Swedish Archie Comics Back Covers
 

Thought I'd share something I "found" while looking through my Archie comics collection. In Sweden, and probably all the rest of scandinavia or even europe, some issues had a back cover that were advertising for TMNT-clothes. I really like how the turtles have been drawn here. Have any of you non-swedish members on here ever seen these? Also, did any of you swedish members buy any of these clothes?

http://www.mega-man.se/comic1.jpghttp://www.mega-man.se/comic2.jpg

Pretty cool and thanks for the share, Filespit! I've never seen either of those images before.

Years ago, I started a thread asking about the UK Hero Turtles comics and it pretty much expanded into a catch-all thread for all European (and Russian) Turtles comics:
http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=24769

You might check out that thread if you haven't already seen it!

That's an awesome thread, I havn't seen it before! Several of the issues posted there have the same front covers here in Sweden, so the comics inside is most probably the same as well. I should post more pictures from my collection and you'll see for yourself! Also, I actually have those four posters you can view in that thread, cool to know they were released not just in sweden!

Though we had a lot of Archie TMNT here in Italy (and only four issues of the Mirage series, before 2009, and a good amount of original italian comics with the turtles), I have never seen those images. The second one, with the turtles without pupils, reminds me some Playmates toy artworks, especially the face of Leonardo. I really like this style!

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think those images were published in Spain either. I had a bunch of Archies and I've never seen it before. I have no idea where those comics went, so I can't really check.

They're very cool!

Dem sweaters. I'd rock one of those any day of the week. ;)

I owned all of those sweaters when I was a kid. I still own one that was sown into a pillow by my mom. The black one with them in the sewers. I grew up in Sweden.

Wow, you are from Iceland, an incredible and wonderful place! What can you tell us about the Turtles in that far country? Did some publisher bring the Mirage and the Archie comics there?

Iceland's comic book publishing was never that big only ranging from Tarzan, Superman and Spider-Man. We got the TMNT books that were released based on the show (and of course the show). But the Archie comics were very popular and Swedish and Danish imprints often found their ways to our shores.

But it was the lack of comic book contact that derived me of my TMNT when I moved back to Iceland for quite some time, until they started selling Volume 4 in my Local Comic Book Shop. It was def weird jumping into the middle of Vol. 4 after having only read the Swedish Archie issues that took some liberties in both censoring pages or re-editing the comic in some way. Although I loved the covers and growing up with all those back stories that I'm guessing came from the UK Magazines.

Iceland also had this great TMNT TV Special in 1992 that showed kids that had been inspired to pick up ninjistu - of course the Special played Ninja Rap as often as possible.

Yes, it seems that the Archie TMNT comic was very popular in a lot of European countries in the early '90s while, I guess, only few countries got the Mirage original comic back in those years. Was the Volume 4 translated in Icelandic or just an imported original version in English? Did they dubbed the show in your language? I am curious to hear the intro of the show in Icelandic :tgrin:
It is such a fascinating, mysterious and funny (and probably really hard to learn) language .

Volume 4 was just imported. The Fred Wolf cartoon was translated and they were simply called the "Turtles" because it's long enough as it is already in our language ("Skaldbökunar") but most kids called them "Turtlesarnir" which is an Engrish way of saying the above Icelandic.
The 4kids show was also shown here (not past season 4 and then it just stopped, no fast forward) but it was shown in English with Icelandic subtitles.
All the games and movies were popular here. Nothing translated, just imported, sometimes from the UK so sometimes it would have "Hero" in it's name, making some people think it was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles".
Turtles Forever was eventually released on DVD but never aired on TV.
No news on the 2012 episode.

I don't know in what quantities, but some people got US imported comics. I remember seeing a Volume 2 comic and two Archie comics here from the US. Don't know how they got here.

While my local comic book shop seemed to have no problem importing Mirage stuff, they would sometimes not get issues from them. So I have gaps in my Tales and Vol. 4 library.
IDW is so much worse as they supposedly don't sell to the region as they don't own the publishing rights to Iceland or something, so the IDW comic is almost impossible to get. If we get copies of it, it's by accident. I had to specially order the TMNT Annual and had to get it from the UK at double the price. But we still get trades just fine.

It's not just Archie, each easy usually had one Archie adventure and one UK Hero Turtles comic. Many older readers wanted to skip the UK Hero Turtles comics after a while, since they thought they ver pretty much the same plot, and just have Archie, but the UK Hero Turtles comics made them sell better.