Plug: My review for “TMNT Adventures” Volume 2
At The Trade Paperback Reading Order. Give it a look!
Despite the “2” on the cover, this volume contains the Archie series’ very first original stories–the book up until then had consisted of adaptations of cartoon episodes–arguably making this the actual start of the series proper. The difference between it and the source is pretty much immediately noticeable. Sure, the Ken Mitchroney art is clearly inspired by the cartoon, and characters and elements that would later be abandoned, like the Turtle Blimp and mainstays Bebop and Rocksteady–are still being used, but even then there are a host of subtle differentiating details dotting the book, foreshadowing the turn it would eventually take. Most importantly, stories are less cynical: whereas the cartoon felt like the product of people who knew they were creating something utterly disposable and therefore didn’t require things like sympathetic characters or stories with proper weight, the creators here care and want the reader to care. Less noticeably, the various characters have been made different in ways subtle and not: the turtles are less reliant on their theme-song quirks; the Shredder and Krang feel more like legitimate threats than annoyances, April, despite having only a cameo, appears long enough to have her professional context altered.
Announcements: Chasing Smaller Sheep and Comic Book Reviews
I haven’t posted anything here in a while, but I have a perfectly good excuse. I was on the moon. With Steve.
(Actually, no. It’s just that between work, a sudden influx of activity on my other blog, and life, I just haven’t been able to summon the focus required for the sort of thing that I like posting here.)
In any case, I just wanted to announce that this blog now has an associated Tumblr page, Chasing Smaller Sheep,where I’ll be posting whatever interests me that doesn’t require the whole post treatment. Also, I am now writing comic book reviews for The Trade Paperback Reading Order, a website focusing on graphic novel trade paperbacks. The first one is a review of the third volume of Archie: The Married Life, which among other things features the wedding of Kevin Keller and his therapist boyfriend Clay Walker, and the plan is to produce one new review a week.
So yeah. While it’ll probably take a while, I still plan on producing content for this blog. But until then, I’m far from gone.
Chasing Sheep 