Well, it's finally here!
After months of teasing, several variant covers created, and hundreds of thousands of preorders, literally everyone and their grandma finally has issue #1 in their hands (if the preorders are anything to go by).
I read the issue and I'll prove my notes here. Feel free to add to the discussion or reply with your own notes or observations.
We have a real writer again!
I was beginning to forget what it felt like to read a comic book written by, well, an actual fucking writer. This is among the best new TMNT stories I've read in recent times. It's good. It's going places. I'm optimistic.
I had an "oh shit, an actual writer wrote this" moment while I was reading it. It was the moment when it was teased why Raph was in prison. The whole "prison thing" had been teased by IDW for what seems like months now. To be honest with you guys, I didn't expect the "prison thing" to be deeper than what it was on the surface. I thought it would just be as simple as "well, humans are bad and racist, so they put Raph in prison because he's a mutant," because that's pretty much the kind of conflict we would have expected from the previous writer. But no, there was an intriguing arrangement between Raph and the warden of the prison.
The second time it was apparent to me that we were dealing with a competent comic book writer was the whole "books" situation. Raphael had stacks of books in his cell, and I even wondered "hmm, I wonder why he's reading so much, that seems out of character." Later on, it was revealed why he had so many books. I know this is an extremely low bar, and it's something that you'd be taught in a "Comics 101" class, but still, it's a technique that requires some forethought. It's the kind of detail that a writer needs to deliberately communicate to the artist. And it's the kind of detail that a novice might not think to include because it's not really important to the overall plot. But it's a detail that's enjoyable for the reader. It's something a real bonafide storyteller would be cognizant of when they're writing.
There were also some great fight sequences where Jason Aaron was confident enough to pull back the dialogue, pull back the narration, and just let the art tell the story. I respect, admire, and appreciate that.
There are subtle, but possibly telling, changes
Aside from the writing, there were a few other details I noticed. I wrote about the pricing two months ago, so I won't go into that again, but there were a few other changes.
Kevin Eastman seems to be entirely uncredited in this new run. Usually, Eastman was credited for story consulting, but not anymore. Additionally, his name used to be on the cover. Is Eastman just not involved anymore? Did he step away? Could they not afford him (or was he working pro bono before)? I don't think we were given any explanation. It's a subtle change, but it's kind of a big change if you think about it. He was one of the two men who created the turtles, after all.
It's my opinion that Eastman and Laird still deserve prominent recognition on the cover or, at the very least, on the inside cover.
As one more complaint or criticism, the printing quality of this issue seems bad. There were ink smudges all over several of the pages. Unless this was intentional? Did anyone else notice weird smudges? It's kind of disappointing to get an issue #1 that's all sorts of fucked up with smudges.
One change for the good is that it seems like IDW wants to bring letters back to the turtles. Or at least, they were soliciting letters. Will they publish them? Let's hope!
