Which Turtle lives longest, Jim Lawson, and Tales of the TMNT musings ...

[Rooish]

I found out the answer to one of my own questions, reading Murphy's blog: he wrote the new frontispieces and epilogue to the collected book. I find that odd. Normally Murphy is my favourite Mirage staff member. (I'm a little in love with him.) I trust TMNT in his hands more than anyone else. He's a great writer. So it seems weird that he would write those new pages. That's changing history. The original frontispieces were cool, from what I've seen, and now I can't have them ever.

There's a lot of changing of history going on, as Roseangelo could show us ... although I guess the first changes seemed rather innocent. Like, changing the spelling of Michaelangelo to Michelangelo. I really liked that name change at the time; now I'm not so sure.

Although it is nice to see that Don gets very old before dying. It's weird that Raph didn't age, much, though. Does that mean he died younger? Tales of the TMNT is part of Mirage canon, so now this thing -- old Donatello seeing his brothers in a virtual reality computer program -- is canon.

To change the subject, you know what pisses me off? How in the old Mirage comics, they often wouldn't draw the Turtles' weapons, so you wouldn't know which Turtle was which. Plus the Turtles act a bit more similar to each other in the comics (their personalities aren't stereotypes), so it's even harder to tell. It annoys me. I don't want to guess who the author intended it to be. I want to know!

Edit: Oh and regarding Jim Lawson. I know, eh? His old art was dynamic and more realistic. The hands he draws are enormous and boxy. The forearms are way too skinny on humans, and the upper arms way too muscular, and the eyes are still spaced weird, although that got better. I have not seen a single good human Jim Lawson has drawn in Volume 4.

Splinter looks pretty bad, too. The thing is, I still love the way he draws the Turtles (although upon seeing the Tales issues, I like those better) when he doesn't draw the Turtles too fast, and he is careful with the eyes. He can draw them in many angels. But everything else is ... wiggy. And the inks, typically Talbot's/Bergers (can't remember???) usually go terribly with the art. I just honestly think he could improve drastically if he tried to draw realistically again, but he probably isn't motivated to because of the $hitty work environment Mirage is nowadays. He does by far the most Mirage art, though, and I just wish it were more carefully presented. I don't want to feel embarassed for buying the Ninja Turtles comics.