Issue #149 preview and discussion
 

Here's a preview for issue 149, It contains a huge spoiler.
https://screenrant.com/tmnt-149-prev...tles-armaggon/

Man, it's gotten so timey whimy I'm almost expecting the Docter to just pop up.

Leo is crying there because someone got unmutated? Why is that cry-worthy?

Campbell logic. It’s like watching Steven Universe: full of cutesy crybaby characters

What on earth? So that Lita kid got changed back to a human and Leonardo is mad? What is Sophie on? This feels like character assassination.

Also as I've said previously, this whole "Evil Bob from the future" thing is honestly so dumb, because his only motive is to be de-mutated back to a human again. Like wtf is going on, why would he join Armaggon and try to erase history just for this.

Sophie's run cannot end soon enough.

... Oh no! Something that is at the very worst a neutral change has happened to the little girl! Now she won't look like a monster to rest of the world anymore and can integrate with regular society! Maybe she'll get adopted, go to school, get a career, start a family and have a social life outside of a few select weirdos. What a horrible fate!...

Fuck this. I mean really, just fuck this bullshit logic, man. There is nothing, literally nothing bad about what happened to Lita here, not a single goddamn thing. Out of all the stupid, horrible, low quality shitty writing decisions made in this series for the past four years this may very well be up there as taking the crown. I'm not joking when I say these pages make me want to scream directly into Mike, Leo, Carmen, April and Koya's ears about how fucked up their reaction to all of this is.

Not surprised. They did a lot of character assassination on other characters. Making Leo a crybaby is just one of them. Seriously, since he already has such power, why didn't he use it on himself first?

Yeah, if this wasn't Sophie's second to last issue I could have seen this being a good point to drop the book. Thankfully it's almost over.

Leonardo saying, "This is a violation!" literally had me laugh out loud with how moronic that sounded. I think Sophie was trying to do a trans-allegory here or something? But it's generally a baffling thing to write either way given Lita was a human little girl.

It's wrong to be normal in Campbellverse, duh.

The only way I can see this moment getting "fixed" is if Lita stays human, is written out of the series for a while and when they reunite, it's turned into a joke where she flips them off, tell them to eat shit for not considering the long term benefits and point out she never wants to see them again for how they reacted.

Seriously. The only way this is a big deal is if it affected one of the uplifted animal mutants, not the LITERAL CHILD WHO IS NOW BACK TO NORMAL. Seriously, what the hell is this?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Campbell's stupid run can't end quickly enough.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by the single minded idiocracy here that has completely missed the point of this being Leo's internal rage at failing as a father figure.

And? Who cares? The intention makes no sense, if he wanted what's best for her then he'd allow her the best possibility for the future. If the intention is just for him to raise her himself instead of letting an adoptive human couple do it, then what he's saying is unbelievably selfish. And keep in mind, if Lita really still wants to live with a bunch of mutated turtles, this changes nothing. Absolutely NOTHING, except her having broader possibilities.

Wait. Is this the author’s way of saying “Protect Trans Kids”, considering Leo’s despair over Lita de-mutating?

So Lita is trans? I guess that was probably stated somewhere and I just wasn't paying attention.

If Leo's idea of being a good father is selfishly wanting to keep Lita a mutant, instead of doing what's best for her, then the character is beyond f**ked. Lita can still live with them, still be family, but now she's back to normal and can do more things. Demutating is literally the best outcome for her and basically every mutant introduced since mutant town.

But no, apparently we're all idiots, all of us, each of us, every one, because we don't like the stupid and out of character decisions that have been made in this run once again. The real "single minded idiocracy" are the people who mindlessly praise and defend this, and try to shut down any discourse by insisting that anyone who has a different opinion is an idiot.

Yeah, exactly. Fuck the way all these characters react here. Even if the actual issue has Lita declare that it's OK and that being turned back into a human fine (and I doubt that is what will happen but let's assume there is enough clarity amongst the writers and editors to realise this reaction from them is stupid), then it still won't change the fact that Lita has plenty to gain and nothing to lose from being turned back into a human. It's not that Leo is "protective" of Lita that is the problem, it's that his first reaction is that this is bad thing when there are literally no logical reasons it would be.

Obviously, this prove once again that they can't even handle bloated side characters. If Lita become mutants again, the damage done to Leo's character will still be there. If she changed back to human forever, that mean everything about future Lita and Band Wars arc is pointless and wasted.

I think it's less that she was demutated and more that Leo couldn't stop Bob from doing who knows what to her. I mean, a small child just got messed with by a dude serving a time-eating megalodon using powers born of "QNA" science that nobody else there fully understands. Even if Lita wanted to be demutated this whole time, I doubt Leo and the others would trust that to Bob and his crazy powers. Who knows what other effects they could have on her?

It's this exactly. Leo's reaction was borne from the heat of the moment, no different than when Splinter snapped the broom in issue #18.
Absolutely he would want what's best for her, but in this instance he's angry at himself for failing to protect a child.
Also let's not forget that Lita was abandoned as a child before she was mutated so literally knows nothing outside of her adoptive mutant family.

This is some backwards, contrived nonsense justification. As far as they can tell, all that happened here is that Lita return to her natural form, which does not have any negative effects on her. She hasn't been harmed, at all, if anything she's arguably healthier. Could there be more going on? Maybe, but these pages give us no reason to think so. And even if we were to accept that Leo's reaction is just a spur of the moment, what's really dumb here is that four other characters react in similar way, intentional or not it just makes it look like Lita being cured is exactly the thing they're not cool with.

And the thing with Splinter is a false equivalence, he calms down and tries to be reasonable the second after he snapped the broom… Nor does he declare someone must die either.

And if you think she needs to be a mutant to still have a role in their lives if really wants that, what's wrong with you?

She wasn't wiped from the timeline, or suffered other worst fate. She just changed back to a human. Lita is still part of family, or she can even go to planet neutrino just like those orphans of Saint Robert's Orphanage. Leo has no reason to be angry and cry like this. Didn't Campbell say that Leo was an adult now? But she still make Leo like a teenager who never really grew up. He is their leader! A elder brother!

I’m wondering what’s happening with Timestress Lita with this happening. I know things are diverging and right now she’s technically outside of time at the moment but this is clearly going to have ramifications down the road, such as did Bob take anything else from her or from any of the others?

Future Lita and Renet knew the truth about Bob, and those events played out, So whatever happened was meant to happen, And Future Lita is still a turtle.

The cover of issue #150 shows future Lita still as a Turtle, so I guess the timelines are getting split because if kid Lita get turned back into a mutant again after this and she and everyone else is fine with it, that's also going to be stupid.

As said before, normal animals changed into mutants like Old Hob, Leatherhead, Alopex, etc. being de-mutated would be worse for them because they'd go back to being regular animals with no intelligence. But humans changed to mutants being turned human again would be a benefit for 95% of them.

They should find some way to harness this QNA power and somehow broadcast it over all of mutant town to turn everyone back their human, but knowing the writers they'll just ignore that and leave them all as they were. I guess a bunch of humans are content with living the rest of their lives as walking farm animals.

Whatever turned Lita back to a human, It was some sort of magic, And we don't know how long that will last, Because Lita's mutation is all genetic, And that is something that can't be change through magic, With magic you could probably create an illusion that someone has changed.

Have they ever actually said that 'magic' cant change someone's form or genetic makeup? I don't recall that.

That aside...

I dont know if Magic can cause anyone to mutate from a molecular level, I know that magic can have people turn into stuff, But its usually temporary.

This article talks about this upcoming issue, and mentions metaphysical 'QNA'.
https://screenrant.com/tmnt-149-prev...tles-armaggon/

I like the reincarnation setting in IDW TMNT, but it was weird the Turtles don’t get to have their own lives. This is actually all about the grudge between Yoshi and Saki, and the other one is about Saiki's past life being related to a dragon god. What about the Turtles? They are nothing, just because they were Yoshi's children in their previous life. It might be interesting if some turtle actually had its own previous life story that wasn't even related to the Foot Clan or Homato family.

That's true. If we're to take reincarnation as a real thing, if I was a carpenter in a previous life that doesn't mean that I'd be able to instinctively build a house in this one with no training. If my previous life was wiped out from the timeline that'd just mean -- in theory -- if I visit a hypnotist and they probe my past lives I wouldn't be able to say I had a carpenter past life. I've always looked at reincarnation as like the raw component atoms/energy (so to speak) of a soul being recycled, not the person it belonged to itself. The new person would still exist, it'd just mean the raw component atoms/energy would have come from someone or something else.

I've always advocated for the reincarnation angle in IDW. It's interesting and as I've said before, it'd be neat to see on screen and would allow for Feudal Japan flashbacks we wouldn't otherwise get. It's just silly (stupid?) when maybe too much stock is imbued into it with the present lives. The Turtles should still be 100% unique individuals.

That, could have been interesting. One of the Turtles' mutant allies suddenly becomes a regular animal again? Interesting. But this? With Leo reacting like that? Nah

Yeah the reincarnation angle of this series has been one of the best additions to the TMNT canon and it deserves further exploration

They took some interesting stuff from Leo. At least in this series, he is the most spiritual and the first turtle to learn spiritualism skill from Splinter. He even took the initiative to used astral projection to fight against the Rat King. Give Leo some minor magical abilities actually make sense, since he does the most meditating and astral projecting out of all the turtles. But now, Donnie becomes a time traveling magician who is doomed to become a mad wizard and Venus is some kind of magical frankenstein. This ruin Leo's character development since he's just a teacher at the dojo now.

For real. Leo was always the "mystical" guy on the team, and then out of nowhere Donnie just became the mystical guy and Leo had a huge part of his character removed. It's not even the first time something like this has happened in this comic. Just to name one, all of Alopex's character traits basically got ported to Jennika, and then Alopex had nothing of value to do.

Thats not true, at the drop of a little comfort she immediately became a valley girl.

Yeah, and all of her previous roles in the story, such as "reformed former member of the Foot Clan," ended up with Jennika. Many things Jennika has been doing is stuff that Alopex should have been doing.

I wonder if that whole Armaggon plot is a way to erase pretty much everything ever happened in IDW TMNT and have a full "soft" reboot for volume 2. I sure wouldn't mind.

I won't get my hopes up, though, since books like TMNT Alpha (showing Hob and Spider-Lindsey on the cover) seem to pick the story up right where we left off.

Another worst thing is they tried to push Leo x Koya idea. Let the most disciplined ninja turtle to fall in love with some bloodthirsty murderer? This just make Leo look like a hypocrite.

Well, the Campbell run has not exactly been a bastion of good writing.

What are you talking about?! Campbell’s an AMAZING author! One of the very best! No, scratch that: Campbell IS the best! Waltz made the right decision when he stepped down as the head writer because he did a pretty lousy job at writing the turtles. The stories he came up with were totally lame and unoriginal, like on a Next Mutation level of bad. Also he wrote Jennika as some boring straight woman, but thankfully Campbell fixed that and changed her into a lesbian queen with a cute pig girlfriend, and you can’t get more original than that! They make a cuter couple than Kermit and Miss Piggy! I was hoping that TMNT would eventually become more like the Party Of Five reboot and every other teen drama on Freeform, and to my great delight, it did! I can totally relate to the characters now when I couldn’t before! And people who complain about the political stuff like the allusions to Trump’s border policies and his red-cap-wearing followers obviously don’t know that comics have always been political. Campbell is just trying to help people become more aware of all the injustice in the world because all the other media outlets obviously aren’t doing enough. Such bravery and integrity shouldn’t be mocked or criticized; it should be praised. The era of Campbell will forever be remembered as the best years of TMNT. Thank you, Campbell, for giving us so much joy and making TMNT a hundred times better than it ever was!

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