4 out of 5
IDW’s reprints of volume 4, which… is a fabled thing. If you were on the TMNT boards when IDW first started in on the Mirage series reprints, then Archie, there were whispers a’plenty about the possibilities. Image was a shock, but felt… attainable. So it was awesome that it happened (and props to finishing it off), if within the “this might happen” options on the table. But volume 4? That thing was hard to get even when it was being published. And sure enough, we got reprints of reprints of reprints in color and director’s cuts and even lost stories before / until… volume 4.
All to say: I rag on IDW’s money-loving aforementioned reprinty ways, but I also have to approve of how thoroughly they’ve been working through the Turtles archives.
What these are: exact reprints of the originals. The page stock is glossier than the Mirage versions thicker paper, which makes the work brighter (and arguably loses some physical texture), but I don’t have a legit argument for one style of printing over the other, and by dint of making the series more available overall… I’m good with it.
What these are missing: sadly, the letters pages, though that’s to be expected. But man, some wild discourse on those back in the day. What I’m surprised at, though, is that they cut (or couldn’t get ahold of) some of the BTS photos and toy mockups and stuff that appeared in the Mirage backmatter, with – up through these issues, at least – only Pete’s designs of the alterna-Turtles being included. The frontispiece chosen for each issue, plucked from a panel, is a nice touch, though feels a little lazy when it repeats. Like – do it if you’re going to do it.
What these add: there’s some nice work done with the title to get it to work with the art the same way as the original, and they do palette swaps to match the cover colors, another nice touch. The bonus covers also bring in some old school TMNT folks, which is super cool (and they’ll sometimes print the alternates inside, in case you missed them).
That’s it, though. So you’re paying for convenience, and some cover tweaks. As suggested above, you already get a lot of credit just for bringing these out, but I can’t call it a perfect project when I feel like they could’ve done something more to give readers a sense of the history.
