4 out of 5

Now, I love the Turtles.  I’ve bought some stupid TMNT shit in my time and continue to do so.  IDW’s / Nikelodeon’s amazing reboot of the franchise has been of top quality, and IDW’s reprints of any and everything has been purely professional fan service.  But then some extra things come out – like this gorgeous, over-sized treasury edition – and you buy them ’cause you buy everything and, well, despite having an interesting ideas behind it (notes, sketches, similar to some of the material in the hardback original reprints that’ve been happening), slots more into the cash-grab territory than some other purchases.  Sorry, Kev.

The presentation, as usual, is gorgeous.  Whatever Treasury dimensions are, that’s what’s happening here, bound between glossy thick cardboard stock that keeps a firm shape despite having regular angled binding and heavy pages that perfectly capture the original blue pen inks Eastman used to sketch these pages and make notes.  About 1/3rd of the book is thumbnails / storyboards w/ pacing and paneling notes by Kev, then some rough to inked comparisons with further notes, then some rough scripts for the first few ‘City at War’ issues, and then some pin-ups, including an awesome every-Mirage-artist mash-up.

The cash-grab I’m mentioning is because it’s unclear if this actually adds anything new.  No, we haven’t seen these roughs before, but the edition feels somewhat incomplete – like, I get that if they’d reprinted the actual issue in here it might’ve made a later color reprint or hardcover reprint repetitive, but because you have nothing to compare the loose versions of the pages to, unless you’re intimately familiar with issue 50, this acts more as a sketchbook than a reference.  And some clarification on the notes – even transcribing some of the harder-to-read stuff – would’ve been good, but it’s not even clear if these notes were written then or now.  I assume then, which means, furthermore, some footnotes would’ve been handy.  The whole issue is in roughs but only a few pages get the inked comparison (again, lacking notes, and since there seem to be two styles of inking examples of some pages, them notes woulda been… yeah, nice), and though the pin-ups are awesome, since they’re a small handfull, it seems more like filler.  And the most obvious ‘incomplete’ nod comes from the script outline at the end, which is titled for the whole City at War series (issues 50-62?  right?), but the outline cuts out after issue 53 or 54.  Why?  Out of room?  They didn’t actually script out that much?  Kev lost the pages?  Just give me somethin’.

But, all that being complained about – gift horse.  I keep buying the stuff ’cause I love it, and though I wish there was more to go off of in this issue, I’ve already been over it twice to take in the ease with which Eastman captured such hectic battle scenes but noted to himself that he needed help with his more static stuff.  Cash-grab or not, sigh, it’s still freakin’ fan service, and we gobble it the shit up.