2 out of 5

I am all for the return of comics journalism that kicked up in 2025 and 2026, with print, indie books / magazines doing the legit Wizard thing of mini-price guides / buyer guides / popularity rankings and the like, alongside fandom-style interviews and “check this book out”s or Comics Journal-style deep dives. Furthermore: I appreciate that a lot of these things are wholly independent ventures, and thus small crews, funded by crowd sourcing or advertising or a mix. So Comics! The Magazine managing to do 30+ monthly pages in full color with 16 features – trying to hit a balance of quick hits + salient info – is very admirable, especially at a 2.99 price point versus the $5 and above of most books.

But.

Hm.

I could’ve just picked up the wrong issue. I will truly set aside my initial disappointment: I guess I misread the press on this in thinking that it was an interview with TMNT’s Kev Eastman and Peter Laird, when… damn, it’s just Laird doing some [inking?] on the cover, although these Turtles are possibly his – there are some Eastman tics, but the dimensions aren’t as “crunchy” as Kevin’s tend to be. Either way, while it’s not nothin’ to get Pete back out and working on Turtles in some way (ever since the sale to Nick, he’d almost wholly withdrawn, even on his blog), it’s admittedly a lot less of a “thing” than it would’ve been for him to be interviewed, and this isn’t the first reappearance of Laird on [inks] in the recent years.

So that’s on me for expecting something else.

That said, the interview with Eastman is kind of a nothingburger. The guy has done a billion press pieces since the 80s, and especially since his heavy involvement with the IDW line, he’s done this interview 100 times. The interviewer even says he’s not going to go over the tired ol’ origin story… and then asks a question about it. Which is essentially where my rating is coming from: I wish I could get behind the quality of the content here, but it misses the mark on a fanzine level too often, not really landing on a point for some articles (a final “Next big thing” column doesn’t really clarify what differentiates the Thing they’re highlighting beyond… it’s new), and whiffing on some editorial bits, like giving us a plot summary of the book you’re trying to hype to us so the interview with the creators has relevance. …What sucks about that in a cringey way is that these errors are often committed… by the editor, alongside a slew of typos and missing words and sentences cut-off or repeated. Yi yi yi.

Again: it’s a small act, done quick, and sold cheap. I have zero doubt there’s sweat and love going in to every issue. But if the end results feel more sloppy than passionate, and furthermore occasionally bungles selling me on whatever’s featured more often than not (not everything is meant for me, but ideally I walk away with a small handful of things to check out), then it’s hard for me to commit to supporting this as the new wave of comics journalism.

I’m glad folks are out here doing this, and I do plan to check out any further issues with some cover stories that grab me – I recognize it could take a few more issues to hit a stride – but this TMNT cover-feature issue isn’t the one to really rev my engine.