Wednesday 25 November 2015

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Works - Volume 2

So here is my first post on the blog and I hope you enjoy it.  I recently acquired “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the Works Volume 2” as a gift and thought it would be fun to share my thoughts on the book. 

Where to start.  This book collects the Colour Classics issues 8 to 11 along with the Michelangelo, Donatello and Leonardo One Shots.  So 7 issues in total, each racking up 40 odd pages so there is a LOT of comic book here for a total of 256 pages.  The book itself is an oversized edition compared to a regular comic and is hard backed and styled to look like a Pizza Box.  It looks neat but kind of not in character to the original Eastman & Laird comics.  I don’t recall them eating Pizza in any of these stories!  This theme continues inside with the contents pages made to look like a Pizza menu which again looks neat but feels misplaced.  The whole book is in a nice matt finish.  This is certainly my preference and there is not a glare in sight where ever you look including the cover.  The cover does not feel quite as robust as it could as a result but again it’s done to make the most of the Pizza box idea.

The new colours look great!
On the whole the book is excellent.  But it certainly does not put every step in the right place.  There are a couple of (in my opinion) glaring errors in this book which I will cover later.  Let’s start with the positives.

I suppose one of the most obvious is the oversized nature of the book.  The pages look amazing!  The art just looks fantastic in this size, they really feel like they’re jumping out of the pages at you!  Action heavy issues like Leonardo and Issue 10 are just brilliant and a joy to behold.  I really dig the large size of this book even if to be honest it’s kind of heavy and unwieldy to read.

The next positive is the addition of colours to these originally black and white issues.  I love the B&W originals.  It’s what I read as a teen and to be honest most of my favourite comics are in black and white.  But the job on these colours is amazing!   They have been done (for the most part) so so well.  The Turtles themselves look amazing with fantastic tones and all the backgrounds look really good and well lived in.  I particularly like the Michelangelo issue which is the Christmas special and has a LOT of snow everywhere.  As much as I love the B&W original you can’t deny that details are far easier to pick out in colour as it’s less of an explosion to your eyes. 
I love both of these pics but the colour
one sure is easier on the eyes
Same again on Chets Toy Store.
Ahhh good old Klunk (the cat)

Issues 9, 11 and Donatello equally benefit from the overhaul of colours.  All look brilliant and while they don’t make the issues any better for me I imagine younger readers who are new to these stories will really like and prefer to have these in colour.


I did say above there were some negatives and a couple of these are really rather unforgivable even if it would not stop me recommending the Colour Classics to anyone.

OK so here we go.  I have been bursting to get this off my chest and I can’t wait any longer.  Issue 8!  I love issue 8, it’s one of my very favourite TMNT stories. It’s the TMNT / Cerebus cross over issue.  I admit I have ZERO knowledge of the Cerebus the Aardvark character and as great as he is here for me it’s all about Renet the Time Mistress and Savanti Romero (the bad guy).  Both are hilarious and make this such a fun story.  So what’s my beef?  WHY IS RENET RED?  WHY?  It looks terrible.  They have even gone so far as to change the cover from her original blue to red and it just looks awful.  To make it worse the ONLY reason I got hold of this book (I have all the colour classics in digital) is because issue 8 was not released individually.  I believe this is due to some kind of licencing issue due to Cerebus, tho I kind of don’t buy this as they have released it here and in the “Ultimate Collection”.  I got both just to get this issue.  At least I grabbed “Ultimate Collection” in digital and have the issue stored on my trusty tablet.  So my excitement of getting this in the largely fantastic colour classics line was dashed as soon as I got to the stinking red cover.  Finding the Time Lords floating head also in red barley registered after the disappointment but again I don’t like it!
I really HATE that red cover 
And to continue the theme, Shredder is now a blue/black and again the original cover for issue 10 has been adjusted from Shredders original red to blue/black.  I admit while I am not a fan it does not bother me too much.  Maybe they were throwing a nod at the old cartoons where Shredder is blue and I was Ok with it till I found Renet in red and just wished they had left them both alone.  But despite my moaning the colour classics do for the most part look great!  It only really negatively effects 2 issues and then only for one (tho important) character in each.  For someone who has not read these before or is not such a fan boy as I am, you probably won’t even notice.  But for me, considering the high price of this book £37 I would recommend grabbing the issues in digital for far cheaper.  You can even grab the Black and White “Ultimate Collection” to grab issue 8 and the Colour Classics in digital for less than the price of this book.

I don't hate the Blue/Black but I certainly like the Red better

It does not take much of an imagination to know how much
 better this would be in the correct colours

So despite my personal gripes at some of the decisions they have made, this is a fantastic book crammed full of great stories that for the most part look excellent and are hugely enjoyable to read.  The oversized nature of this book does genuinely add something that my 10” tablet cannot provide and I'm sure most will NOT have the same distaste towards certain aspects I have.  I do still think that it offers poor value for the money but the strength of the stories are great and many new readers will love all the new colours.

7 out of 10

Edit.  Well the formatting is kind of pants but I am glad to have something up and have learnt a bit.

2 comments:

  1. Hey there, great to see the blog taking shape, I have added at link to this blog on my front page.

    And now a shameless plug http://wargamer40kcraziness.blogspot.co.uk/

    Cowabunga!


    ReplyDelete
  2. Cheers dude. Thanks for the support. Something to invest my time in ;)

    ReplyDelete