Last Ronin concepts from 1987 in the Director's Cut #1, possible spoilers?

[neatoman]

Alright I just bought the Director's cut of Last Ronin #1 and there are two pages of notes by Peter Laird with additional new notes by Kevin Eastman. They detail some ideas about the story so they could possibly count as spoilers.

Here is a list of what's detailed in there. Keep in mind, this could end up in the actual series, so these could be spoilers:

Spoiler:

1. Raphael injured Splinter and left out of shame, this seems to have been changed for the actual series.
2. Donatello went with Splinter to Japan because he wanted to die there, Don never came back.
3. Mike and Leo stick together for a while but split up when they don't get along anymore.
4. Casey shows up all injured in front of April one day and dies, no details about who beat him up.
5. Casey and April were married once and had a kid but divorced on good terms.
6. April married some other guy who isn't named and had two kids with him but their divorce was messier than the one with Casey.
7. The Fugitoid's body was destroyed in battle and only the head was in working condition, the reason he wasn't given a new one was because he requested to be put into sleep mode for a thousand years for unknown reasons.
8. The Fugitoid has telepathic powers due to the experiments that put him in the robotic body to begin with, which April uses to contact the Turtles to battle some unknown menace.

There are also some notes and concept art clearly made for the actual series, which seem less plot relevant but are still kind of spoilery:

Spoiler:

1. Hiroto is inspired by Bullseye and Norman Bates.
2. Casey Jr is inspired by the Crow.
3. Flying MOUSERs that look like dogs and have laser beams mounted to their heads, inspired by Dr. Evil's request to have "sharks with frickin' laser beams".
4. Humanoid MOUSERs, looks like Bellybomb with MOUSER heads for lobster-like claws.
5. Stockman makes crap weapons for Hiroto as a private joke and keeps the good stuff to himself.
6. Hiroto's crows aren't real, they're killer robots disguised as crows.

[AquaParade]

Thanks for sharing this! I've been waiting to see all this stuff but didn't want to buy the whole issue again.

[superstaff]

I think I like some of these concepts more than the actual story.

[Galactus]

Spoiler:

1. Raphael injured Splinter and left out of shame, this seems to have been changed for the actual series.

2. Donatello went with Splinter to Japan because he wanted to die there, Don never came back.

Mirage TMNT Vol. 2 tease. Seems like Laird had a pretty good idea of how he wanted the turtle story to end.

[Powder]

Originally Posted by Galactus

Spoiler:

1. Raphael injured Splinter and left out of shame, this seems to have been changed for the actual series.

2. Donatello went with Splinter to Japan because he wanted to die there, Don never came back.

Mirage TMNT Vol. 2 tease. Seems like Laird had a pretty good idea of how he wanted the turtle story to end.

Yeah, wow. Cool to finally know what that was gonna be all about. Everyone always suspected it was just a "possible timeline" kind of thing. Which, I guess it is/was, given things did go differently due to Vol. 4 & Tales Vol. 2

[Galactus]

Originally Posted by Powder

Yeah, wow. Cool to finally know what that was gonna be all about. Everyone always suspected it was just a "possible timeline" kind of thing. Which, I guess it is/was, given things did go differently due to Vol. 4 & Tales Vol. 2

I have a suspicion that when he began Vol. 4 Laird still wanted some of that go to happen. Raph's hallucination when he first becomes Gamera-Raph and Donatello taking a sample of Splinter's DNA seemed like like obvious allusions to these things.

[AquaParade]

Not to gripe, but I did get a kick out of how they marketed this issue. It was essentially "Wow! To thank our fans for the success of The Last Ronin, we will sell you the issue again, so you can see a few pages of concept art!"
I mean, a better way to "thank us" would be to just put the behind the scenes stuff online for free. (Which, they did to an extent.)

That said, I actually don't blame IDW, given the state they are in. I'm just glad they were able to put out the book. I've bought multiple copies and I'm a total cheerleader for TLR, so I'm actually glad they are finding more ways to milk it. It's a great book.

[Sharman]

Originally Posted by Galactus

Spoiler:

1. Raphael injured Splinter and left out of shame, this seems to have been changed for the actual series.

2. Donatello went with Splinter to Japan because he wanted to die there, Don never came back.

Mirage TMNT Vol. 2 tease. Seems like Laird had a pretty good idea of how he wanted the turtle story to end.

Seems like it. I kinda wish that IDW republished Volume 2 with annotations a la the Ultimate Collection.