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Description
Welcome back. I promised I'd be covering this and it will be the second to last one before the truly BIG drawing.

Soooo. Let's discuss that Turtles comic that ha a cosmic cow-head transposting people within its mouth.

And I have to make a shout-out to Mark Pellegrini and his impressive effort of reviewing each issue of the series tmntentity.blogspot.com/2008/0… . Even though as you will see , he and I do not look eye to eye when it comes to the TMNT.
Archie Comics' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures originally started out adapting episodes of the 80's cartoon, but quickly moved on to their own, original stories and direction for better AND for worse. Well I do love the fact that they 've experimented something new (new developments, characters and concepts), they did not take advantage of the better aspects of the cartoon and try to strengthen them. Oh well, let's give to Caesar his due. Besides if I did not like it , I would not have drawn or written about it !

PROS :

+ The Turtles and Splinter are pretty much the ones from the 80's cartoon. They're just put in different situations ... most of which resemble the 2 first seasons of the show. Speaking of which...

+ The censorship is far less strict on the comic than what goes on on-screen. The book has a more adventurous tone than a humorous/farcical one (which prevents Shredder and the Technodrome family from winning and stealing the show from the green boys like they did in the cartoon through their brilliant application of the "Chuck Jones Method")

+ I will speak up here , the other supporting characters like Oyuki (who'll become April's sidekick) and Ninjara are fine. As for Ninjara and the problem readers seem to have with her.... I never minded her. What ? It's because she 's a Fox woman ? Dude, this whole anthropomorphism shtick is not always a mean of sexualisation for fuck sake ! At times it's just done for shits and giggles, so lighten up !

+ Mondo Gecko is our savior ! Even if he's more stoned than Michelangelo !

+ Most of the original villains are pretty cooland worthwhile additions to the TMNT villains pantheon and lead to very entertaining fights ! I mean we have Maligna ( basically Rule63 Annihilus ), Verminator X , Charmeleon, Wyrm , Animus , Sarnath ( actually inspired from the Eye of Sarnath episodes from the cartoon...
But the 2 that stole the show remain Slash (you know ? that evil Turtle with a Palm tree hobby ?) and freaking Armaggon !I mean it's a fucking SHARK from the FUTURE and who pilots a robot and has Hitler's brain in his possession ! Dude , SIGN ME UP !

+ In the whole Archie TMNT , April steals the show for me! Holy shit, Miss O'Neil gets an evolved stage and by God does she deserve it ! Granted, I might be peeved that they ditched the Jump suit (if you do not like the Jump suit, you do not understand beauty .), I am however glad that Stephen Murphy expanded on her established qualities and made her able to become a protagonist on her own right ! And since we're still praising right now, I am happy that while She learnt how to fight, April did not become super-uber-awesome-mega-coveredwithpecan-gifted. Here, she just is wiser and less foolhardy but every bit as brave and fun .

CONS :

- The Mutanimals.... Mondo Gecko aside, the others just did not seem all that memorable to me. I mean, I am not expecting the height of character depth from them but GODDAMMIT, were most of those guys bland ! Hell the Cartoon Ray Fillet , who was not all that special , was still more entertaining than the Archie Man ray if only because I take Mr "Not Give a Fuck" over Sir "I'll protect the environment !". And how the fuck do you make Leatherhead BORING ? HOW ?!

- The biggest flaw in Murphy's writing is when he tries to go all Captain Planet on us. I only had 2 reactions when that happens :
1) Damn I miss Krang and Shredder's marital disputes...
OR
2) Dude , the planet will fucking outlive me anyway ! So Mother Gaia can eat shit for all I care (well she kinda does, so it renders the point rather moot.

- The lack of Shredder and Krang. Now , okay let me make things clear : I don't want them to be the antagonists EVERY damn time, let's agree here. HOWEVER, since this book does not suffer the same crippling censorship that plagued the cartoon, Why not take advantage of that and push the enveloppe with both of them ?!
Well fine, Shredder ALMOST had the Forever War story arc , but the book was frustratingly harrassed by editors who disagreed with the book's direction. That's pretty sad... But for Krang ? NO FUCKING EXCUSE ? The awesomest talking Brain ever deserved faaaaar better than being squandered in potential and left on a prison planet ! I mean in the book, Krang can have BOTH his great dark sense of humor AND BE more explicitly cruel (we can show him destroying a planet with his army in the name of "Fuck you that's why ." and sneer at it eloquently a second later !). In fact, had Krang been the one behind the slaughter of the Mutanimals and thus coming back triumphantly from Mobus after 30 issues of absence, the "Terracide" would have been fan-fucking-tastic ! But instead of Krang , we got...

-... Null. Holy dehydrated prostate is this gonna suck.... See, when I've heard of this guy, I was like "Oh, this seems like a cool villain !". When I've actually read the guy in the actual book , I was like " Seriously ? TMNT fans whine about Ch'rell or Lord Dregg being one dimensional and yet THIS POS gets a pass ?!". But why do I seem so frustrated ? BECAUSE NULL IS UNGODLY SUCKY ! He's not one note, he is BELOW ZERO-NOTE ! He's not a monster or even a force of nature , he's an overpowered cardboard of a fucking cardboard ! EVEN his design is as unimaginative as it can get 2.bp.blogspot.com/-MPiYyd69viw…
Come on ! Even the most banal monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh ! were far more threatening/better thought out than this !
What's that ? He mind controls women and wanna build a harem ? WOW, I think "taking over the world" has become a breath of fresh air compared to this guy's motivation. I mean, is that supposed to shock me ? Because it fucking doesn't ! It just reminds me how phoned-in, unimaginative , cheap , boring and ultimately shallow this "demon" is. And a last jab ? I am a Spawn fan and fucking proud to be one, so the fact that a demon from hell lets me down like this greatly tells you more than enough about how crappy and useless a plot device Null is. Hell the Mutanimals could have all died of a heart attack , and we'd still have Slash VS Maligna !

- The Artwork problem... Yeah, I think that while the 2 best artists of the book, namely Ken Mitchronev and Chris Allan , draw the Turtles pretty well, they kind of struggle with the other characters . The art would have been more effective if it were more on-model with the cartoon (at its best of course !), but as it is :
1) Mitchronev does decently overall, but his April may not be the most expressive (or beautiful for that matter !).
2) Allan's Splinter fucking SUCKS ! His Krang even more SO ! And while his depiction of April is okay , I have no fucking idea as to why he gave her Ariel hair-do (because I despise Ariel...) !
I mean how hard it is to stick to this model ? Seriously ?! www.thatchickensite.com/letter…

Sooo that 's my final word guys ! Now , who's hyped for the next step ?

Description
Welcome back. I promised I'd be covering this and it will be the second to last one before the truly BIG drawing.

Soooo. Let's discuss that Turtles comic that ha a cosmic cow-head transposting people within its mouth.

And I have to make a shout-out to Mark Pellegrini and his impressive effort of reviewing each issue of the series tmntentity.blogspot.com/2008/0… . Even though as you will see , he and I do not look eye to eye when it comes to the TMNT.
Archie Comics' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures originally started out adapting episodes of the 80's cartoon, but quickly moved on to their own, original stories and direction for better AND for worse. Well I do love the fact that they 've experimented something new (new developments, characters and concepts), they did not take advantage of the better aspects of the cartoon and try to strengthen them. Oh well, let's give to Caesar his due. Besides if I did not like it , I would not have drawn or written about it !

PROS :

+ The Turtles and Splinter are pretty much the ones from the 80's cartoon. They're just put in different situations ... most of which resemble the 2 first seasons of the show. Speaking of which...

+ The censorship is far less strict on the comic than what goes on on-screen. The book has a more adventurous tone than a humorous/farcical one (which prevents Shredder and the Technodrome family from winning and stealing the show from the green boys like they did in the cartoon through their brilliant application of the "Chuck Jones Method")

+ I will speak up here , the other supporting characters like Oyuki (who'll become April's sidekick) and Ninjara are fine. As for Ninjara and the problem readers seem to have with her.... I never minded her. What ? It's because she 's a Fox woman ? Dude, this whole anthropomorphism shtick is not always a mean of sexualisation for fuck sake ! At times it's just done for shits and giggles, so lighten up !

+ Mondo Gecko is our savior ! Even if he's more stoned than Michelangelo !

+ Most of the original villains are pretty cooland worthwhile additions to the TMNT villains pantheon and lead to very entertaining fights ! I mean we have Maligna ( basically Rule63 Annihilus ), Verminator X , Charmeleon, Wyrm , Animus , Sarnath ( actually inspired from the Eye of Sarnath episodes from the cartoon...
But the 2 that stole the show remain Slash (you know ? that evil Turtle with a Palm tree hobby ?) and freaking Armaggon !I mean it's a fucking SHARK from the FUTURE and who pilots a robot and has Hitler's brain in his possession ! Dude , SIGN ME UP !

+ In the whole Archie TMNT , April steals the show for me! Holy shit, Miss O'Neil gets an evolved stage and by God does she deserve it ! Granted, I might be peeved that they ditched the Jump suit (if you do not like the Jump suit, you do not understand beauty .), I am however glad that Stephen Murphy expanded on her established qualities and made her able to become a protagonist on her own right ! And since we're still praising right now, I am happy that while She learnt how to fight, April did not become super-uber-awesome-mega-coveredwithpecan-gifted. Here, she just is wiser and less foolhardy but every bit as brave and fun .

CONS :

- The Mutanimals.... Mondo Gecko aside, the others just did not seem all that memorable to me. I mean, I am not expecting the height of character depth from them but GODDAMMIT, were most of those guys bland ! Hell the Cartoon Ray Fillet , who was not all that special , was still more entertaining than the Archie Man ray if only because I take Mr "Not Give a Fuck" over Sir "I'll protect the environment !". And how the fuck do you make Leatherhead BORING ? HOW ?!

- The biggest flaw in Murphy's writing is when he tries to go all Captain Planet on us. I only had 2 reactions when that happens :
1) Damn I miss Krang and Shredder's marital disputes...
OR
2) Dude , the planet will fucking outlive me anyway ! So Mother Gaia can eat shit for all I care (well she kinda does, so it renders the point rather moot.

- The lack of Shredder and Krang. Now , okay let me make things clear : I don't want them to be the antagonists EVERY damn time, let's agree here. HOWEVER, since this book does not suffer the same crippling censorship that plagued the cartoon, Why not take advantage of that and push the enveloppe with both of them ?!
Well fine, Shredder ALMOST had the Forever War story arc , but the book was frustratingly harrassed by editors who disagreed with the book's direction. That's pretty sad... But for Krang ? NO FUCKING EXCUSE ? The awesomest talking Brain ever deserved faaaaar better than being squandered in potential and left on a prison planet ! I mean in the book, Krang can have BOTH his great dark sense of humor AND BE more explicitly cruel (we can show him destroying a planet with his army in the name of "Fuck you that's why ." and sneer at it eloquently a second later !). In fact, had Krang been the one behind the slaughter of the Mutanimals and thus coming back triumphantly from Mobus after 30 issues of absence, the "Terracide" would have been fan-fucking-tastic ! But instead of Krang , we got...

-... Null. Holy dehydrated prostate is this gonna suck.... See, when I've heard of this guy, I was like "Oh, this seems like a cool villain !". When I've actually read the guy in the actual book , I was like " Seriously ? TMNT fans whine about Ch'rell or Lord Dregg being one dimensional and yet THIS POS gets a pass ?!". But why do I seem so frustrated ? BECAUSE NULL IS UNGODLY SUCKY ! He's not one note, he is BELOW ZERO-NOTE ! He's not a monster or even a force of nature , he's an overpowered cardboard of a fucking cardboard ! EVEN his design is as unimaginative as it can get 2.bp.blogspot.com/-MPiYyd69viw…
Come on ! Even the most banal monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh ! were far more threatening/better thought out than this !
What's that ? He mind controls women and wanna build a harem ? WOW, I think "taking over the world" has become a breath of fresh air compared to this guy's motivation. I mean, is that supposed to shock me ? Because it fucking doesn't ! It just reminds me how phoned-in, unimaginative , cheap , boring and ultimately shallow this "demon" is. And a last jab ? I am a Spawn fan and fucking proud to be one, so the fact that a demon from hell lets me down like this greatly tells you more than enough about how crappy and useless a plot device Null is. Hell the Mutanimals could have all died of a heart attack , and we'd still have Slash VS Maligna !

- The Artwork problem... Yeah, I think that while the 2 best artists of the book, namely Ken Mitchronev and Chris Allan , draw the Turtles pretty well, they kind of struggle with the other characters . The art would have been more effective if it were more on-model with the cartoon (at its best of course !), but as it is :
1) Mitchronev does decently overall, but his April may not be the most expressive (or beautiful for that matter !).
2) Allan's Splinter fucking SUCKS ! His Krang even more SO ! And while his depiction of April is okay , I have no fucking idea as to why he gave her Ariel hair-do (because I despise Ariel...) !
I mean how hard it is to stick to this model ? Seriously ?! www.thatchickensite.com/letter…

Sooo that 's my final word guys ! Now , who's hyped for the next step ?