3 out of 5

Covers the first year of issues (001 – 012)

It’s glossy, it’s over-sized, it comes with like ninety toys per issue (a seemingly unique trait to UK kids mags)…  The newest incarnation of the Turtles Magazine is definitely the slickest yet, matching the fresh vibe and CGI presentation of the current series.  Now, I haven’t read the ‘Flash Forward’ magazine, so new clue as to the standards there, but comparing this to the old Welsh Publications mag, there’s an odd parallel: the 90s mag was happening in conjunction with the Fred Wolf cartoon which, more often than not, was pretty hokey and silly.  This Panini mag is happening along with the Nick cartoon, which surprises, often, with how sharp and smart it is.  And the mags flip the formula.  The Welsh volumes were nicely varied, and actually required kids to read.  Yes, they had mostly the same features issue to issue, but I can honestly say that they felt like legitimate attempts to educate along with Turtle-inate, articles about the world’s reptiles, kids involved in surprising activities, and generally a text story as ‘told’ by Splinter were all written at a comfortable beginner’s level but never over-simplified insultingly.  Plus: comics by Jim Lawson.  The Panini books, on the other hand, are pretty dumb.  Each issue requires a couple brain cells to find “hidden” objects are “decipher” messages or pictures, or find your way through a maze, all listed as being indicative of different “skills” of a ninja.  So it truly amounts to a picture book – all the art is perhaps clipped right from the show’s components, with CGI’d backgrounds to match.  To be fair, it seems like the mag is skewed toward a young audience, but based on the art submissions (the Welsh magazine had a similar letter column) – readers were / are a similar age… so… kids are dumber, or we’re just totally comfortable with under-estimating them.  But let’s assume we’re okay with the content being so basic – it would still lower my rating because there’s no variation.  You get a different poster or character to color, but the puzzles are 100% interchangeable.  So thank goodness the comics that are included are, on the whole, better than the monster-of-the-week yuks of Lawson’s comics (though of course those were charming in their own way) and, actually, better than the IDW series, which feels too ‘safe’ to ever really excite, whereas the work in these Panini mags has a sort of off-the-cuff feeling to it that energizes the visuals and stories.  A year in, I’m noticing some artists and writers move back and forth between IDW and here, so perhaps someone else was taking notice as well.

Magazine: boring.  Comics: great.  Worth the shipping and handling to get it from overseas?  For me, sure.  But I felt like I got my money’s worth from the old mags, whereas with these, I know I’m just being a collector.  (Though, again, the comics are good.)