Tales of the TMNT #70 (Final issue)
 

And it shall be known as "Return to New York".

Head on over to the Mirage Group and see the new cover!

The coloring looks very old school. I'm looking forward to it.

The cover looks pretty cool. I find it a lot more detailed than usual.

I'm so glad Talbot is doing the inking. Although I would have settled for Laird or Eastman... lol

I was thinking the same thing.. They could've had a hell of a better collaboration with this one. Idealistically, eastman & laird. Wtf man.:tcry:

Yeah Eastman & Laird would've been awesome. But come on, we all knew that would never happen.

Looks alright to me; sort've just the usual from Lawson, really. Might've been flashier if it was a Dooney painting or something.

It should fill in a nice littel gap in storytelling, by the looks of it. In the original storyline, Raph just meets Zog in the sewers in one panel and he's following him around loyally the next.

A little fight scene ought to add some girth to that plot element, though I hope there's more to the issue than that.

Lawson makes sense for a Return to New York issue. Jim Lawson pencilled all 3 of those issues.

Now, if Eastman had inked this issue, like he did TMNT #21 (final part of RTNY)... I would be ecstatic.

And don't forget, Lawson is giving this whole issue the duotoning treatment.

Ya know, it would've been "nifty" if the cover had that gray frame around it like the other parts of "Return to New York".

Just sayin'.

Oh yeah! Hey, maybe it's not too late... I'll talk to Jim.

Hey, it's still five months away. Maybe it hasn't gone to the printer's yet and there's still a chance!

I hope this feels organic in between #19 and #20 of TMNT. How cool will it be to have "Return to New York" go from a 3 parter to a 4 parter?

My fear is that the bulk of it will be, like, Raphael running through tunnels or something. But I don't want to believe they'll bungle this one.

Yeah, it is at kind of a weird point in the narrative where they don't really have the freedom to do a whole lot, aside from an extended first encounter between Raph and Zog.

Still, there COULD be room for a look at the machinations of the Foot Clan going on at the same time, which I'd love to see (Tales #65 got me hungry for more Foot POV stories).

The possibility of more "Brain Thief"-esque cardio workouts is sort of a looming threat, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.


Didn't they say this was going to be an oversized printing, like way back in the day? Or did I imagine that?

I hope that's true, but I haven't read that.

I just noticed, TMNT #20, the second part of Return to New York, features Jim Lawson AND Eric Talbot, Jim on pencils and Eric Talbot on inks... same as Tales #70. I knew Jim pencilled all 3 but I forgot about Eric inking the second part.

So this when #70 is out, we can truly compare the Jim/Eric of yore with the Jim/Eric of today. I wonder if they'll make an effort to harken back to their "old" style. TMNT #20 sure was a pretty issue.

Personally, I wouldn't like the grey frame in the cover of Tales #70. It would fit with the "Return to New York" issues, but it'd be too different to the rest of Tales, and I just want the cover of the last issue of the series to look like the rest. I see you guys got a point, but that's just my opinion.

As for the issue itself (and hope I'm wrong), I don't think it'll be too "special". I would just expect another issue of Tales, just like all the others by Lawson, except for the duo tone part. Not that it's a bad thing (I love Lawson), but you know, I just don't think this is gonna be such a big ending or anything like it.

The cover as-is:

http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/tales70.jpg

In true "Return to New York" fashion:

http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/tmnt70-cov.jpg

Now side-by-side with the other Return to New York covers...

http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/tmnt19.jpg http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/tmnt70-covs.jpg http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/tmnt20.jpg http://www.thegreenlanterncorps.com/tmnt21.jpg

I'd totally dig the grey frame, especially after Andrew's examples.

But that's just me.

Sounds cool but I kinda had the idea that this would elaborate on Raph's memories/halucinations he had when he became Gamera Raph. Specificaly RTNY Raph with the rags running through the sewers and fighting Shredder, kills him and it turns out that it's Splinter.

A Zog story sounds good though. Infact when Tales first started I remember wanting a story around Zog. Seventy issues later and here we are.

Nice work Andrew, I really hope they do the cover like that.

I still think they should do it in normal Tales style, but now that I see it, and considering this is the last issue, it would be really nice if they had a variant cover.

That's a really good job, Andrew.