Baxter not in Archie's Universe sourcebook?

[CyberCubed]

I just re-read the Archie sourcebooks and I notice Baxter wasn't listed at all, even though he appeared in the first 4 issues and the mini-series.

And before you say those are non-canon, remember the whole Sarnarth storyline pretty much continued from the cartoon adaptions and confirmed those issues are indeed canon with Archie's storyline.

I wonder why they totally blew off Baxter Stockman in this series? You would have thought he'd come back eventually...

[ToTheNines]

They had a lot of other stuff going on. I think it would have been sweet to see A.C. Farley's rendition of The Fly, but Baxter never got that far.

Now that you mention it, the Archie series definitely gave Baxter his happiest ending throughout the multiverse lol.

[marcelangelo]

hey guys...I have never read the archie series thus far, so don't rip my head off, tothenines, allright? ( I just read your overheated answer to cybercubed in the ult.coll topic...)..
what I want to know is..you mentioned a.c. farley worked on it somwhere?did he contribute to the archie books often?I love his drawings of the dudes in green from the mirage collections....and shellshocked and whatnot...

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by marcelangelo

hey guys...I have never read the archie series thus far, so don't rip my head off, tothenines, allright? ( I just read your overheated answer to cybercubed in the ult.coll topic...)..
what I want to know is..you mentioned a.c. farley worked on it somwhere?did he contribute to the archie books often?I love his drawings of the dudes in green from the mirage collections....and shellshocked and whatnot...

Yeah, he did the 3 Archie Mutant Universe Sourcebooks.

http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=184521

[marcelangelo]

thanks for the link, the covers looking great!his shredder and bebop and rocksteady look awesome to me!

[oldmanwinters]

Heh, never realized he got left out! I suppose after the fourth issue, he only existed in cameo form. So it's understandable how they would want to devote space to characters that were more essential to the ongoing story. I suppose the Neutrions weren't included either?

[wilddiverse]

Well, maybe if the Archie series hadn't been cut short, that 'eventually' would've come around. As things stand, at the end of 72 issues and a mess of specials, Archie's Baxter Stockman was really never more than a bow-tied scientist sidekick in a labcoat.

The last we see of Archie's Baxter Stockman is in #43's flashback, which shows Baxter and the Shredder fleeing the Turtles at the end of #4 when Armaggon timeslips Shredder into the future, leaving Baxter 'to face the Turtles alone' though we're never shown how that plays out.

I know I've seen some mention of this time travel discrepancy around the forum before, but comparing the two issues, I'm wondering how reliable a narrator Armaggon is... cue visual aids!

At the end of TMNTA #4, Shredder and Baxter slip away through a trapdoor with the TMNT making no apparent effort to pursue:


While in Armaggon's version, the trapdoor didn't shut behind them and the Turtles did pursue:


I'm of a mind to accept that the flashback of #43 is how things actually happened as Steve Murphy had certainly made the story his own by that point, freeing it of cartoon adaptation mire (and also #43 puts the characters in a far more competent light-- 'oh, the trapdoor closed, my sons, it is useless to try' is an odd lesson).

Getting back to why Baxter didn't receive his own Sourcebook entry-- it's possible he was omitted for space purposes or forgotten about, but it's fun to believe that there was a Baxter story coming that would've taken him beyond Steve Murphy's 'derivative mad scientist' conception (http://www.flickr.com/photos/terrible2z/2331442448/) and set the TMNTA version apart somehow. Where Baxter was left in #43 was a 'worthless' character in limbo, but with room to be developed in any direction the writers chose.

At the very least they could have turned the guy into a fly.

[oldmanwinters]

Leonardo: "He's getting away with the crystal! We must stop him!"
Splinter: "It is useless to try. He is gone."
Leonardo: "Bull! He's just below the surface! Let's just follow him down the ladder!"
Splinter: ". . ."

Originally Posted by wilddiverse

it's fun to believe that there was a Baxter story coming that would've taken him beyond Steve Murphy's 'derivative mad scientist' conception (http://www.flickr.com/photos/terrible2z/2331442448/) and set the TMNTA version apart somehow.

If I remember, that early Baxter concept art was not the creation of Steve Murphy, but simply a copy of some of the TV show production art that he owned and shared on the internet.

[wilddiverse]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

If I remember, that early Baxter concept art was not the creation of Steve Murphy, but simply a copy of some of the TV show production art that he owned and shared on the internet.

Ahh, well, assuming the quote at the link is Murphy, then he has called Baxter a 'derivative mad scientist', which could be part of the reason the character was seemingly shot out of his canon like a Neutrino.

[CyberCubed]

I really would have liked to see fly-Baxter in the Archie series. I would have liked to see Murphy's take on him, he might have been an even more sympathetic villain than in the cartoon.

Surely some of those "filler" Archie stories could have been cut and replaced with a Baxter story instead. Like #26 and #27...both which were throwaway filler stories that were never referenced again. They even later brought back that mutated Wooly Mammoth Caveman for no reason...

I also feel Rat King should have gotten another issue in the present. After #11, the only time we see Rat King again is in the Future Shark trilogy. But why no second Rat King issue in the present time?

[DrSpengler]

Originally Posted by wilddiverse

I'm of a mind to accept that the flashback of #43 is how things actually happened as Steve Murphy had certainly made the story his own by that point, freeing it of cartoon adaptation mire (and also #43 puts the characters in a far more competent light-- 'oh, the trapdoor closed, my sons, it is useless to try' is an odd lesson).

Yeah, by about the #40s Murphy was doing a lot of revisioning of the cartoon adaptation issues.

In addition to changing the pursuit of Shredder and Baxter at the end of #4 to have a less sloppy conclusion, he changed how the alien pilot died in #1 (claiming that instead of disintegrating, the Turtles buried his corpse in the park) and in #45 he did an overhaul of Splinter's origin, namely changing the manner in which he was banished fromt he Foot Clan (Saki framing him for the murder of his best friend as oposed to "Throw da bum out!").

So I also tend to take the later retcons of the earliest stuff as the "canon" interpretations, as Murphy was acknowledging the episode adaptations but modifying them to fit his new vision for the series.


As for Baxter not being in Sourcebooks, it was kind of a glaring omission along with a few other characters from the episode adaptations, but all I'm really missing is the Farley artwork.

[CyberCubed]

I am pretty sure General Traag wasn't in the sourcebook's either, which is odd because they still featured the Turtle Blimp/Van if I remember correctly.

Just because Murphy was spinning Archie into its own continuity doesn't mean he had to ignore everything from the old show.

Krang still had his army of Rock Soldiers...I would have loved to see General Traag rescue Krang from the planet he was stranded on and launch an attack on Earth. Its a real shame because it was an angle of the series that could have been expanded on.

Krang was a warlord from Dimension X with his own army, yet the thought of him contacting General Traag never occurred to him?

[wilddiverse]

Yeah, and why wasn't there an entry for the Mock Turtle Gang?! ...

There wasn't a Sourcebook entry for the Turtle Van, but the Turtle Blimp did get an entry that detailed how it was used in the initial encounter with Wingnut & Screwloose. Other vehicle entries include the Knucklehead and Sewer Jet-Ski.

The deciding factor of what's included seems to be whether a character/thing was used by Murphy and company from TMNTA #5-on. Baxter's appearing in flashback in #43 but not being in the Sourcebook seems to make him the only exception.

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by DrSpengler

all I'm really missing is the Farley artwork.

Seriously.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Krang was a warlord from Dimension X with his own army, yet the thought of him contacting General Traag never occurred to him?

It wasn't like Krang was exactly left with a transmitter when he was banished on Morbius. Still, the "Where were his Rock Soldiers?" presents a big logic problem in the Archies... for example, why did Krang need to put his tail between his legs in begging Maligna for help during the Final Conflict when, by all reckoning, he should've just been able to swoop up General Traag and a few hundred (thousand?) Rock Soldiers?

I dunno, I think it's really best to just treat TMNT Adventures #5 as if it were TMNT Adventures #1.

[CyberCubed]

That's the issue, since the Archie TMNT and Shredder/Krang have the same origin as the cartoon due to the entire first season being adapted into comic form.

A lot of missed opportunities to flesh out some of the OT concepts like General Traag and such. I also would have liked to see Napoleon Bonafrog join the Mutanimals, he's probably have a different origin like Leatherhead did.

The lack of Casey Jones is also bizarre, but given he was referenced in Year of the Turtle I like to think they had some off-screen adventures with him. After all April has a great granddaughter in the future timeline and unless The Warrior Dragon knocked her up who else could it be?

[DrSpengler]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

It wasn't like Krang was exactly left with a transmitter when he was banished on Morbius. Still, the "Where were his Rock Soldiers?" presents a big logic problem in the Archies... for example, why did Krang need to put his tail between his legs in begging Maligna for help during the Final Conflict when, by all reckoning, he should've just been able to swoop up General Traag and a few hundred (thousand?) Rock Soldiers?

Yeah, that's something I hadn't even stopped to consider. I understand the narrative necessity of Krang borrowing the Malignoids, as it set up the Mighty Mutanimals miniseries, though in retrospect it was kinda at a logical expense.

As for Krang being stranded on Morbus, well, the first time he got banished there he was left on a toxic waste cannister slowly sinking into a lake of acid. He was pretty much about to die when Slash happened to come along and save him.

He was sort of left just chilling the second time he was banished, but Morbus was clearly not a very friendly environment for Krang, so I doubt he'd have lasted very long there. Of course, it was also a penal colony, so there were probably lots of other convicts (including Bellybomb) for Krang to manipulate.

I guess we'll just never know.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by DrSpengler

Of course, it was also a penal colony, so there were probably lots of other convicts (including Bellybomb) for Krang to manipulate.

A squishy, pink blob of skin manipulating convicts...hmm, not sure he'd be the one doing the manipulating.

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by Venom

A squishy, pink blob of skin manipulating convicts...hmm, not sure he'd be the one doing the manipulating.

Yet Krang always did. How do you think he got Bellybomb to join him instead of being eaten by him? Not to mention Slash joined his side rather quickly.

For some reason Krang is always able to get people to work for him, even when he's at a disadvantage. I enjoy that because it shows that even being handicapped without a body, Krang can still aspire to ruthless world domination.

[wilddiverse]

Krang: An Inspiration to One.