The Overall Opinion of IMAGE TMNT (Vol. 3)
 

What is the overall fan reaction/opinion of the Image Comics series? Many TMNT fans on other sites/forums don't seem to care for it and ignore it completely, while others hold it as essential. It is out-of-continuity but why? Did Peter Laird not like it?

What are thoughts about this series on the 'Drome?

Personally, what I did read was alright. Much preferred Leatherhead’s portrayal in it, though not sure what to think about King Komodo. As for the turtles themselves, it may need to take me a few more issues for their design changes to grow on me, even if it does seem to take place in the future.

I'd honestly have to give it another spin. It's been well over 10 years since I read it properly.

My initial response to just about every issue was, "Oh, god," followed by incredulous laughter. :lol: So take that for whatever it's worth.

I will say, that when I was young, and someone said to me, "Image Comics TMNT", I immediately had expectations in mind, and every single one of those expectations was met, and with gusto. For better and worse, it is every bit the comic you'd expect to get from those ingredients in the late-1990s.

I don't think it was drawn to be in black and white, though, that I will say outright. The early issues, especially. Didn't care much for the art.

Actually, given that I haven't looked at it much since I first read it almost 15 years ago, I guess that tells you how deep it grabbed me. :lol: But who knows? That was a long time ago. Will I like it better nowadays? Very possibly. Will I actually like it as in enjoy it? Ehhhhh, I'unno, kinda have serious, serious doubts, but who knows?

Mixed feelings, the Savage Dragon crossovers and Splinter turning into a bat arc were all in all pretty boring, how the turtles behaved seem pretty off (they berly care when Donny "die") But I did like what they did with Raph (the most development he has ever had) the Puzzoreli mafia trying to get shadow, Mickey writing a novel and being with Horridus, Letherhead and Dr. X.

I prefer it over Vol. 2 and Vol. 4

It's a pretty fun comic. It has a quick pace, with a lot of action, while introducing exciting new concepts and following through on them.

I think it goes overboard into corny territory in an attempt to be gritty and mature, but I'm still along for the ride despite that. It's just a lot of fun.

Thanks for the responses. Hope we get more to chime in.

I'm somebody who read every issue of Mirage (Vol. 1, Tales Vol. 1 & 2, Vol. 2 and Vol. 4) and fell MADLY in love with about 1/3 of it and hated the rest.

So, my only exposure to IMAGE TMNT was that first Savage Dragon crossover which I adored because that series for the first year and 1/2 was amazing. It was early on in Dragon's book so the TMNT seemed very Mirage to me. Those first 21 issues plus a mini-series made Dragon my fav. comic of the 90's.

But yeah, I've heard terrible things about Vol. 3

IS IT TRUE that Laird hated Vol. 3 so much that he deemed it non-canon?

I looked up general info about Image in order to confirm that it and Vol. 3 are one and the same. That said, it does seem that way about Laird’s opinion. Why, I don’t know, since it does have the more serious tone he made it clear he prefers over the FW cartoon. Then again, if it was the late 90s, it may have been that he wants to forget about that time altogether, since that period also saw The Next Mutation.

Or it could be because they gave 3 of the 4 turtles significant life altering to injuries. At least that's why I dislike it. Don't get me wrong, I give them kudos for having the balls to do such a thing but it was too much for me.

Counterpoint taken, though again, I haven’t read a lot of the issues yet. Hope to soon, though.

Well dammit, hope I haven't spoiled too much for you.

Rest assured, no harm done.

Sadly, no TMNT series is ever consistently good.

Donatello and Leonardo don't get much in the way of character development (unless you count shock value, which I don't)... but, oh, do Raphael and Michelangelo get great character development!

In my humble opinion, both Raphael and Michelangelo have never had such good character development, before or since. Whereas Donatello and Leonardo got a ton of the character development in Mirage Volumes 1, 2, and 4, so it all kinda evens out.

Also, Image Volume 3 was the first TMNT interpretation to give Oroku Saki a daughter, AND the first to give leadership of the Foot Clan to one of Clan Hamato, specifically, Raphael.

Buy the collections IDW put out. The coloring is also surprisingly really good and I honestly prefer it in color over black and white now. Story wise most is pretty great and it fits into the Mirage universe just fine.

This is my first time reading Image with the IDW rerun.

Overall, I've enjoyed it. I feel like the middle section with the Image characters and Splinter being a bat was kind of weird, but then Mirage was weird too. The Raph storyline, Leatherhead and his Utrom friend, the followup on Shadow's parentage, that was all pretty cool.

There are some things about the book that are very 90s. That can be a positive or a negative. I do feel the characters can be really uneven and not all the dialogue is that great. The art quality varies between issues too. But that's stuff you can say about parts of the Mirage run too, so...

It's been a fun read. I don't have any problem with it being a canon continuation from Mirage.

No, not true that he hated it, but true that he later on considered it non-canon which always struck me as a mistake. And during Vol. 3 Laird would approve all the stories and was actively giving Gary notes on things.

I've never heard anyone say Vol. 3 was terrible. Where'd you get this from?

My theory always was that Laird maybe didn't so much hate it, as he probably didn't want to bother with it once it was over. As in, didn't want the hassle of undoing all the mutilations and such to reset the status quo for Vol. 4, didn't want to have to run everything by the people who worked on Vol. 3 for notes and "permission" on how to undo such things to ensure he didn't ruffle any feathers on their end, etc. "So I want Leo to have two hands again, since you wrote the story where he lost one, is this okay with you as a way for me to undo that?" Like, he probably didn't HAVE to check with those people but if he had Vol. 4 be a direct in-canon continuation of Vol. 3, he probably would have felt an obligation to do so, and most likely just did not want to have the conversations at all.

So instead, he just Grant Morrison'ed it because it was simpler. "Oh, that other guy wrote 'Death of the New Gods' and it's completely contrary to what I'm doing in 'Final Crisis'? Eh, just ignore that stuff, then, it's not relevant. MY stuff is relevant, that other stuff is fanfic." Which admittedly ruffles feathers in a completely different way, BUT, was probably a whole lot simpler as a way to move forward.

I also can't speak for every single person, obviously, but among my comics-geek friends back round 2002-3 there had become a very vocal backlash against the Image series, and at that specific moment in time the general consensus about Vol. 3 among a lot of people was that it was terrible - whether it Was or Was Not, that was generally the prevailing attitude about it, with it even being openly dismissed in the various comic magazines and things like that - so Laird more than likely thought that starting Vol. 4 with as clean of a slate as possible was the right thing to do, and you really can't blame him for that, either. Why spend the first few issues of your TMNT restart book undoing/"apologizing" for a previous series that most of the "new" audience didn't read or didn't like? Do we NEED a long explanation about why Don's not a cyborg anymore, or in that context and climate, is it better, or at least easier to say, "Yeah, well... I didn't write that, so ignore it"?

I'd pretty much put money on that being why it was disregarded. Too many things Laird simply didn't want to bother undoing, explaining, or ever referencing again in his own work, and whether he liked it or didn't, it would take too much work to reconcile, for no real reason or point when you can easily just handwave it all, which is what he did. Makes perfect sense to me. I know it rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I'm not sure all that much of value was "lost". In my headcanon Image was one of the Turtles' drunken fever dreams at best.

I've been hearing that for years, my man! At least 15 years ago there was a thread on the SuperheroHype and people were doggin' it! Those same people however, didn't like much of what they read of Mirage either but now that the IDW run is out, that's all they can talk about.

But remember, Laird went on to ironically similarly "mutilate" the TMNT. Don became a cyborg in V3... he became a little guy inhabiting an android body in V4. Raphael got scarred in V3 and now he's a vampire mutant thing in V4. And he certainly never needed permission from anyone to "undo" that stuff... he was the only guy giving permission and his notes and thumbs up the whole way.

But yeah. My suspicion is that when he had the notion to suddenly do V4... something he may have never figured would ever happen... that was a big thing. And while even if he participated in V3 creatively... here was this new chapter. No Image, no Kevin, no anything but him. And I'm not saying that's bad or he's a bad guy for taking that approach... but I get it.

Interesting to read through this.

I have to confess, hearing the Image comics were being continued sort of stunned me because I was under the general impression it was up there with Last Mutation and the Anime as things TMNT fans tend to think best left to the wayside.

Not being continued but yeah... being reprinted! Always thought these books were up there with the "bad TMNT" as well. Come to the 'Drome and you find out it has fans.

Not only reprinted. Reprinted twice (first time in comic form, then TPB), with a fan conclusion, and an official one, too.

Wow. Didn't know that, Andrew. Thanks. I know that Veitch owns his own TMNT work, but do you think IDW will ever reprint the guest era stuff that Nick/Viacom now owns?

Perhaps another factor was that he indeed had his own rather bizarre plans for Vol. 4, and found the Image stuff to be too thematically similar, so therefore tried to create as much distance as possible from it. There's a bit less redundancy if the events of Vol. 3 and Vol. 4 happened in different universes. That could've been part of it, too.

I'm not entirely sure why the series is like 30% Savage Dragon crossover, it just makes me wonder why the Turtles don't just move to Chicago so they won't have to hide in the sewers.

Beyond that, I mostly think the series is cluttered nonsense with unappealing artwork and some really ugly character designs.

Just to be clear, I'm not bemoaning any series getting a continuation/conclusion, was just taken aback that this got a conclusion of all things, that's all. From my perspective, it was a bit like...I don't know, a reboot of Dallas as if season 9 wasn't a dream? A Star Wars EU based show focused on the Yuuzhan Vong? But what do I know?

[QUOTE=neatoman;1852836]I'm not entirely sure why the series is like 30% Savage Dragon crossover, it just makes me wonder why the Turtles don't just move to Chicago so they won't have to hide in the sewers.
I'd had complaint about that too, but Mirage had the same problem since issue 15. There are already superheroes and freaks in Mirage universe.

Image was always intended to be canon. It's why when PL brought Mirage back he called it "Volume 4" instead of "Volume 3" because he acknowledged the Image run as Volume 3. As said, PL probably just didn't want to continue off someones elses writing and "undo" what happened to the Turtles, so he did a time skip instead and left it up to people's imagination.

Image directly continues off the plots of City at War and Volume 2 and does them fairly organically, and ironically enough, some elements of Volume 4 and Tales continue stuff from the Image run. Such as Dr. X the Utrom that Leatherhead befriended in Image, he appears in one of the Tales issues. Leatherhead losing his mind and the mutagen degenerating was something that also started in the Image run and continues into Vol. 4 and Tales. The Turtles uneasy truce with Karai and the Foot in Vol. 4 also makes more sense after the events of the Image run.

Likewise nothing PL wrote after that contradicted anything that happened in Image.

I haven't read the Image comics yet. I reaaaallly should....I will soonish. I want to I swear!

I think I read the first two-three issues. Are these the ones where Donatello basically dies/becomes a cyborg and Raphael gets his face blown off. Also stripper ninjas. See I read these issues but I couldn't tell what the ff**** was happening. The art is chaotic and without color, if there was a fight scene or close up, I couldn't tell where one character ends and another began. So I lost interest fairly quickly. It was like trying to interpret static.

That's the one!

Stripper BDSM kunoichi, Two-Face Raphael, and Cyborg Donatello! It's GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT. :tlol:

Yeah, that's the book.

I do think the art kinda got better as they went along, but the earliest issues were definitely not great with that. It clearly wasn't drawn to be printed in black and white, some parts were really, really tough to make out. I never thought the art was "good" at any point, but it did get better later on.

But yeah it's a pretty ridiculous book. Although "ridiculous" is apparently what this franchise is best at. It's just kinda funny to me how some people who really hate FW really love Image. To me, it's equally goofy from the opposite direction. Like a teenage boy's idea of "edgy", that's the Image TMNT. And even as an edgy teenage boy, I thought it was seriously Try-Hard. Me and my friends used to just laugh at it. "(Sigh), Now Donnie's a cyborg and Leo's got one hand. Can't wait until they have April working a street corner or stripper pole, that'll be fun." Tell me you couldn't see them doing that!

I'unno. It is what it is, I guess, but I don't think it's anything particularly special.

The earlier issues looked the best imo. Even moreso now that they are in color.

Looks much better than the IDW "Color Classics".

That isn't a problem if it also explicitly rare or hidden. The Superheroes we saw in Mirage were mostly old or a rare sight. However, Chicago as depicted in the Image series had plenty of Superheroes and weirdness, which was very clearly out in the open.

I do so dearly hate superheroes in TMNT. Don't care if it's Mirage canon even, don't like 'em.

Aliens, sure. Monsters, sure. Mutants, only a few. But not one damn superhero.

That's Eric Larson's fault. The Dragon's supporting characters were a 90's/Image riff on Justice League/Avengers called the Freak Force. A lot of the heroes were anti-heroes and the villains were of the "bad guys are only bad if they burn people alive, rape large numbers of women, blow up hospitals and daycares and molest children" variety. It was everything about 90's comics and American culture that I worshipped when I was 10. These days, that story is soooo damn good, I urge, beg and pray that folks read it. Savage Dragon was some damn good comics in the early 90's.

You'd love my fanfic, though. But only because I'm incredible at every single thing I set my mind to. :trazz: It also only is what it is because it wasn't written for an audience and sprung out of a very specific idea; if I were doing a "real" TMNT story for public consumption and charging money for it, it would be an entirely different animal all the way around.

I'm with you in spirit, though. Ideally, the TMNT should be the weirdest thing in their world, or else the premise sort of doesn't work. They wouldn't theoretically have to hide out and sneak around if there's a ton of other mutants, guys who can fly, and all this other stuff going on around them. They'd just be One More Weird Thing instead of "the weirdest thing".

Just saying, though, there's ways to make the TMNT "work" in a world where super-heroes exist... it just takes a steady hand and a damn handsome guy who's never, ever sober in order to force it to work. So it's no wonder why, on the surface, it can SEEM impossible. But that's what I do, make the Impossible into the Slightly Plausible! :trazz:

Lucky for you and your point of view, you'd never have time to read it anyway. So you're just gonna have to take my word for it.

OMG! Shut up! What? That fan-fic has to be read by me. Please. May I see it? That sounds amazing! Any time you're ready, pal. I wanna read that.

$hit, man, we agree on most things TMNT. I'd give it a fair shake.

As long as April ain't attending a cockroach orgy, it can't be all bad. :tlol:

:lol: I've been picking away at it off-and-on for 20 years and it's not finished, so if you have another ten or so to spare and wouldn't mind waiting... maybe you'll get lucky.

The first one actually won a couple Fic Awards on this very forum back in 2004 or so, but I've recently re-read it and Christ almighty it needs a near-complete do-over. Gets the story across but you can tell I was 18-19 when I wrote most of it. I gotta George Lucas that sh*t up if anyone's ever gonna look at it again.

But yeah, a common response from those who did see it was "None of this should work at all, but it works great," that much is historical fact, so I maintain that pretty much any idea is all in the execution of it.

I'unno, sometimes when people ask nice - or I get really bored - I send 'em a sample chapter for fun. So ya never know!

The addition of color has certainly improved the Image series and, as far as I can tell, the coloring has been handled well on "Urban Legends".
Still have mixed feelings over the IDW coloring of the Mirage stuff, though.