33 Turtle Power Hour — Adventures 24 and TMNT 15

0:00Hello and welcome back to another brand new episode of The Turtle Power Hour. My name is John and this is a podcast that looks at every issue of the old Ninja Turtles comics. Both the Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures series and the original series published by Mirage where the Turtles got their start. This is episode 33 and with me on today's journey is my good friend Laine Hi Laine. Hi John, Hi listeners. What do you mean old issues? I mean, I was alive during these issues. Are you saying I'm old? I'm not saying you're old, I'm saying that we're old. And also with us definitely not any notably not older than we are is Clinton. Hi Clinton. Hi John. Hi Laine, technically if this is the first time Laine is reading these they are new issues

1:03to her. Yeah. And I don't know if you're aware of this but we's is practically naked. I mean I know that I usually wear very little but I'm podcasting so things are before we get started though and see if we can stop for some food somewhere before we get to this podcast recording thing as I as I floss my teeth with barbed wire. Today we're looking at the amazing teenage mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures number 24. And then we travel back in time. We're going to look at the Mirage series issue 15 and then a brief look also at issues 16 which we'll be doing multiple issues of Mirage more frequently as we try to make our way through the I don't know I was going to say less memorable but I feel like that's insulting to the creators just you know the artist era. But yeah I've got adventures 24 in front of me and I always have to figure out who that

2:06other turtle is because just looks like two Ninja Turtles are going to fight that I'm like who is that? Oh wait that's not a Ninja Turtles that's slush. Is he trying to play into the Wolverine Fad of the day because this is like 1991. He's a snapper he's bad. You know I never really stopped to consider that but yeah I couldn't see that. I thought he was just kind of mimicking shredder with the gauntlet. That's what I always took it as but um I mean we've already decided that Raff's costume was pretty much the black suit spider man so I mean slash slashes design in the comic care being Wolverine inspired wouldn't really surprise me and it could be both um but this is June 11th of 1991 when this issue hits so Wolverine's rise to fandom rise to fame among the X-Men is definitely happening yeah so you know X-Men has already pretty

3:08much broken records at this point. I think we are right in the season of X-Men volume two number one launching I think that was in May of 91 and we're in June of 91 so yeah. He's going to get his metal pulled out in two years consider that maybe Wolverine became more popular because of slash I mean that is entirely possible I mean you do know that's why the GI Joe toys switched to neon colors and all that kind of stuff right Lane because of Wolverine no because of Ninja Turtles oh the Turtles toys were bright and vibrant and you know GI Joe toy sales started to dip and they were like this is why they're selling because they're bright and vibrant and all they were selling before is just some bushes hanging on the on the the toy pegs in the in came art. I mean that's not a bush it's camouflage what?

4:10Is this cover and homage to another cover because it feels like it should be but I don't know if it is hmm I mean we've had comics have all had a lot of you know verses covers yeah but that position specifically probably not none of this you're really popping in my head but yeah because we have a Raphael and slash coming at each other from either side and then on the bottom we have a very worried Donatello peeking out of the nopin manhole cover mm-hmm although as saturated as the colors are that could be Leonardo but I'm thinking it's not telling you right I agree honestly though I almost think the cover would be better without Donatello down there but I suppose he kind of has to be to really convey that yes this is still the kid friendly adventures comic you know we're not going to end with was slashed it can his blade straight through Raphael so the cover is by one of our

5:10standard artists whose name is not I thought that he would kind of be as I started the sentence but definitely a different artist than the interior of the book mm-hmm where we have two art teams and it switches partway through and it is extremely noticeable but the we start off somewhere in dimension x on this spaceship where crang is flying his new companions slash and belly bomb towards earth uh slash calls crang pinky are we there yet pinky pinky is a crang pinky is a crang he is a genius and yes he's insane you know John it until you mentioned it I never really realized that he's actually using barbed wire to floss yeah I just always kind of assume he had some very frayed strings that's what I thought too is it reminded me of those uh things that you

6:14used to unclog drains mm-hmm like a snake or something yeah like it it's just like a plastic strip that has little hooks on the side so it grabs things as it pulls up yeah I'm going to go with barbed wire in my brain though yeah well of course you know this is where the comic is is hitting its teen angsty years so of course he's gonna have barbed wire because he's no edgy and cool yeah yeah teen edgy angst coolness you definitely hold on to that when we get to that last page but belly bomb is weird here is like I don't know about youtube but I can go for some chow catch my drift then like you're drift as in your hungry and you want some food or is there another drift we should be catching and then he's like yeah belly bomb sure as in if he does hit something to eat soon he may eat his companions mm-hmm shouldn't he floss after he's had chow and up before

7:19and it's like when you wash your dishes before you eat to save time after so the the the ship comes in on this earth like but not earth planet there's no palm trees much to slash his dismay it's one of the Eden worlds and as soon as they said Eden worlds my brain was like I know where we are mm-hmm also the fact that their rhinoceros is running from them in the first panel is kind of a hint yeah um and were they just flying around with a bunch of deer in the cargo seems to be all the are those oh yeah because it's a living cargo oh yeah the ship's cargo but then they went hunting so like why didn't they just if belly bomb was hungry why didn't he just use what was already anyway yeah like go eat one of yeah this is like he would have no problem doing that um the the excuse narratively for us landing here is that the ship had a preset course I'm going to go through the before they can take it where they want to go and so it was

8:22it was pre planned to come to this Eden world and drop off the gazelle um but they're just walking around and belly bomb's got a big ol hunting rifle and uh they mention earth and so when someone off panel says duh did one of you guys mentioned to planet leaf unbelievable and yes it's bebop and it's rock study and they're standing naked with fig leaves and they're surrounded by others of their species like rock study has a couple of rhino friends and bebop has a couple of boar friends and and yeah now imagine my confusion reading this without having read all the stuff went on because you were there for 13 you joined with 19 and so yeah yeah I'm sitting there like why are bebop and rock study here and why are they naked and you know the original original purpose of the fig leaf in art it wasn't for you know to cover

9:25nudity it was originally over where the uh the belly button would be because they didn't know if Adam and Eve would have a belly button because they weren't born huh no I always thought it was covering everything else that was the original from what depends on how what artistic movement you're in you once you get to certain points you know they introduce the concept of modesty and shame yeah but like earlier than that I think she's saying or yeah but huh that's interesting I don't know that might be apocryphal information though because I don't like depending on how early would they really think about I don't know I don't know if that much thought was put into it but anyway one of those things has come up oh like like how we change the word stop on the house stop yes and that butterfly and butterflies were originally called flutterbys which makes a lot more sense yeah butterflies flutter by all the time I'm also kind of um grasping my head around the fact that you didn't start reading this comic clinton until four seasons

10:26of the show had already aired so like you'd already been through the cartoons heyday and are now getting the comics yeah I'd never seen it on the stands there you know it was one of those like oh okay so in our credits down below we have Garrett Ho and Brian Thomas our one pencil inking team and Jim Lawson and Rod Older's Ulrenshaw are another pencil inking team and I don't know which is which if we're here with Garrett Ho now and then we switch to Jim Lawson I think that's what it is I think we switched to Jim Lawson later but um but yeah it's gonna be a thing so be Bob and Rock study they want to go with them slash grabs crane he says your friends good then you carry pinky for a while and he grabs crane by the brain of course and turns him upside down and hands him to be Bob to and it always makes me smile whenever they turn the words upside down for an upside down person it's also slightly annoying because you have to like pay attention more to read

11:30the words but um but it's funny it's cool actually I'm more amused with uses kind of cold and clammy dear mr. Crang me the brilliant insights oh fish one what for you take those horns which they're not horns their teeth yeah their teeth why do you want to be called teeth because I have teeth I'll guard his galaxy three reference um so he asks just for everyone who's confused about the plot connections is this the planet Cherubi set YouTube before she banished me to Morbos so that you know young Clinton knows at least something about what's going on here and why they're running on the internet a bunch of names that made no sense right which is kind of what recaps are sometimes if you weren't there for the events it's just like okay those words make sense in that order I guess that's an explanation you know if it had very clearly said C. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventures number 13 mm-hmm I love it inters notes mm-hmm

12:32the problem is that here in Paradise get ain't no crime get ain't nothing to do you that's why he wants to go home see all they can run around is all they can do is run around and eat and sleep and phone mm-hmm yeah yeah and and be there definitely uh life yeah yeah yeah um because you know didn't we say about you know 10-ish issues ago that rock steady and be pub definitely had gay coupling vibes couple coding mm-hmm and crank says yeah that's his plane is the nose on my face as we look at his face with absolutely no nose on it rock rock steady steady rock in all that long you say that John but you know his lip I guess you would call it is definitely sagging into a beak which is nose ish it's nose ish but it's not a nose also I was watching crime this week and

13:33I realized that none of the transformers have noses have you noticed that Lane yeah they have very flat faces they have eyes and they have mouths and they have a flat plane in between them yep anyways one last thing to animate so so they head out time for crime then time for earth time for a bit of revenge as well boom tree and we we transfer our attention to Odo Kusaki in one of his few maskless moments snipping a bonsai tree looking at is that map porn no that's just Manhattan same thing isn't it the shredder has a thing for infrastructure that's a big map too he catches us all up on the plot yes where he very much admits that yes that definitely was him that released the giant foot soldier robot and and did do things and it totally wasn't just a filler

14:36issue that they decided to run with for plot um Dean Clarane wrote them all it just felt like really weird because the artist was different in it because it was such a different shift in tone i don't know the less we have to talk about vidavicious the better but um but of course you know he also reminds us that the warrior dragon is a character which is helpful for the backup story and you know they go and capture the uh donatello enough and for bait and all the turtles showed up and fought him and Rafael smacked him in the face the sudden intervention of the one turtle who had been missing and uh that gives us so we really we had nothing to do with shredder there nothing to do except plot recap he's snipping bonsai and recapping plot out loud well you know he did you know help us to know that he very much does know each turtle's name it's so sweet and he knows which is which probably which is more you can say for the low girl the issue 16 um and it helps that they have their initials on their belts it does and the color coating also heaps but the

15:38turtles are traipsing through the sewers as turtles are want to do michael angelo is eating pizza actively walking in boop water i think he never gets sick he's got to have a uh uh intestine a GI tract of solid rock his immune system is Fort Knox they're finding all these drums of radioactive waste mutagen very much like the ones that they saw back way way way back like in the uh cockroach issue yeah um what does that like eight nine eight ten no nine is chameleon we have somewhere around there um just don't touch anything you never know some of these barrels might contain mutagenic residue as well and Raphael looks at the word on it definitely because it says you know mutagen on it but you know they get to practice the art of invisibility which is weird because we can totally see them the entire next page yeah best i can figure out Raphael's just saying hey let's shut up for the next eight panels okay so if i forget it later i'm going to mention it now there's a letter in the letter column

16:42for mirage issue uh 15 where one of the letter writers is complaining about how the turtles are supposed to be in the art of invisibility and yet they're always making wisecracks in situations where they're supposed to be stealthy like sneaking into a building sneaking into a window and cracking wise the whole time and uh and yeah so here they stopped they go quiet they sneak past the laser beams they stab the locks to go into a danger room and we get a really big zoom in on the crutches of bebop and rock steady you notice you know rock steady is like at least trying to hide his shame bebop is loud and proud rocks that he's crouching behind a word balloon i don't know if they the uh stem of the fig leaf hurts it or helps it well i was just going to mention you know um is bebop's leaf bigger than rock steady's leaf i don't know but i think this is our last page of our first art team or it may be the first page of

17:43the second art team but when you turn to the page after that you go back to the tools and shredder we have definitely changed art it's uh not necessarily for the better you know what we have failed to mention um the rock steady's bird has come along he brought his bird he's a little red bird his little red bird that you know manifested itself into existence from his dream yes that one the the um they're entering earth solar system and crane mentions in passing earthly only inhabited planet at the section of the Milky Way galaxy although there have been rumors of beings having long ago lived on Mars who knows maybe they still do maybe they've just moved under ground where earthlings can't see them is he referring to something specific or is the writer just having a muse about one of the like pop culture ideas of space at the time um i'm not sure that that

18:48almost sounds like it could be a you know a john card or kind of thing but i am not read up on john card or so don't it seems like a really specific thing to mention more than is necessary to set up the joke at the bottom of the page but like that joke is hilarious though you cannot get out that joke is hilarious where rocks that he overhears was like Martians to dealt with mean did aliens really do exist as belly bomb slash and crane sit there and stare at them yeah to say nothing of the malignoids and uh sherube and whoever else they met while they were in space this is like when people in the dc universe are freaked out about the idea of aliens and then superman just looks at them or martian hunter comes over and says hi how you doing yeah that or their best friends was zatana but they don't believe in magic right right okay

19:49or who you is is i don't believe they exist switching to a shredder on the bonsai a single blossom beginning to emerge a predator who has taken the time to put his mask on for reasons right what better way to symbolize my approaching victory and he evidently heard them coming in he heard them doing their art of invisibility they were not quiet enough show yourselves fools he sets down the bonsai shears and picks up the serrated blade staff you know it's the right tool for the right job yeah it definitely looks like it would be an accessory for one of the toys yeah now i want to look at the shredder toy and see if it's exactly that because slash carries all of his sway accessories um we've seen this artist before i'm pretty sure this is the same artist who did the chameleon issue and he's done a one over two more since then but um i don't like his turtle faces hid i don't know but you see why i looked up to see if either the artists were from you know

20:54the 1940s because it just kind of has that like oh we have to get this out ASAP because printed media is one of the very few forms of entertainment that exists in the world yeah and then i heard you know that this this comic did definitely come out on time every month yeah adventures was a really a solid production as far as scheduling goes which is more than we can say for our other book we'll talk about a few minutes um all times a lot of times i say well it's still better than i can do i'm not so sure i'll say that this time around so yeah um they jump in the turtles jump into shredder's layer and lean artist announces everyone into defensive positions now and shredder asks the obvious question you attack me in my home and then say go to defensive positions yeah i'm no yeah i'm glad he pointed out because like i actually thought that like when they jumped in and they said defensive positions i'm like but what i mean but you're attacking yeah yeah but again this is 1991 this is

22:02after the first movie they have gotten yeah the the whole turtle franchise has gotten the the angry mom reports of that stuff's too violent yeah mom we're two movies in at this point but yeah it's uh yeah again hence why the second movie they they use nerf bats and hot dogs yeah the sausage nunchaku so shredder is like watch and learn as i present you a most offensive lesson fools and then he starts telling racist jokes because i see offensive lesson no i mean say what you will you know art yeah art aside it's definitely well scripted yeah now i love Dean Clarane like he he has kept this book going almost from the first issue and it continues to be entertaining and interesting it's occasionally very bonkers and we're about to go way off the rails in a few minutes and again also remember this is written for like the eight to twelve crowd

23:06so while they are fighting cranes ship arrives in new york there it is general man earth and this is that's great as city new york i don't see any palm trees pinky i don't see any palm trees pinky um do you ever wonder if like belly bomb comes from like this higher civilization and he looks done it says what this is your greatest city that this looks like trash like belly bomb comes from like i don't know some planet that the future toy would be a one or something you know that he's just he's just a scum person so they're freaking uh they're freaking it says freak on the page um they're fighting uh freaks and geeks freaks and geeks right crane says he's gonna go get slash his palm tree he has to take a little detour first his small detour and turn that page and the depiction of belly bomb and we'll be up in rock study in slash and crane

24:07is definitely a drawing on this comic i don't care the rock steady face is hilarious yes the slash face however looks like somebody just missed through my colangelo yeah he's just an injured turtle um crane wants to make a small detour he wants to deliberately crash into shredders headquarters what the in my colangelo he's been talking to leatherhead lately uh oh okay i mean at least the crashing through the ceiling looks okay yeah they only i got a no price this here because like the only way you can assume he knows where the shredder is is because like he knows all of shredders hideouts do you think he tried others before we hit this one do you think you like crashing a few other places i mean maybe but either that or you know he's got like a tracker in shredders neck i was gonna say maybe he's like a dangerously possessive and and he's a jealous act he hit he hit an apple air tag somewhere on his on his helmet

25:12okay so many day to the guy who was exactly that kind of guy that's terrifying don't do that people right that is not good moves um so yeah all of our bad guy friends come out of the ship and Rodic said he had been already ready to pick up exactly where they left off hey use toils long time no fight and slashes surprise prepare to die turtles because he's a turtle and they're turtles and they're like wait you're a turtle i thought all turtles were nice turtles but they're not all nice turtles he's a snapper he's he's bad bad to the bone the vultures gave me my name they call me i don't think he says the word i think he just like swipes the air they call me is that with one or two exactly i've only seen one i mean adult snappers are rather frightening um i wouldn't mess with them but i did find a baby snapper on the road once and

26:17i helped it off to the side and uh it was kind of cute but it was only like four inches wide mm-hmm but i still wasn't gonna put anything near its mouth because that would still pinch right um of course slash in the idw is a hulking huge snapping turtle mm-hmm um while they are fighting shredder decides to investigate the ship because he doesn't know how bebop and roxley hooked up with those two creatures but i want to play matches they're fighting in my battle for me perhaps there's some alien weaponry or technology within the ship back in borough what's that mean bebop and roxley are running around naked this turtle's name is slash now we're talking about ships it's fiction okay well just saying just saying um so yeah while shredders slinking into the ship he does not see a friend lurking over the doorway like a bucket ready to fall

27:19um one with tentacles no less right i hate buckets of tentacles so the worst kind of buckets we we get a few more jokes from the fight nice costumes fellas kind of breezy i'd bet though huh gb-bop michael angel is michael ardo is right we's practically naked uh maybe we ought to cut out of here to do some clothes shopping um they get clunked on the head because they're fashion unconscious now and crane splorps down onto his boyfriend's shoulder it's been a long time saki crane i somehow i knew you're behind this yeah he jumps down on on naked blades very very near them much too near for his soft smushit uh tissues uh huh i was reading something recently um it was a captain america parody comic from alan morris 1963 image series and instead of the red skull they had the red brain and this guy was basically human shaped but made entirely of brain tissue and

28:23was always complained about getting punched because brain tissue is soft and tender and painful so um yeah it was it was it was weird that's some kind of thinking here is there's somebody hurt crane he hurt a lot because he's made a brain um yeah so the fight continues outside while saki and shredder get reacquainted belly bombs lurking on the outside because i think he thought that he and crane were going to be something and uh turns out saki has his tentacles wrapped around shredder is that sense of what i say you said saki has his tentacles well you know that too uh it's a sense of togetherness that has brought me here it's always been stronger together than a part what what is with shredder's torso and uh i mean then we see lane um when a shredder starts to hit a certain age he's just been hitting the x-flexer 9000 biskeck biskeck i must i must i must increase my

29:23bust um michael angelo and donatello are are kind of looking in surprise as my as bebop and ruxley run away uh slash is still fighting little butt cheeks little butt cheeks like right in stumpy forget them michael looks like our brothers could use a hand against our cousin in the ship crane asks belly bomb to knock out shredder with bad breath one dose of mega halatoshina q sit again one dose of mega halatosis it's like they are just decided it's ahead of time i don't know what crane was exactly planning but he planning to come to earth for the sole purpose of doing what he's about to do because it all seems like he's just going on a pre-arranged course here well you see if we rewind back about 20 or so issues uh one of you made a comment that i said to put a pin in i thought it was just a random like play on words that sort of made it into this so let's go

30:28and finish the issue they will talk about the implications um they have shredder on a table belly bomb now has his doctor outfit on including a surgical mask over his stomach for his mouth is perhaps i should borrow slashes blade all that won't be necessary it's not that i need to cut or prune so much as i need to reshape and cast a new which y'all i have questions and he's being he's being all face hugger at this point is he sporking his mass around shredder's head because you turn the page in the exactly where he shredder stands up with crane for ahead well all i have to say is remember when you said crane only wants him for his body you know like two years worth of podcast ago something like that yeah this is weird yeah and i know you're you're not supposed to think about it too far but i am thinking about it too far

31:29where is shredder's face right now where is his head yeah it's not in a jar it's in cranks butt yeah now as a kid young me whatever did not quite catch the i don't need to cut so i was not entirely certain that shredder still had a head which is also a reasonable conclusion like you know it's it says he's not going to cut but still like the head's gone so where did he put it also to take off the bladed helmet before he put shredder's head up his butt depends on how kinky he was feeling i don't think that's license dice is very nice and at the same time we get this really odd it feels like it's trying to be poetic picture of the bonsai tree with a single blossom down there well if you if you go back like you know half a dozen pages shredder has made it come as uh yeah go ahead you know he makes a comment about it

32:32a bud blossoming that you know something about like it is an omen for good fortune for him or something it symbolizes his impending victory yeah it's like aren't you he's getting victory yeah it's like might be somebody's victory yeah so this is this is where we are with issue 24 the two-year hallmark of the series shredder's head has now been replaced with crang and that's where we're going to be as we go into 25 which you know i i can't help but say that totally blew my mind whenever i first saw it it was like okay you know that's one of those like i got to wait 30 days for this it's amazing balls it's crazy socks it's it's the kind of comic the kind of storytelling you can do easily in comics more so than you can do anywhere else and when they say comics should be fun i think like this kind of thing is just fun it's just insane you can't take it seriously or you won't enjoy the story but if you just let it be bonkers it's

33:34like okay what the hell gonna happen next yeah so like even that little panel on the wall over to the right is surprised it's got his eyeballs his dials but yeah that's why i messaged you guys and the guy didn't see that coming but yeah yes so that's where we are with the the main story of issue 24 is that shredder has been headmastered by crang so that takes us into a backup story which this series this series has a larger page count 20 i think eight pages is pretty standard whereas most comics were 20 to 23 pages and i've always thought that's kind of interesting i don't know how they managed to do that on a regular monthly schedule so successfully um but we do have a backup strip here i think it goes for three or four chapters it's come this is this chapter is called it started in Chinatown and it's focused on April Dean Clarani is still scripting but now our

34:37pencils are by Chris Allen are inked by Mark Pachella and uh yeah april's in Chinatown catching up with our friend the dragon man sushi and i want to see vampire dinosaurs from hell okay so i think it's in the next issue so just in 15 let me do 15 and 16 the backup of adventures 24 oh never mind never mind never mind never mind never you know i just have to tell you you might not believe me i don't but i know our our little friend here from Chinatown who has the warrior dragon you might think he grew up eating a lot of you know traditional rice and noodles and stuff but i have it on good authority he grew up eating a lot of peanut butter peanut butter choosy moms choose jiff i have been sitting on that for you know since it's you 20

35:40we finished the recording you're like dammit i was gonna say that oh that's funny well done that's funny um i do wonder about the the name because i think choosy is both the surname and the given name and as is very common in chinese the given name is second but april calls him true throughout the story so i don't know it's because he's just confused he can't be choosy he's not choosy by which name she uses which name she uses yeah i don't as well confused by that as well but it's april yeah it's april we also get a name for his older companion whom we saw back in 20 bound up we got his name back then he's fushang collector of antiquities and once owner of the warrior dragon curiosity shop which was destroyed four years ago and because we get the recap the the gold the big dragon man that you saw in

36:42shredder's recap is this little guy here this unassuming young man um so they're just talking and fushang goes about his day and then we hear screech this car pulls to a halt guys with guns men in black jump out try to grab fushang um i say try to he fights back but they do knock him out no it's just a try they're actually sick since like put him in the car because april with her sword runs up and helps say the day because you know this is where some of the sword training april thing has been leading to mm-hmm she is definitely a woman of action at this point i do like the versions of april we have her here and we have her in the 2012 animated where she is able to join in the action not just be the person on the sidelines because in the 80s cartoon she's almost entirely a person on the sidelines she occasionally gets captured and that's as much as she has to do with the plot um well you know two k three she's as much their tech person has done a

37:44tello is i forget about two k three since i haven't watched in a while and it's not as internalized for me she's i mean they she's more for like relationship with ktc kind of stuff you know they don't they don't just shy away from the fact that she worked for backster right because she's a technician person for backster so she's still technically minded there um which is also a good use of her i like that um well yeah so april with her brandished blade and chusey with his elbows are able to fight off the people trying to capture fushang but then ninja show up four of them in full shinobi like you know dark gear i'm sorry i just now realized the store behind them hey you hey you imports hey you imports you know hey you exactly you know it gets your attention so you can go in and look at all the imports

38:45is it just imports no exports well i mean they're in china town this is probably where everybody goes to get their cheap knockoff souvenirs probably at hey you imports um and they do successfully grab fushang uh they knock down april chusey runs to her help and she's like never mind me too look what happened to fushang um you have to call forth the warrior dragon it's the only way chance we have of saving fushang and he doesn't want to but he does and so we end on the cliffhanger of giant kaiju size yellow warrior dragon i live so much bigger than the um little ninja he's about to fight against continue next issue he's the perfect size to take that um water shower on that roof as if we're like a small traditional tea cup and like have a sip of jasmine tea so yeah i was not expecting i remember when i was reading this i was not expecting to see now then to come back

39:46because it's just like it felt like a one-off issue but um yeah we're gonna spend three or four issues in backups with april and china town and two c is is is not going away he's gonna show up from time to time for a while okay i'd like him so i'm glad to see him back yeah i'm time to time for a while is about to the right way to say it because you might as well say he's well i wasn't gonna say fifth wheel because they're they're like yeah he's like the eighth wheel or something like that during world tour two the um like like we're talking about dragon ball earlier the the story kind of goes in directions that don't really allow a lot of ways to keep him included but um when they're when they're home and there is supporting cast he is there and it is good if it's an april focused story there's a larger chance of him showing up because you know person on the street kind of thing because it's worth pointing out that the adventure is comic does not use kacy jones so the

40:49relationship between kacy and rafael doesn't exist the relationship between kacy and april doesn't exist and so giving april somebody else to talk to in her personal life is is is a is an each choice well considering you know adventures is you know it launched from the cartoon and toys and the cartoon barely used kacy is like yeah yeah kacy is just a psychotic frank miller-esque character in the cartoon and as far as the toys kacy jones exists but he's still basically the cartoon yeah and you know even though adventures has very clearly taken its own path by this point it still does take cues from the toys every so often because it's like hey hey poke poke you we got a new line coming out in the spring you you might want to include one or two characters just saying right turtle power well speaking of the toys just coming out if we rewind our

41:51time machines back three years we're in the summer of 1988 instead of 1991 and the toys have started appearing people are reacting to the cartoons the turtles creative team eastman and layered are no longer working together and we have a peter layered drawn issue 15 and it costs 150 cents 150 cents now if you look at this cover the the image is the turtles with a lot of superheroes fighting a bunch of little robots and there's little curiosity in the bottom left as in this issue kacy jones but then the detailing of the cover it looks like an old beat up comic book and this was intentional okay it just dawned on me that that's supposed to be coffee cup rings on the cover right although fun story coffee would not stain dark enough so he actually used brown

42:52ink mm-hmm and there's even a torn off corner down the bottom right with an actual glimpse of uh turtles comic underneath not this issue it's it's part of i think issue two um but but yeah he wanted with the idea of old superheroes coming back into play he wanted to evoke old like marvel mystery comics you know Sid shores kind of cover styles and look like an old beat up comic from a generation back which i think is a pretty delightful idea lane what do you think of this cover i legit the thought i just had a bad scan it just was the only one in existence and uh so yeah they uh they did a good job with making it with beat up he said what he did was he drew and he drew in color and everything else produced the original art for the cover and put it into a um you know quality color copy

43:54process like you would do to print the cover of a comic on the kind of paper you'd have for cover for a comic and then took that print out and threw it in the floorboard of his truck and let it sit there for a few weeks while he was working on the issue so we have this nice beat up look to it and then he took it out added a few more details like the the the taping in the top um and the the faux coffee stains and the torn corner all of that stuff because he wanted to evoke this idea and i think he himself to lifefully because if you went and bought this in the stores it would look like like lane said this is a bad scan but um it's funny because we have two very different treatments of what if superheroes existed in the ninja turtles world to very different treatments of that from the tail's issue last episode and this issue here where Peter layered is basically saying there used to be a justice society and they're all retired now with with the justice force team we're gonna have in the story um do y'all have the back cover image next in the scan the yellow

45:00looking at with the studio and everything yes okay so this is the back cover of the comic this is actually a really old drawing it's from like three years earlier and you have the fugitoid and aliens xenomorphs and all this other fun stuff and uh megaton man is on the wall back there zits from space it's really fun and silly and Peter layered makes the very pointed comment in his commentary in the collection that this represents the mood from when the uh image was drawn and not capital letters from when it was published oh geez and i really kind of get the vibe that whatever happened between heaven esmond peter layered i think that there was like resentment from layered because of what just like i think esmond was just being esmond and ways that layered didn't like and he just got to him after a while and and they couldn't get along anymore i don't know if that's true or not but that's kind of the vibe that i get okay esmond's the young one right i honestly don't know which is which but yeah i think so okay because i'm trying to remember like esmond is the one

46:06that eventually went and like more or less but heavy metal magazine yes that's how he's yeah which i don't think he owns it anymore but on the bookshelf back there you have who's that penguin character from the newspaper comics opus um yeah in a triceratops up top there's lots of really fun stuff in this image i'm just kind of like taking in the details so basically was there falling out just like they spent too much time together and their personalities drove each other nuts basically they've been really closeted on the details which is probably you know the most professional choice but that's the impression i get is that after a while one of them just couldn't stand the other very much or or both ways but if it is mostly the one way i think layered couldn't deal with esmond anymore there was a documentary came out about a decade or so ago though that at the end of it they kind of patch things up and are actually having fun just sketching turtles again like it like it was you 1986 all over 1984

47:08or what it you know right yeah hopefully like sometime apart help them kind of just cool their tempers or whatever had annoyed them and realized okay that wasn't that deep to be fair they no longer have to work together because they're breaking in money on the merchandise and licensing yeah yeah they pretty much have sold pretty much all the rights but so just to kind of put things in perspective um 15 and 16 for one they came out in the wrong order we'll talk about that in a second but they came out this summer of 1988 which is right when the mini series teenage mutant Ninja Turtles adventures adapting the opening season was coming out so our show has come full circle we are now talking about the mirage comics that were coming out whenever our first archie comics were coming out um but 16 was i'm sorry 15 was running so late that issue 16 was all ready to go Michael Martin i think his name has had done all of the pages

48:14they were ready to be printed and he was still penciling issue 15 and he's like it's not going to be ready for a couple of months so they put 16 out in July of 88 and 15 wouldn't come out until September of 88 and then um 17 comes out in November so they're um they're still trying to do the Eastman doesn't issue layer doesn't issue Eastman doesn't issue layer doesn't issue but they're really running behind hmm but anyways um all right so we open dome doom story and pencils by layered inks by a loss in letters by Levine with a really pretty uh sort of storefront scene and this is where your theater is laying yeah no no i can say it should also be noted that this gets it gets a 2k3 adaptation with just a few minor changes yeah when i when i revisited this and so i was coming out it's like oh yeah because i've seen the 2k3 episode more recently that i've read this issue i was like Clinton's gonna enjoy this

49:15because it's a mara it's a it's a 2k3 source the buildings to the left and right of the comic shop are real in north hampton that theater is there and i can't see this title of the store to the right of it very well but they mentioned it in the commentary it's there steves comics is a fictitious creation oh that's because steve is a fictitious creation yeah uh my collage on rafael or inside comics kacy's looking through the baddish back issues for an old issue of dead face check between daredevil and dead time stories kacy daredevil you forgets about that alpha bit stuff the flaming carrot tales of the bean world crossover special lots of references to underground comics in this comic shop i had a while there it could be alpha bet thing reminds me i i worked as a librarian and i i won't i won't say the location but um a student very very sweet was a student

50:16employee and she was putting together some files for whoever was her supervisor and i was just i was there with her but i wasn't her direct supervisor but she has looked at me and said should i put these in chronological order or by year and i was just thinking oh honey i'm glad you're pretty chronological or by year yeah i said let's go with chronological wish was she a business major or communications i think she might have been business anyway while they're shopping there is an older gentleman also looking at an old issue of justice force maybe the current issue of justice force and on the back cover is one of those ads that's kind of like the atlas exercise ads it's be a real man of steel with the official stainless steve steel exercise kit and you don't know it on the first read but that is stainless steve steel reading an issue of justice force with stainless steel on the back and i think that's really funny

51:21i also had fun zooming in on what was on the background um because you have model kits up top i saw that in the enterprise oh there's a model of kacy jones's car the 59 caddy self that is i think so there's a comic book of pipi long stocking did pipi long stocking actually have comics now i need to know this um because her movie was right around this time late 80s early 90s i love that mean i don't know i don't know if it actually hold up but i love the design there are story books um there are modern comics from like 2012-13 um but i don't know if there are any old comics anyways pipi long stocking yeah hold on let's see um while you're looking there's also x-men and uh zina zowik tales um i see troll lords and albeda which were both comics that eastman layered like at the time there's a whole

52:27poster and a batman poster there's puma blues which is a mirage book which they mentioned in the in the common uh dialogue as well why don't you read this puma blues book case i don't know i guess it's just that flying sea critters make my skin crawl in that robot chauffeur creep arama they're just making fun of their own stuff because it's their own book did you find anything clinton i mean i found the the like 2013-2014 whatever printings that you're talking about i'm not sure if these are like created at that time or if they are reprints of old strips it's hard to tell like maybe newspaper strips it kind of plays like that yeah well that or um kind of similar to tin tin i don't know so there is um strange there is an artist who did flash comics and i'm trying to remember who it was uh if it was ever at hibbert or if it was somebody else

53:27but at some point the style of flash's face changed or maybe the artist changed because Harold Winston Wilson sharp also did a lot of armechan and it just became almost is it like a i don't know more natural curvature to the face outlines it became much more of an angular outline i remember i did a lot of reading of old flash comics in the forties thinking oh i don't like this this guy's face style as much but i mention all that because kacy jones turns around and sees this little dude and it's not apparent from the black and white art but he is a little metal dude and on the cover he's red but his face is just kind of angular and the eyes and the angles and everything else reminded me of that flash comics artist but kacy jones is like whoa we're looking low guy and he's we're a metallica shirt and peter there is like i think that was just the anchor having fun with metallica because he likes metallica because he did not remember who metallica in there see that in the two k three the little dude is a little more obvious that he's stands out

54:30he does have a creepy expression in here i'll give him that yeah his head is also you know like an adult-sized head on a child-sized body right that's mostly but i'm really apparent i kind of put that toward uh is dwarfism the correct term i think so yeah because i think depending on the type there are proportional issues that's why i didn't think anything about that yeah they're definitely trying to draw him a little bit oddly um but before you think about that too long we get a really cool two-page spread of these cute little droid dudes with transparent heads like skull domes crashing through the windows of the comic shop while turtles and kacy and old dude are all looking on and shocking surprise wow check out the wall books yeah layered says he wasn't sure if he just got tired of drawing fake comics covers or what because he did put actual um the uh photocopied stats of actual comics covers you've got syrabas number one avengers number one

55:37watchman number one g i joh grew um other crazy cat well yeah and i've read all the ones that i recognize but oh v from indebtors back there i have not read v from indebtors um i've not read the giant helo monster but yeah that that's some kind of cool cool nods to you know you go into a comic shop they always have the highly priced stuff behind the counter on the wall saying hey pay twelve hundred dollars for amazing spider number one i say twelve hundred dollars because whenever i was a kid in lewisville there was a comic book shop that no longer exists that had amazing spider number one on the wall for twelve hundred dollars and i just think if i bought that for twelve hundred dollars in nineteen ninety i could sell it for like three more zeros now well meanwhile some of us were lucky enough to snag a copy of teenage mutin and chiturtles number three out of the dollar box uh-huh that is cool you know it's it's definitely not a mint condition but but it's

56:38Ninja Turtles number three yeah you know still like the big oversized pages and stuff so eat it suckers i really like these little droid guys um they eventually get named dome oids um but right now there's little droid guys and it's like if mousers were cute instead of chumpy i like the fact that carrying maces yeah like the fact that the robot droids is not enough and okay little do with the weird face at this point transforms okay so maybe you had a regular maybe you had regular skin tones before that before that when rath first starts encountering him he calls them yeah he calls them demented shmouz do either of you know what a shmou is i know what spoo is but not shmou okay there was a newspaper strip called little abner which was very much you know the

57:40yokeal comic i know little abner you know it's where we get the term saty hawkins dance right okay i've just googled it this is like in little abner there is a creature called a shmou there are multiple shmou shmou is the preferred plural not shmouz was as uh shmouz or shmouz he's he looks like a vaguely sealed shaped but he doesn't really have flippers or a tail but he'd has legs that's weird in the final season of mash there is an episode where kernel potter has bought an inflatable shmou and he and he likes to punch it i don't think i've seen that one um in fact lord this is you know for one little abner was like a cultural powerhouse thing you know it was one of the most popular strips in america at the time you'll everybody knew

58:46who little abner was who saty hawkins was so on and so forth all the all the residents of dog patch mm-hmm in the uh nineteen eighties possibly even in the seventies but definitely in the eighties because i remember the commercials for it there was a theme park in arcan saw called dog patch USA oh wow we're um you know employees would dress up at you know people would be assigned roles of characters from little abner interacting throughout the park and of course you know rides and games a typical theme park stuff but it was it was very much a thing for a while i did not realize a lot and it was such a huge phenomenon it was just one of the comic strips i read in the papers all that by the time i was reading it it must have been in reruns because it said that stopped production in 1977 um so i guess they just started rerunning older strips because i read a little abner all right you dimension shmou's so easement layer would have grown up with this because they

59:49they're you know they're adults in the eighties yeah but i mean you have to remember y'all ending in 1977 the comic ran for 43 years yeah from the thirties of the seventies yeah mm-hmm read by and according to google here an estimated 60 to 70 million people in over 900 american newspapers and 104 in papers across 28 countries he was a spokesman for cream of wheat no abner was mm-hmm all right so now we have our cultural reference that's always fun um i had no idea what a shmou was i thought i was just him making up words because rafael you know calls people names nope i i definitely know it's time was like okay we have a learning opportunity here folks so rafael is stabbing michael angelo is chucking one of the uh create uh droids slams into the head of the old guy and michael angelo thinks that he's been like badly hurt oh no the guy just like starts wiping office for it it's okay don't worry they don't

1:00:54call me stainless steve just because my laundry spotless and he has a metal plate in his forehead because he's not just a regular guy he stainless steve steal from the justice force which begs the question does he have you know wolverine style metal bones or does he just have one metal plate right there in the middle of his forehead he just has to go around him you know headbutt people he's like hammerhead i'd like to think that he's got like metal all over because otherwise he wouldn't be very stainless steve steel stainless steel steve he just be regular steve with a metal plate on his head but um but we don't know we don't get that confirmation one of the one of the droids that has fallen to the ground emits a holographic projection of doctor dome who was called doctor dome because like the little robots he has a dome in the top of his head a transparent dome

1:01:59over his brain casing so you know you can see his innards and the projection says help me obi one canobi prepare for your doom this attack is merely a minor harbinger of the calamity to follow and what follows i think is rather interesting because stainless steel steve is you know pulls out his justice force signal device to you know call all the justice forces Michael angelo Raphael and Casey Jones take all of this completely and stride they do not seem bothered at all this is just Tuesday i mean they have been through a lot by this point this is true they've seen future toys and try serotones and utroms and so the fact that superheroes are real if i remember in the cartoon Michael angelo or one of them is like a fan of these comics and finding out that their real people was a really big deal to him um but stainless steel steve pulls out his justice force that gives a z z z like Jimmy Olson signal watch from the old shipment comics intentional

1:03:04homage there and we see a stretchy guy get a signal we see a shadowy person in a costume like like they just wear their costume all the time get a signal we see somebody who kind of looks like a retired old man sitting in like wealth and everything but also over to the side are a rather large pair of legs behind uh uh one of those museum barriers he's also getting a justice force signal but his signal is like in a display case and so the device is like beeping while inside a glass display case it's uh these are all of course members of the team and yeah so they just decide to go um go around everybody up Michael angelo introduces themselves as Michael angelo that's Rafael we are two of the teenage mutant ninja turtles i noticed that they have they they've claimed their name they've claimed their name i think for the very first time on page and Peter

1:04:04Laird says it felt very weird to go back and read that because they didn't intend to ever use that phrase in story yeah but yeah that's who they are that's their team name so do they change their would would Michael angelo change their name after they hit 20 okay i'm reading city at war still and letter writers are like come on guys they're getting older time is passing they can't be teenage forever and he's been there like no they're 16 they will always be teenagers Peter mom is only as old as you need him to be for the story mm-hmm yeah i mean marvel did the passage of time thing especially with characters like Peter Parker but for the most part comics keep characters the same age bar Simpson is not not any older now that he was in the first episode unless the episode demands it right if you have a birthday yeah future episodes etc um so we see doctor dome he is a little

1:05:07wrinkly guy and he's like excellent steel reactor design expected soon all my old foes will gather in north hampton stainless steve steel metal head captain deadbolt zippy lad joe elastic the rubber band and battling Bernice is doctor dome a play on doctor doom i think so but like a much less impressive version mm-hmm joe elastic the rubber band was an intentional reference to something from Peter lyrics childhood joe elastic and the rubber band was like either a real or fake musical group and he'd heard the phrase as a kid and always thought i was fun so working it in here was was intentional but he had a full-page image of this doctor dome character and he's ridiculous he's just like a boy man yeah he's like a bow tie invest in his face like a raisin and i'm not sure what happened to his nose or his skull for that matter but later in outer suburbia which i didn't think north hampton was big enough to have suburbia much less outer suburbia

1:06:12but they go to this really big fancy house that stainless steel steve has designed and they go inside and the flash is there only it's not flash it's a zippy lad but problem is his legs don't work anymore so he's in a wheelchair his arms still go at super speed so he can wheelchair himself down the highway at car speeds but yeah that's kind of funny actually yeah you should have seen the looks on the put the pusses of those vets drivers on i-91 as i breeze past them on old messy here oh yeah the pusses yeah old old word for face yeah i just had to catch myself because it wasn't the word of my brain yeah you recognize patterns i had to reread it several times i do like that uh the wheels of his wheelchair are like they look like they'd be highway grade they're wide they're tires yeah um he's not just going around small rooms and stuff with that

1:07:15i see a clear preference for diet pepsy pepsy is far superior to cook where's the pepsy preference on page 16 oh there it is yeah what do you mean pepsy superior to coke you're terrible yeah bottom of page 16 it looks like Rafael is walking over to grab a drink but instead joe last six hands stretches into the panel and he grabs it right in front of him yeah until it you know doesn't work and he spills it all over him yeah well you know we reach a certain age a lot of guys have difficulties with their stretchy arms staying um stretchy it is the kind of thing that you would expect to happen though this were a superpower and they got old that makes sense he's like a stretch arm strong that the corn syrup has started congeal or the hardened in no longer stretches they um start catching up on what's been going on in the years since they went into retirement and stainless steel steve is looking at a picture of captain deadbolt who is this sort of large

1:08:22clay like creature who it kind of looks like the thing but if you were made of gray instead um we find out that his power was to like freeze himself in position and then he couldn't be moved or hurt but he froze himself into position and couldn't unfreeze did he freeze himself or did he just freeze and stop moving yeah I don't know um so he's like an old character who longer can move or function and that's whose feet we saw on display up in zippy lads you know sort of mansion room behind the barrier Peter layered had intended to come back to this idea at some point and do more with the character but he just never did but that was why he brings him in here um yes they just keep on catch up and then suddenly another two page spread of little droids attacking the roof as uh Leonardo looks at I was like oh no because Leonardo and don't tell over here

1:09:23now and they start fighting uh robots and case of jazz like all right let's kick some dome um I really like the action here with Leonardo shishka bobbing three of them on his sword they didn't they didn't shy away from killing these guys no and uh Rafael's like they're in the house get ready yet's violent time and he starts shishka bobbing them as well uh stretchy guy stretches and squishes a guy he runs over the zippy ladder runs over some of them as wheelchair his hands can still move so he can still do his buzzsaw hands trick which is an aspect of the flash that has always bothered me because I don't care how fast you are if you take your fleshy bits and hit something really really hard guess which one's gonna get smushed you say that I do and yet a tornado can put a piece of straw through a tree that is because in that direction the rigidity of the of the straw is enough to go

1:10:30into the poorest bit of the tree at enough speed but the straw is not squishy that's like how an egg from a certain direction has a lot of resistance to pressure our arms don't have that but that was the exact same reason I can give it in flash comics why flash would just like throw people through walls and they get stuck in the wall but be safe and unharmed but yeah um we don't we don't do that we are we are smushy and now we finally get a name for the robots um it's almost like Peter Laird decided here on page 22 that they're going to be called dome oids TM because his curse is my dome oids TM have failed now I must unleash my ultimate weapon and now they get called dome oids on almost every page after this we can pinpoint the moment he thought I've been named for them I do like the little TM though that is super funny hmm yeah at this point it's just kind of like there there's fighting but there's also a giant

1:11:31dome oid who shows up on another two-page image with dr dome in the top driving it it's his dome bot which is a play on dr doom's doom bots who writes this guy's dialogue what a cornball and that's when bathlin Bernice shows up in rocket powered roller skates or something um and she slides and and kicks the dome bot over and smashes it and grabs dome by the lapels and says why are you doing all of this dome why I did it to find you to bring you out of hiding Bernice because I love you dr dome has had an unrequited crush on bradlin Bernice all these years but she she's like it's not even me you were in love with my mom 25 years later ananda who is a the daughter has taken up the the the mantle anyway so there's it's like the sort of like conversation about how unrequited love is not a good motivation to

1:12:32cause mayhem why can't you just like be a person and they have a little conversation about it and he's like uh sure I'll be a person and everything's just kind of kind of over and they leave the wrecked doom bot dome bot behind so what do I think about this uh resolution to the justice league fight that like it was all about misplaced love and not that we are all friends again we're just over now and her mom died three years ago was kind of sad all you have another little complication in the 2k3 what's that uh that dr dome is actually her dad um okay because in the comic layered in the commentary for the comic layered talks about how uh batlin Bernice and stainless steel Steve had been like she in his mind she would have had an unrequited crush on him like was the trope of superhero comics mm-hmm and dome has a crush on Bernice and so there was this like you know unrequited love triangle the idea that she actually hooked up with him was not the original intention

1:13:36but I guess you know when you're adapting you can do what you want to with it yeah what an unrequited love triangle be where all three points are actually obtuse yes they're all obtuse and at the same time not connected because there's no actual but yeah you know comics her her dad is just some unnamed dude that we never meet apparently yeah just some guy and she took up the mantle but yeah and we get we get to the epilogue and Mike Lange on Raphael are hanging out on the north hampton porch reading comics and you know stainless Steve metalhead and doc dome how long are they gonna stay housemates good question ref I'd say they've got a 50 50 chance time heals all wounds right dot dot dot right I don't know exactly why they're ending the comic on a wistful note of how maybe time doesn't heal all wounds I'm not entirely sure what we're supposed to think about that except that maybe layered is pissed at

1:14:38Eastman and talking about enough friends anymore um as far as the wistful note I don't know but the epilogue technically you could read that as everything we've seen before that is something that happens in the justice force comic and they've just inserted themselves into the story oh that's an interesting read I didn't even thought about that yeah that's just raff and Mikey hanging out on the porch reading comics and they're like hey wouldn't it be cool if we were in the justice force comic case he got to bust some heads too and that's funny they're reading comics on a porch at that house in that environment looks pretty nice actually the very sort of tranquil domestic north hampton setting you know setting us out all the justice for shenanigans they were just at the town comic shop you know and then they went home to their little townhouse and it's it's cute and quaint and sweet mm-hmm and then we get to the roast session that is the letters pages

1:15:43yeah there are a couple of cool ads because they're reprinting Ninja Turtles 1 five years ago the book started it all take a look at us today but yeah the letters pages were raff did y'all read these I did I I skimmed every moose of them I didn't like read them in depth but it was a lot of the same thing I didn't know I didn't read together but you suck apart mm-hmm yeah in all caps uh-huh and misspelled but that's okay um they're the letter writers are full of quote recommendations on how they can make things better again make make turtles great again one person says get rid of april and casey and time yeah send april and casey on a trip forever april's been around since the second issue like she's part of the story mm-hmm um Michael Duney is bad news okay sure but it's also a lot of conflicting recommendations and then layered draws a draws an arrow to that like some people like some things other people like

1:16:43other things some people hate some things other people's love those same things is like you can't make everybody happy all you can do is do what you want and hope some people like it yeah but it looks like a lot of the letters are on the same page and that like it's like the recent issues have been off some people did not like eleven which was the introspective townhouse issue which I think we really enjoyed we just wish it had actually been a transition issue and not an end issue um it has been long enough since 16 came out that one of the letters references 16 yeah so everybody has what happened to 15 yeah so it's been thriving about it was talking you with Jim bow there's also a letter from a mom who says the turtles use foul language and violence and if you're gonna make something for children you should be accountable to it and he's like not on comics are for children why aren't you parenting but also yeah um but yeah the letters page was a huge roast followed by an ad for issue 17 on stands in November during each of the mystic

1:17:52world of feudal japan a time of samurai honor and courage Eric uh Talbot is going to do story and art on that it's a pretty neat rugged image of a turtle and look at that an ad for tales of number seven we get ridden that back prehistoric pandemonium dinosaurs turtles and a very ticked off wizard tales number seven which is funny because then the issue 16 the out of order issue has an ad for tales number six and so they just kind of highlights the out of order in a seven it it seems like it with eastern and layered alternating issues that would be a good opportunity for issues to come out really on a timely manner because it'd be kind of a competition mm hmm when also they started the tales issues and another effort to get things out in a timely manner because it was supposed to be turtles issues every other month and tales issues in the intervening months because they were just scripting that other people doing the art and yet the whole thing has gotten away behind schedule mm hmm which lyric mentions in the in the letters columns

1:18:53is not a motto if it's if it's on time it's not a mirage book or if it's not late it's not a mirage book but you know what a waiter on a railroad mm hmm okay so briefly we all did read 16 um 16 came up before 15 but we're we're mentioning it afterward for multiple reasons um this is when I was reading through mirage this last time this is the first time where I read a comic is like that did not feel like a turtles issue like everything up to this point even the non-eastern layered issues had felt like turtles issues more or less this one did not this is Michael Martin and I'm pretty sure this was a story he was already working on that he incorporated the turtles into but it's basically this cute little girl has a time machine that looks like a cardboard box and she's talking to the camera how everything started seven years ago and then she goes back in time and meets the turtles and then disappears and then this little alien kid shows up and meets the

1:19:55turtles and we find out that this set of parents the dad went to work for this multi mega you know corporate corporation um was surrounded by radiation all the time and so their child was a mutant and um figured out how to make a time machine to go back seven years in time so that she can get the help from the turtles to stop her dad from going to work for that company so that whenever they do get pregnant and have a child it's a normal little girl and it's cute and there's some fun jokes in fact this is the first time the turtles explicitly reference the fact that the turtles all look alike which is as soon as we get mentioned on page a few times by other artists um but it doesn't feel like a turtle story what were y'all's thoughts on this issue um i like the art style it was cute yeah it's cute and consistent which i like the turtles look like they're emulating like the front cover of issue number one turtles yeah like it looks like they're directly copying that style with a slightly more cartoonish bent

1:20:57yeah i mean it was it was okay clinton what do you think of sixteen the little girls adorable i would actually probably read more comics about her well they will be heard the turtles are in this completely by happenstance basically if they had met indiana you know if the little girl had met indiana jones or wolverine or charlie brown you know the story still happens basically the same with the exception of maybe the american gothic people being scared to death i love the fact they use the american gothic the image was funny because you read this panel the page where she's talking about her parents backstory and they have like the all belong nondescript faces and then you see the american gothic you realize that her parents are the american gothic couple that was really funny which is funny enough because the american gothic couple or not a couple

1:21:57uh-huh it's a father and daughter yep oh i don't even know they were actually supposed to be real people um but yeah i was just looking that up because that's something i had learned in our history that they were a father and daughter but so many people assume i mean understandably so that it's a couple but nope it's a father and daughter um i mean i like the story itself but about halfway through it i'm sitting here saying this could have been an email like this this would have played out wonderfully as a backup or a short story in one of those collections something like that there is no reason this needs to be thirty pages yeah and whenever we're when i was talking about i was thinking thinking about how i wanted to structure this podcast this was the first issue that came to mind on we don't need to give every mirage issue full coverage i would like to read them on address them all but like we don't have to talk about this comic for half an episode

1:22:59especially with a lot of things coming up yeah yeah and they're there even more egregious examples of we don't need to talk about that for half an episode yeah issues i'm telling you that three issue arc i'm gonna the the runniston p style arc yes i don't know if i can read it again there are things in this world that are unreadable i have all three of those episodes all three of those issues in one episode to just get it out of the way it reads quickly does it though what's kind of like what we were talking about um was a turtle soup and like one of these stories in there was actually not the longest story by page count but felt like the longest story just trying to get through it yeah yeah the coolest part of this issue is the ad for leather head i know it tells it's yes would hearing a cat snore make you feel better clinton yes and this came out also john yeah you are you got to stop talking seeing here the cat snore

1:24:06hold on a second it's a squeaky snore okay continue i had to share john you were completely missing the ad for commando sores okay yes there isn't ad for commando sores there there are a few things that scream late 80s more than this like dino riders i love dino riders so did i those toys were so ungodly expensive they made transformers look cheap though there was and this kind of messifies me there was a one thousand copy only um for a limited edition hard cover from ninja turtles so like they collected i guess just the eastman layered run in this really nice hard cover five hundred sixty pages but only one thousand copies were run and that was it five hundred and sixty pages god that's that's what that's that's um wow that that's a lot of issues for

1:25:10yeah somebody somewhere has to have this hard cover yeah someone somewhere i would like to do some image searching and see if i can find uh examples of it you know see kind of getting anywhere it looked like um it contradicts itself in this ad though what's that the big bold text says one thousand copies only the rest of the ad copy says we are only printing five thousand of this limited edition oh so was it one thousand or five thousand yeah that's interesting i bet one thousand is printed more oh okay okay wait wait wait the limited edition is one thousand the deluxe paperback is five thousand okay so they're doing one thousand hard covers five thousand soft covers got you yeah i had i had to actually read the order form put it all together um this came out before June because it's saying that the tails i'm sorry before july because it says this tails issue is coming out in july um there's also an ad four fifteen coming this summer um so

1:26:14that one kid who's like what happened to fifteen there is an ad four in the back of this issue i would really like to know how many times in comics history you have an ad in an issue for the unpublished previous issue number but anyways um that is the end of our turtles coverage for today so we um next episode what are we looking at next episode bring up the spreadsheet we're going to wrap up our adventures arc with issue twenty five because after issue twenty five we're taking a small detour which we'll talk about next time although we've already mentioned it before um and then we're going to come over to talk about tails issue number six with that leather head storyline that we just saw an ad four so that is coming next episode as well i'm excited to revisit the first leatherhead episode issue i have not read that in a quite some time and i'm excited to see where this uh crying headed shredder story ends up and just think after after issue twenty five

1:27:17we get to take a lane on a magical musical journey i don't know oh yeah they're shells tour yes that's our little detail our detour that we're going to take after your power