TMNT Vol 4 #31!!!
 

It be up, on Peter Laird's blog. Ain't read it yet, thought i'd share first:

http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/2010/...lume-4-31.html

I read it.

I am going to offer my unedited commentary. The loss of this comic book is no great loss in the world of comic books, or in the world of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I didn't follow much of Vol 4. Picked up a couple issues here and there. The writing is boring, the art is boring, and the characters are boring. Particularly the "April kicks some ass!!!!!!" scene. Gimme a break.

Favorite piece of dialogue: "I'm... dissolvin'!"

I welcome contrasting points of view. Who here really enjoys Volume 4? If so, why? Am I missing something?

*blinks*@the cover.... Robin Hood? Wha??


Buh wha?!@the ending.... wait what?!

I can't believe it!

Oh, awesome. *bookmarks to read later* Thanks for letting us know!

Well, it's nice of Laird to give these away for free, so I can say I appreciate that very much.

As for the issue, well, more of the same generic Vol. 4 complaints blah blah blah art is dull blah blah blah terrible, stilted, unnatural dialogue blah blah blah.

In regards to the storypoints, the ending has my interests piqued:



Mike seemed too comfertable with the Triceratons wasting an innocent farmer who obviously wasn't a soldier. A rather shallow reference to America's napalming of Vietnamese villages, really, and seemed very out of character for Mikey, especially his energetic reation to the promise of a bloody, carnage-filled massacre. Really? Mikey would go all "woo hoo" at the thought of slaughtering people?

I liked the dream sequence, even if it was pretty silly. It was a nice callback to Don and Casey's encounter in "Shades of Grey", if that was the intention.

As for April, well, it was good to see her for the first time since "White Horses". The whole "Harley vs. Ricers" thing would have left me with the feeling that it was more of Laird shoving his trivial opinions on the plot of the book if I knew exactly what his opinions of motorcycles are (outside of the fact that he's an enthusiast). Is he a Harley man or a Kawasaki man? I really don't know.

Either way, the fight was kinda stupid.


Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise to see the issue up today, whether I cared entirely for its contents or not. The ending at least has me intrigued, I'll give it that.

just read it, and i think it's very much the same as the entire vol 4, the story is kind of weak, and i don't mind the artwork. i just wish that there was more of an exiting story line - having said that i am still happy to read it, and hope that one day we will at least see a wrap up of the series. The michaelangelo story is the most interesting in my opinion.

I used to feel this way, but now I find Leonardo's story MUCH more intriguing.

Man you guys complain a lot. It's not the greatest story ever told but I've read comics written way worse than this. The book really only suffers from two things for me. First some of the things the characters say should be in thought bubbles because it looks like they're talking out loud to themselves and unless you're The Maxx you shouldn't be doing that. Second each character is doing something or has something interesting going on and he really only has time to show 2 turtles an issue and one human character. If the releases weren't so far apart this wouldn't be a problem but that isn't the case.

I haven't re-read any of the V4 books. I was waiting for the series to end because I can see it's very much a story meant to be read in rapid succession. Until the final book comes out, if it comes out, I won't judge the series. I've been reading Shadowland and it started off as pretty crappy but it's getting near the end and it's starting to get good. If the ending is worth it then I will have enjoyed reading it the whole way through.

I believe the same applies to the turtles. I'm also intrigued because Donatello is my favorite turtle, Raph second, and they are currently the least interesting. The book is making me intrigued in Mikey and Leo. Mikey especially who is refreshingly mature compared to his TV series counterpart.

This popping up is quite strange to me as it was only last night that I asked myself when it would. Weird!

...But great.

I'm not gonna use spoiler tags so don't read my post if you've not read the "book" yet.
Don't be mad at me, why're ya readin' this thread & not the issue, ya jackal?!

Regarding Donatello's dream sequence, I can't say anything negative knowing that there's a bigger picture to it. Am I fan of Shakespeare and the like? No. However, I've always appreciated what nods to history the mirage guys would put in. They're there because they're timeless & they relate to everyones own struggle in some way. I love a good Shredder cameo, but when he became Casey, it threw me. I'm very interested in seeing what that's all about.

Mikes storyline, as some of you have said, is in fact out of character, but with reason. Think about it, this dude has been the comic relief, the guy who keeps his head up in the worst of times, the subdued one in battle, etc. He's still young, life changes you. He's maturing, even if that means he doesn't see death as such a bad thing, so to speak. One of his best pals got cancer & a timebomb lifespan thanks to being a drawing & her spouse remains a deteriorating drunk. His brothers have been mutated & sized down to an action figure & zapped off to some other dimension. His surrogate father, the one person who raised him & cared for him & taught him all he knew, is dead. When all you've come to know has been changed dramatically, what do you have to lose? Sometimes, your empathy meter goes down a few notches in hard times. Besides, Raph always used to be the hard case, it was bound to rub off on him sometime. Thats just my take on it.

Aprils adventure... What can I say? I somewhat agree with you guys. It's a little cheesey to me, in all honesty. The whole empowerment, April kicks butt thing, its been done & it ought to be done, as in never done again. I guess I understand it, though. It shows that she's more then able to deal with all types of bullsh!t from cancers to bullies & whatnot. Its a sign that she's ready to deal with everything up front, & that means goin' back home.

The ending, well, I'm 70/30 on it. 70% of me says "Holy sh!t! No way! What could this mean?! Is that really him?! Oh f*ck, this will never be finished & I'm dying to know!" etc. 30% of me says "Really? Really now? I think we all told ourselves we didn't see it coming a thousand miles away, but we did. Ya couldn't of just kept him dead & gone? Ya hadda go the generic comic book route & bring him back? Nothin' better up yer sleeve?". Well, at the end of the day, I'm happy to see his face. Nothing would be greater for the turtles then having their father back while all of this other nutso stuff is going on, even if he's merely a spirit or a parallel version or whatever the hell he is.

Now, for your complaints. If ya don't like Jim's art, don't f*cking look at it, ya assholes. Time & time again, thats the response we get. Counterproductive sons of bitches. You want new turtles books, real ones, by the real mirage crew, we get them, you bitch & moan. How dare you! With Diacom & Dick at the wheel, we won't get this kinda stuff. This is the purest form of the turtles that will ever be. & for the record, Pete reads the things we say here, so thanks alot for discouraging him & potentially the rest of the guys. Just 'cause you would rather nothing then something doesn't mean the collective fanbase agrees with you.

Well, to cap this off, I hope to see more. Thanks to Pete for puttin' it up. Much like a few others around here, I wasn't too sure it'd ever show up, especially not this "soon", even though its been about a year since he said he might post it. That's not a complaint, by the way.

You know what he probably reads BEFORE he comes here?

The comments on his blog. If you feel so strongly about encouraging him, go there. I did.

I pieced it together into a more easily readable .PDF. If anyone wants, send me your E-mail address.

Finally!!! :D Thanks Pete!!

Just right click and save-as.

http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/tmnt31.pdf

cool issue!!!

I love that PL posted this. I believe #32 was also pretty much finished too, right? I wonder if he'll post that one as well eventually.

As for the story, its pretty much the same.

We can say that's not "our" Splinter, but a different one. It'll be interesting if he's like that Oroku Yoshi Shredder.

I wonder if Mike is "playing along," with the invasion just to find out where the Regenta is. I agree with others that it doesn't seem right for Mike to want an entire race to be killed. Makes me think Mike is pretending to go along with it for the time being.

Don's part was filler, but you can tell it has to do with Casey worried if April will truly be back or not.


Good issue. I'd love to see Vol. 4 reach its conclusion someday.

You know my addy, shoot it over.

That never occured to me but would make alot of sense. & yeah, it's a good issue!

O yes ! thanks !! :D

My thoughts...

It's a little meandering, and it seems to be raising more questions than it's answering, but I actually liked it quite a bit. Also there's a good use of duotoning here, which is always a plus.

I mean, let's do an appraisal here: pretty much all the storylines going on got a bit of a nudge in the issue (except the whole thing with Casey screwing Karai... I want to hear more about that)... and there was a fight scene. Of course, it wasn't entirely a very necessary fight scene, but it counts, doesn't it?

Laird seems to be more writing around April than actually writing her, but it was nice seeing her again nonetheless.

There's always a lot of filler scenes in Volume 4.

The previous issue had Casey tangling with a mechanical shark that Karai trains with for no reason, this issue had an April fight with some guys for no real reason etc.

I wouldn't mind those filler scenes so much if they didn't take up so much time in the book, delaying the main story.

There's also so much exposition going on with Mike's story, its like every issue another small detail has to be explained over the course of 8 pages.

Woo, cool! I'm only at like issue 17, so I can't read it yet...but I look forward to doing so in the near future.

Also, thanks, Andrew, for the PDF.

thanks
 

thanks a lot for informing,enjoyed it.

Thanks for the PDF, Andrew!

Thanks a bunch, Andrew!

Now, to get this potentially stupid question out of the way: is there any chance of this ever going to press? I'm sure the answer is a resounding "no," but I just wanted to remove all doubt before I hoof it to Kinko's and burn off my own bootleg copy.

Not anytime soon. I'll always have the belief that someday in the far future when PL is, "settled down," with his new life style, that he may want to take a crack at writing TMNT stories one last time.

If he does I'd imagine it'd be to wrap up Volume 4, rather than do anything new.

A great read, thanks Pete

Just pie in the sky now, but if a lot of time passes and Laird says, definitively, "Yeah. No Vol. 4 conclusion, sorry," then I'm sure myself or someone would be willing to invest in printing some kind of TPB-sized printing of a Vol. 4 conclusion that would include this.

thats pretty cool! I haven't started vol.4 yet so I cant read it now but I'm just glad were getting some more

all these complainers from vol 4 I need 29 and 30 if you want to sell them to me. ;) I get paid thursday morning. cheers... I saved the pdf thanks andrew. I will save it for another day until I get caught up
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Latina Cams

The only part of this I didn't care for was the April section. It seemed like an unnecessary attempt to shoehorn some action in. In fact, as much as I love issue 22 (and I do; it's great), April's entire character arc in Volume 4 has seemed a little superfluous. I really hope it's building to something.

But, oh man. The rest reminded me just why I love Volume 4. Or rather, why I love-hate Volume 4. I think it's full of great concepts and poor execution. We have fantastically creepy ideas like Michelangelo waging bio-war on an alien race, April's origin, Splinter in the Battle Nexus (holy sh*t), Baxter on Don's wall, etc. And yet they're all marred by Laird's awkward pacing, reluctance to build upon them, and terrible, terrible dialogue.

We got more of the "this should have been in a thought bubble or not there at all" syndrome in this issue, and it's a shame. Laird's great at ideas; he should have handed script duty off to someone else. Lawson maybe.

Finally, I was quite bored with Donatello's dream until it became a callback to "Shades of Gray." Stuff like that is why I love the Mirage series.

Oh there was a reason. It was sorta like a public service announcement. I'm pretty sure that's the kinda bike Peter rides, Lawson too maybe. So it was like beating up the other bikers that bag on those kind of bikes.

I think it was also to show that she's strong again and her will is coming back.

Well... have you seen a Laird script? Usually it's not really a script as you or I would think of one but just that -- paragraphs of ideas, with a few dialogue blurbs mixed in there... the rest, Lawson has to come up with entirely on his own.

Which isn't a slight on Laird -- that method isn't unheard of and actually makes the storytelling more 50/50 between writer and artist.

My impression was that he gave Lawson a semi-detailed overview, Lawson did the art, and then Laird went in and added all the speech bubbles with his own dialogue accordingly.

So the ridiculous wordiness still comes back to Laird. If you compare the dialogue in Volume 4 to the terse, thematically-loaded dialogue of "City at War" or Volume 2 (Lawson), it's worlds apart.

I don't care what their artistic process is. At the end of the day, it just seems like someone other than Laird should be deciding what goes in the speech bubbles. Laird's been a great idea man; not so much an actual writer.

All that said, I still really enjoy Volume 4. This has just been one of my greater misgivings about the series for some time.

A long time ago I said the reason Karai was acting strangely was because this was an alternate Karai from the Battle Nexus, and, "our" Karai was missing.

I really wonder if I'm right now. Especially now that an alternate Splinter and alternate Shredder have shown up.

It would explain a lot about the Foot storyline still brewing.

Interesting thought. You might be onto something there.

I really liked this issue. I mean, HOLY CRAP! Stuff actually happened!
I enjoyed getting to see the inner workings of Don's mind, not to mention getting a darker side of Mike.

As for April's story...
It was there. Kind of like April herself: just there. As 2D as her overwritten backstory. But...that's a thread for a thread of a entirely different color.

Wow this storyline would really make things much more interesting, let's hope that we live long enough to actually see if this is correct!

Laird has a good 20 years in him left at the least, and hopefully we'll all still be around 20 years from now.

Leo once said Karai seemed, "possessed" or "unusual," so it really would explain a lot. PL has been hinting for awhile that something was wrong with Karai in Volume 4.

I'm with you on this one.

I have to admit, I've not been the biggest fan of volume 4.
But this issue was a turning point for me and oddly enough it's free.
I think things are progressing and I think what Peter needed was some time away from the characters.
Jim's art looked great with the tones, especially in the Donatello part.
I can't wait to see were things are going and I hope we won't have to wait to long.