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Happy April 25th!!!!

Miss Congeniality (2000) dir. Donald Petrie

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TMNT ADVENTURES: THE FOREVER WAR (kind of FAN MADE)

April 2024

By Steve Murphy, Chris Allan, Andrew Modeen, Artem Tsarkov, Arseniy Dubakov, Egor Prutov , Jon D'Agostino, Dmitry Bobrovnik, Yuri Kochin, and Jim Lawson.

The Shredder finally succeeds at erasing the Turtles from history and conquering the world. But the Turtles and Splinter will try to defeat him and ensure their existence in this conclusion of the iconic Archie series.

SCORE: 8

You'll have to forgive the lack of images, but it is very hard to scan this book (I'll see what I can do for the video review, but I may need to work with photos of it). In any case, this is another of those fan projects by Arseniy Dubakov and Andrew Modeen... but with some interesting twists in its genesis.

You probably remember that this saga was announced in 1995 before the Archie adventures were canceled, and fans have been speculating forever about how the story ended.

In 2009 we almost got the conclusion by the original team (Steve Murphy and Chris Allan), but the turtles were sold to Viacom and the plans never materialized. In any case, Murphy couldn't remember where he was going with the story, so it would be fair to say that it was never going to be the same arc.

More recently, Chris Allan met Arseniy and the two got together to make this project happen. The first chapter (which was made public at some point in the past few years), was mostly recovered from 1995, but it had been colored and edited by the new team.

As far as I know, the second chapter was plotted by Steve Murphy, and I can say that the two first chapters feel the most like the original book... with some annoying differences.

After that, the book does its job, and the story works very well. The project was promoted as "closing all open plots" of the original series, but fortunately, it only tried to solve a time paradox that has always been a problem in that book. I applaud the restrain of the writers from bringing up every single plot point just to let readers know they read the book (as is usually the case with these projects).

The art is probably the most spectacular aspect of the book. It's an updated look for the Archie adventures that for the most part, looks like a continuation of the story. There are some stylistic differences when it comes to inking after chapter one, but you get used to them after a while.

The book comes with two back-up stories. One penciled by Jim Lawson that tries to make sense of the convoluted Archie timeline (specifically about which Shredder you were looking at in each adventure). The second backup is some sort of epilogue to Forever War that will leave you with more questions than answers.

For me, the weakest point of the book is the "overwriting" from Andrew.

It's hard to explain, but Andrew goes into these long narrations directed at the reader that just feel overproduced and underproduced at the same time. There is an overuse of "Modeen" expressions that can be said by any character at any time. Perhaps because he is not doing the writing/plotting alone, this is his best story yet. We know Andrew is a fan, an we know he can write. But it would be nice if he could work on his dialogues and... I'm going to call it now... think twice before adding an unnecessary celebrity quote at the beginning of each chapter.

I am not sure if this was in the original plot, but some elements in this story were even darker than the original series (like slashing a classic character in two). I get that we all grew up and we can take it, but this should be a continuation of that book, and I feel that it wasn't this bloody (most of the time).

But again, this story worked for me, it didn't bring up characters and plots just for the sake of it, and the turtles were front and center.

Should we consider this an ending for the Archie series? Well, just like it happened with Volume 3 before Urban Legends came out, this is all we can get. It's technically just the story, and not a proper ending, so you could still consider "Year of the Turtle" the final story (I assume that it not being referenced was intentional). There is one reference to "TMNT: Odyssey" (because for some reason, all these projects need to share the same multiverse), but it can be easily ignored... I think.

Maybe one day IDW will decide to do their own version of Forever War, but I don't think Chris Allan would go through this ordeal again... I think it could be published as is (fourth-wall monologuing included). Perhaps censoring some of the blood, to keep it consistent with Archie guidelines.

Now, let's take a look at those spoilers after the break...

You guessed it, most of the chapters take place in an alternate timeline. This allows for familiar characters to return even if they were already dead. And also introduces Carter to the Archie universe... and he may be British... I don't know.

Most characters show up to die... which isn't unusual on alternate timeline stories, but feels like a waste. Carter and Claire had very little time to do anything, and Claire being April's sister is an interesting twist... but I wonder what caused it? It is implied that they may have been separated at some point, but the existence of the same photograph without her suggests there wee further alterations to that timeline.

The Mutanimals play the bad guys... probably for the better. I wonder if the reason they didn't undo their deaths, or brought back Cherubae, was so that it could all tie into "TMNT: Odyssey"? Whatever the reason was, I appreciate it.

Perhaps the biggest reveal was that Chet was the Rat King. While this is a fun twist, some things are a bit too convenient. Why did he choose the H'antaan name? And why didn't he ever mentioned this to anyone in the original timeline? (Apart from the flashback in this book).

Overall, Shredder's plan makes sense (for once), although he somehow recreated all the mutants from the original series, even the ones that weren't mutants (like Katmandu)... perhaps he and Al'Falqa simply joined the cause.

There isn't much characterization for the turtles, but I think is in line with the original book as well. And to be fair, the main focus is the story.

The Jim Lawson back-up also introduces another problem, a Shredder that finally remember everything (this may be the one in "Year of the Turtle"). Mr. Null decides to share all of this, searching for the Turnstone (a "TMNT: Odyssey" plot). I don't like these fan-projects being all connected, but I appreciate the long explanation of the Shredder paradox in the Archie adventures. It also officialized that Armaggon created the Archie universe.

I would have appreciated a Mr. Null origin story... but I guess that would have clashed with "Odyssey" (and this is why I don't like them being connected).

I may sound negative, but my nitpicks only took two points from the overall score. I am happy with the results, and I think we can now stop wondering what it could have been.

Although... can you imagine what it could have been in 1995?

That my friends... is the forever war.

[Include some super serious celebrity quote here]

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I only seem to post on "Tumblr holidays" nowadays. I last posted on March 15, the Ides of March. Today I'm posting on April 8th, Rex Manning Day (from the movie Empire Records). I'll (hopefully) be back on the last day of April for "It's gonna be May."

#tumblr #tumblr holidays #honestly when my last blog got taken down I lost the desire to post so I'm barely on here anymore

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I need to watch this movie

Not on Rex Manning Day!

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There are two kinds of people on my feed today. I'm at the intersection of both.

And

Happy birthday to Stiles Stilinski.

Where do you fall in this?

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Act accordingly.

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Happy Rex Manning Day 💜 Act accordingly!

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I'm so glad that Marvel finally got permission to reprint these. Hopefully they'll be able to reintegrate him into the comics too

GH: ROM #43

ROM, SPACEKNIGHT is one of the better-remembered series of the early 1980s, this despite the fact that it was a toy tie-in comic. The toy was a bust, but the comic wound up running for 75 issues, a respectable run by any metric. Along with MICRONAUTS, it was writer Bill Manto’s greatest success in this period, as he invested these series with the same amount of imagination and energy that he…

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I'm still waiting for my powers to activate.

Did anyone save that cheerleader yet?

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Yep, constantly

😁🙋‍♀️

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Boris Vallejo

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an A+ Iron Man Yellow Pages ad...

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Car Repair Expenses

So I've gotten myself into a hell of a mess this week. So the other day my dad had surgery and I had to drive him there and as it was gonna take a good amount of hours I decided to go out and run some errands. But as I was pulling back out onto the highway my car started to break down as all of my alarms started going off and I started to lose control of the steering wheel and pulled over. Thankfully I managed to pull over and make an emergency stop before getting into a crash but after I did, everything shut down. I managed to get my car towed and taken to a local repair shop where they were able to replace my car battery. I was able to make it back to my home town, drop my dad off, then make it back to my apartment however throughout the drive back my car alarm told me to check my charging system but by the time I made it back to my apartment it'd be too late.

My plan this morning was to drop my sister off at work then drive my car to my dealer shop to make sure things were okay. However, as soon as I started my car again in the parking lot the battery died again and systems stopped working. I tried to get road side assistance but that wasn't helping and took a while just to get a tow so I could get to my car dealer shop. It took them even longer to be able to start inspecting the damages on my car but when they finally did, they informed me my car sprung an oil leak that damaged my oil control valve, my alternator, and stressed down the battery and caused it to fail and die. They'll be able to get it fixed thankfully soon however this is going to cause a massive dent on my finances and I could use some help. Any donations and reposts will go a long way.

I know it seems like a lot but the tow yesterday was $105 dollars then getting the temporary battery replacement job was $500. And from the problems today the second tow was $142 and the fix for my car tomorrow is gonna cost me $1940. The tow costs I can accept the money loss on but I could use the help on the expenses for the car repair. I appreciate any support you can give. Thank you.

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Please prank responsibly on April Fool's Day.

#skeletor #skeletor meme #april 1st #april fool's day