2 out of 5

Ah, another day, another reprint of a Turtles book – specifically the IDW series.  Hey, it’s a dollar, kudos.  So why buy it if you already own twenty other copies of it…?  Why, for the “Complete IDW TMTN Reading Guide!” promised on the cover, of course, which is exactly why they do things like that.  Thus I’ll be rating the issue for that bonus content, since nothing else has been redone here, as far as I can tell.

A reading guide, to me, tells us what order to read things in, which should be helpful for the IDW-verse, since they print a mini-series every time I blink.  The reading guide is… okay.  It accomplishes that requirement, essentially, I guess I just wish a little more work had been put into it, because really, it just amounts to saying: Read the trades.  They call out the micro-series individually, which is interesting, so I’m not sure why they didn’t call out the individual issues as well, noting where they group in trades.  (Because it would take more work than a dollar can get ya, perhaps.)  That’s all average, then, but I’ve knocked off the ‘average’ star to make it two because the graphical presentation is unnecessarily confusing, with lines winding around the page for no good reason except to fill space.  Also: “The story continues!  With mini-series’, one-shots and crossovers….”  That’s the beginning copy on the bottom of the page explaining what the guide is for.  As far as I’m familiar with the English language, ” mini-series’ ” has no reason to have an apostrophe after it.

The reading guide is at least better than the Ghostbusters one, printed as a bonus here as well, because that’s literally “read the trades.”  Numbers are confusing, I guess.