest seems to be a 3 issue mini beginning in December.

Haven't picked this up yet, but meaning to. Priority goes to the Mirage collection though.

Question: Is the "black and white" just the original ink and line art, or a copy of the color material with appropriate shades?

its pretty clean looking, so i'd say original ink and line art?

So it's not just a black and white photo copy of the colored version? As in, there is no shading at all?

right. looks like an issue of Tales would.

Back to being just three?? :ohwell:

According to Dan today, that's the word.

The bonus for this trade was an Farley pin up of Leo and TMNTA #7 if I'm not mistaken? Was that it? Cause the Previews listing said there'd be only 8 comics reprinted, the book has 9. Kind of nice of Mirage to do. But I must agree about the lack of no covers and as someone posted earlier that the original issues had 5 Farley pin ups. Wished they'd included those. Can anyone post these Farley pin ups? I'd like to see these as I never was into this series' run back in the day. I love Farleys TMNT art. He makes them look so real and have emotions from their faces.

It was actually Mighty Mutanimals #7.

That's Armaggon's first appearance, isn't it?

I've never heard of the April backup story. I don't think there's anything about it on the official website. What's that story about? I liked the Archie April series, and wish they had done more.

Yes I realised this after I finally started reading it. Overlooked this as being the MM spinoff. I was confused for a bit when it mentioned references of TMNTA#16 and #1. I'm like if its TMNTA #7 how can this be? But its MM #7 now I get it. Thought it was odd they'd put the MM #7 cover after that issue but then don't put up the TMNTA covers at all. I was also totally lost in the first half of the issue, as I don't know any of the characters. Even with the references being told I couldn't get the grasp of getting into the story for a while. The last half seemd more ok. But why did they pick this issue? 'Cause of Armaggon and his future history bits as a foreshadow? I was upset there were no TMNT in it too. Guess I'll find out when I read further along.
I didn't like reading the story as some of the words got really cropped into the spine. Wished Mirage could've like right indexed the reprint pages further away from the spine. Is it like this for the TMNT Collected book? And we know how thick that is.

There's 2 backup stories really... The one where April, Chu Si (who's her love interest in the series), and the old man have an adventure (she's by this time quite proficient with a katana). And another set in "the future" (Around New Years Eve 1999) in which April and Oyuki (who's now April's assistant) investigate a supposad Angel that has been appearing to people on a stage.

The MM was a spinoff series focusing on the turtles' mutant friends from the tmnt adventures series, hence no tmnt in these books. it was a short run, only 9 issues or so. but, they lead directly into some of the better TMNT Adventures stories, so they're worthwhile.

Im not as concerned about the extras, but i think its silly that this went to press with the duplicate pg and the missing proper page. other than that, this book is a really generous collection from Mirage. (I just wish Archie would continue with the TPBs like they did recently with the miniseries!)

It's called "The Angel of Times Square"--basically, April discovers that a porn producer/petty crook has enslaved an angel called Gabrielle and has begun shilling her out for cash on New Year's Eve 1999. It's worth reading, even if only for the fact that it's hugely different from anything else published in the Archie series.

As an aside, you can see that Mikey is sketching Gabrielle on the first issue of "Dreamland"--what I didn't notice until today, though, is that he's not just drawing her--he's drawing the actual story.

And the orphanage Michelangelo runs is called Gabrielle's

Self-pimping for a bit, but my review of the book can be seen at GaijInside.com. It's my first real review of the sort, so feel free to comment.

Anyone else surprised by how sweet these stories look in black & white? I was bummed upon hearing that at first, but it's definitely cool.

It works. I think the few issues of Tales that featured black and wite Chris Allan art helped warm me up to it :)

I'm halfway into the Future Tense trade and have been pleasantly surprised by it. I actually didn't want to get into the Archie TMNTA comics but thought since Mirage is going to the fuss of giving us a trade of these story arcs and its upcoming sequel mini series The Forever War, I'd at least check this out. There must be some reason these stories are in such appraisal from TMNT readers. I've always enjoyed time travel stories and this first arc just drew me in. I'm diversifying my TMNT comic readings beyond just the Mirage and Image comics runs trying this trade out.

Oh the Future Turtles stuff is definatly some of the best of the storylines. But there's of course others. I grew up on the TMNT Adventures. Didn't know about Mirage till around 2002.

I remember when the Cyber Samurai arc first came out. The first issue came with an awesome poster that I still have. :D

I should be getting the TPB this week. Panel to Panel finally shipped it yesterday! Wooh!