Do you think IDW TMNT will reach issue 200?
 

We're 125 issues in right now, so I assume they have at least a plan to issue 150 which is another 25 issues. We already know Waltz has the Armaggeddon war planned with the major villains as the next big arc. Beyond that, what do you think?

Yes. I think they will make it to 200. Maybe well beyond that. TMNT will always have vast potential, it just needs to be properly harnessed. And that is possible.
Now, dose that mean every issue will speak to everyone? Of course not. Nothing dose.
But that certainly doesn't mean it won't be enjoyable or have merit.
Only time will tell.

If it keeps going like the last 25 issues, I hope the hell not. More doesn't mean better...

If things stay the same as in 101-124, then no.

If future issues follow 125's lead, then yes. Definitely.

This poll needs a "Maybe" option.

Nah. “Maybe” is too wishy washy for a poll like this. Of course it may get to issue 200…the poll is trying to figure out how many people believe it will.

I agree with the sentiment though. 101-124 were pretty weak. I have not read beyond that yet. I’d love to see the series go on well past 200, but only if the story and art is as engaging as issues 1-100 were.

I’d say no, it won’t make it to 200…but I’d love to be wrong.

Another thing to consider is that IDW is losing their woke G.I. Joe and Transformers franchises. The TMNT book has a lot of woke $#!( in it, but TMNT fans might be more accepting of those themes. But patterns like that are something to consider.

Either way though, 200 contiguous issues of a series is a hell of a feet nowadays. Off the top of my head the only other I.P.'s doing it without relaunches or "fad #1's" have been Spawn and Savage Dragon and Savage Dragon is literally a money pit for Larsen - he pays to keep it going. Even if IDW TMNT "only" makes it to 150, that's a a respectable run. Although people need to realize that all sales on these books are way artificially inflated nowadays. For example, there's a big difference between selling 30,000 copies a month to 30,000 readers and selling 30,000 copies with variants a month to 13,500 die-hards who buy everything.

TMNT #1 debuted in August 2011 in the top 50 (it was 48th) with 34,800 copies

TMNT #50 from October 2015 placed 67th in the top 100 and that was an anniversary issue. It distributed 33,553 copies.

For perspective, issue 90 in January 2019 saw 9,805 copies distributed and was at 189 on the sales lists for that month.

Issue 100, an anniversary issue gave the title a small sales boost for a while. Anniversary issues tend to do that, so it's not a true readership victory, unfortunately. Issue 101 distributed 20,470 copies. But those bumps do help push a title forward for another year or whatnot.

102 saw 13,780 copies. That's 13,780 copies with cover and ratio variants, and that drop came a month after a 20,470 copy order of issue 101. Don't think for a second that 13,780 individual people are buying the IDW book monthly. It just doesn't work that way. 104 fluctuated back up closer to 15,000 copies. Keep in mind that those issues were riding the high of the whole woke push and the orchestrated Jennika thing which got YouTuber attention as hype too.

So what it boils down to is that IDW is either making the smallest of profits from their woke TMNT book and clinging onto it for dear life, or more likely the ongoing is just another carrot in the greater soup of their TMNT publications (mini-series, one-shots, reprints, trades, etc) that as a whole they push the I.P. into profitability. My guess is that the monthly books don't make a lot of money, but the trades and reprints have kept IDW firmly in TMNT. And there's nothing wrong with using the whole meal to create the profitability if that's what is happening.

I think though that it wouldn't be unfair to say that IDW has been definitely used "event content" for sales hype. I don't know that the book would've made it this far simply on firm storytelling as opposed to politicized "zeitgeist" hype-content.

At the very least it will be cancelled and relaunched with a new #1 long before then. They haven't done that trick yet, but it's still in their back pocket if need be.

What makes #125 an improvement? I noted before that the only characters that I want to see still are The Punk Frogs, Groundchuck, and Dirtbag. Though not under Campbell's pen and a Fraken-Venus to come? No, thank you!

Agreed with that, but that point speaks to what I was getting at with the "contiguous" point and the sales data in post #7 there...

I think if the series ends it'll be either because Viacom/Nick seems they can get more sales with the license for another company, or IDW as a whole goes bankrupt. I don't see them ending the current run just to restart at #1...at that point Viacom might as well see what either Dark Horse or someone else can do with the license rather than sticking with IDW for another few years. It'll be a sure sign the IDW series had run its course.

I have no idea what sort of deal Nick has with IDW, but for all we know it's some kind of flat yearly fee. I seriously doubt Nick cares about the IDW comics in terms of actual sales... Nick is not getting rich off of anything IDW has given them back, ever. If IDW wants to continue paying the yearly fee? Cool, we'll keep extending it, and so on (again, speculation). I'm sure they do care about it a little in terms of "Is it putting forward the right image of the Turtles in print form?" and to a much lesser extent "Is it a viable 'hook' to get people maybe interested in our latest cartoons and toys?" If at all.

Even if IDW TMNT sells 50,000 copies every month, 50,000 viewers of a cartoon or 50,000 people buying a toy is nothing to Nick. They're not going to -- largely -- care about that. That's just a drop in a bucket. The kind of "moves" Nick makes with TMNT, they need millions of people to make a difference. And I don't mean that in a negative way, I mean that in a pragmatic way.

I would hope that if the series can get much better and stay better for at least, let's say 10-15, issues without another drastic drop in quality afterward we would get to 200. But if no such improvement happens then it might as well end at around 140 with a hasty wrap up of all the major plot threads, which would be about the best thing to hope for. Though, hilariously the quickest wrap up I could think of would be a sudden reveal that the EPF had an anti-mutagen bomb ready to go, the Utroms/Triceratons are relocated to some other vacant planet, Null goes out of business due to a market crash so she can no longer prepare Earth for invasion and whatever focus left goes to whatever was going to happen with the Rat King. It wouldn't be elegant but it would at least wrap it up. Of course, if the series does get better, then just let it breathe. The only thing I just want to wrap up yesterday is Mutant Town, the inclusion of it was a giant mistake from the start and I'm just so tired of it.

As for whether or not it will get to 200 issues isn't dependent on me or any other single person liking the direction, it depends on how long IDW can justify an ongoing. Even if an ongoing stops being lucrative, IDW may still find reason to publish 4-5 issues every year just to keep the license.

125 is an improvement in the sense that:

• The inclusion of the Burnow Island sub-plot means the series is trying to get back to progressing the story.
• The fact that we have three different plots going on means fewer pages feel like a waste.
• The "Sheena wants her hair back" thing and this Barlow character seems like a more appropriate thing to explore with this setting than a Battle of the Bands.
• Set up for a mystery plot with the Punk Frogs will probably mean the next few issues will continue to be a bit more busy.
• The destruction of the Dojo might imply parts of Mutant Town might be coming to an end (though I will admit that might just be wishful thinking on my part).

That said of course, there are still many problems with 125, much of it feels rather sudden/random and much of what's going on actually seems rather awkward. But if I were to sum of up the improvements in one sentence it would be this: "It's not boring and I can see interesting stuff coming". The biggest problem with 101-124 is that almost nothing happened, there were other problems too and some of those are still present here, but least things are happening in 125. They could of course still be things that suck down the line but least it is something.

And as for Campbell's pen... I have to admit that I suspect 125 was at least partially ghost written and that's why it's an improvement. Apart from the pages about the Dojo and the Punk Frogs, the writing style doesn't match Campbell at all and even those pages are much more compressed than what she usually makes. While this possible ghost writer might be someone who hasn't worked on a TMNT book before, I suspect it might be Waltz because he has "Story Consulting" credit (which admittedly he has had since 101), the fact that he is coming back for the FCBD issue, wrote the last two annuals and may actually be coming back to write the book fairly soon. If not Waltz, then maybe Allor or Burnham since they wrote many of the minis. The alternative to there being a ghost writer is that Campbell came to terms with her flaws as a writer, took a writing class and drastically changed her style immediately, which is technically possible but I doubt is the case because of how quickly it must have happened.

And if it is true that 125 is indeed ghost written, then the next few issues credited to her may be as well, in which case her run is already over in all but the official sense.

... Well, I guess technically a comic book is also good to have as a testing ground. Because they're dirt cheap to make, then they're ideal for things like: Testing new story ideas, introducing new characters, refining existing concepts, etc...

Since they don't have to worry too much about something working out in that format, it's always good if IDW does end up hatching a gem of an idea they can put into movies/cartoons/toylines, duds can just be ignored. Admittedly, the IDW ideas that have made it into other media are elements of character design, the revised origin in which the Turtles are intentional lab experiments and an in-name-only version of Alopex, but that would still be something.

Others have already put the possibility forward but I was the first to mention it on this thread and I stick to my guns: this issue doesn't feel like it was written by Campbell. At all. It's a true return to form for the series.

Naturally, IDW wouldn't throw her under the bus by admitting there's a ghost writer involved, but it appears that they finally noticed the writing (heh) on the wall (double heh) and went into damage control mode, trying to spin her run into something worthwhile at the very end.

And it does seem to be the end for her. Whether the ghost writer is Tom or not, the next few issues should tie into the big event later this year which we all know will be handled by him, so there's no more room left for woke, furry fanfiction.

As the song goes, "Ding, dong..."

Hate to burst people's bubbles but I've spoken with Sophie and she not only confirmed that #125 was written by her but that she's staying onboard for the forseeable future. You can complain all you want but Sophie isn't leaving anytime soon.

Of course she would tell you that she wrote it, the point of ghost writers is to not share credit. If you hire ghost writers then you don't intend to reveal it. And using ghost writers is also not the same thing as not having put in any work yourself, she would still technically have told you the truth if it turned she just wrote the synopsis and let someone else do the actual script.

The reason we think this was ghost written is that it does not match her writing style, like at all. Issues 101-123 are very similar in the sense that they use very decompressed storytelling, heavy on dialogue without direct plot relevance, long montages and generally avoids subplots. After that we got 124 which intentionally leaves out word balloons and text boxes as a break between these two issues. Then we 125 which is drastically different in style, using at least three different plots and managing to get the point across much quicker.

Technically, it is possible that Sophie wrote all of this herself, it could be true. The problem is that would require me to accept that a writer completely overhauled the style she had been going with for 23 issues over night. Telling me I should just stop being suspicious because she said she said she didn't use a ghost writer, something that you naturally would deny doing regardless of whether it's true or not... That is to insult my intelligence.

1. Putting Sophie's name to someone else's writing would be incredibly disrespectful and offensive to the real writer if it were true and I can't see IDW or any other publisher doing something so low as that.

2. Professional writers are often capable of writing in a variety of styles and even other writers of this very series have done just that; compare the City Fall and Northampton arcs both of which were co-written by Kevin, Tom and Bobby.

3. You're insulting your own intelligence by behaving like conspiracy-theory nutjobs and believing in an idiotic unfounded assumption based upon zero factual evidence.

Are we sure Potato Joe was referring to Peter Doocy? I mean, it fits Campbellistas so well...

Calling Campbell a writer is incredibly disrespectful & offensive to other writers who don't suck nearly as much for 23 issues in a row...

Now, I don't think this is an actual ghostwriter situation with Sophie at all (again, short memories around here)... but what a stupid thing to say. So publishers have been being "disrespectful" and "offensive" to the hundreds of ghostwriters hired for the last couple of centuries? It goes with the f***ing job and its right there in the word "ghostwriter."

Is this seriously the first time you have ever heard of ghost writers? Do you have the slightest clue as to how common they are? A ghost writer goes in knowing they won't get credit, that's their job. Publishers don't just credit others just for the sake of it, it's a very common practice. Bob Kane, the official creator of Batman, is credited with having written and drawn most early Batman comics but we know his involvement didn't stretch far beyond coming up with the basic concept. Any issue with Bob Kane writing credit was actually written by Bill Finger or someone else, not to mention that the art style shifts so drastically in those comics it's doubtful Kane had much to do with the artwork either. Kane didn't publicly admit this until 1989, 15 years after Finger died and 9 years before Kane himself died. DC comics itself didn't even officially credit Finger until 2015 because of contractual obligation. I'm sorry, but if you believe this isn't something that happens quite frequently I have to ask what rock you've been living under.

As for professional writers being able to write in multiple different styles, this is true but the example you brought up is nowhere as noticeable of a change as this. The pacing throughout Waltz run is fairly consistent and there are several key features of his writing you could use to identify him as the writer even if you don't know for sure it's him. Not to mention that Northampton and City at War were part of the same larger story with the same writer and if you read all the way through, you can see how one slowly transitions into the other. Likewise, there are several features of Campbell's writing consistent throughout the first 23 issue of her run and 125 is a very sudden change.

Are really not able to notice what a massive departure 125 is from the rest of Campbell's run? Technically yes, there is no factual proof that Campbell wasn't the sole writer on 125 as is the official credit, but if you have the slightest ability to analyse the content you'd notice the whiplash here. Why would the same exact writer do the same thing for two years straight and then completely change nearly all of her stylistic choices in a single issue? Of course I can't say for absolute certainty that was a ghost writer involved, it's the sort of thing we're not meant know but we can infer it.