sort of new to comics...
 

hi. i'm new to both the board and kind of new to the comics. i've been reading tales since roughly this time last year and have got from #37 onwards. someone told me a fellow aussie was writing tales and got interested. what stories outside of tales should i be looking at getting? i was told that there were a lot of old issues that aren't canon but i'm not quite sure where to start. i have the 'first' reprints of the first few original books in tpb form and the one where shredder comes back. anyone have any advice?

As for what's officially canon, Laird hasn't issued his Mirage timeline yet, but Berger says that one (along with a sourcebook) is due out next year.

For a list of all the issues and short strips that could conceivably be a part of the Mirage timeline, you might want to check out the "Mirage Continuity Timeline" thread that's stickied at the top of this board. It lists everything that could canonically work and in more-or-less coherent order.

The entire board helped put it together, so it's the culmination of much Turtle knowledge.

If you have the first few First books thats great. I would consider the first 15 books as they were the ones that were all Laird and Eastman before they stopped penciling the work. I cant remember if they had the 1 shot stories in the First books I'd recommend those as well. 19-21 Return to NY is really good, as well as 50-62 City at war a huge arc in the Mirage universe. 45-62 is when they got back to putting together the comic in house those are all pretty good books.

Tales of the TMNT vol 1 1-7 has been reprinted with an extra story by lawson. They are usually pretty hard to find so that would be a good option.

I havent got all of volume 2 so i have held off reading them... got most of em gotta track down the rest and Image I also want to read all of those. Other than that there is Vol 4 and the rest of Tales Vol 2.

www.ninjaturtles.com also has a whole listing of all the issues with synopsis. There are also a lot of good stories in vol 1 like the river and others there are a lot of books.

The First graphic novels only include Leonardo.

You'd think they would have included Raphael too, since that story introduced Casey Jones.

At this point, get the singles of the first few issues. its actually cheaper than getting the collection.

managed to pick up a lot of the city at war story from the older comics at the my local comic shop yesterday along with some earlier issues in trade form (return to new york, the first two FIRST books). they also had some of the recent tales books, but i'm thinking i might get the individual comics where i can with those. that big list you guys compiled here is really helpful.

Nice, lots of books are hard to track down I have finally started to try and complete my collection I am missing 9 from vol 1, 4 from vol 2 and a bunch of the image books.