5 out of 5

This rating is more of a representation of my appreciation of what this is, and the effort to bring it to us English-readers, as opposed to rating its content.  ‘Tales’ is an Italian-to-English translated Turtles comic, brought to us by Nortock Diab, sourced from Italian kids comics written in the early 90s.  The strip – as originally written by Federica Montanari, illustrated by Giuseppe Montanari and Claudio Piccoli – is definitely of the goofball, Fred Wolf variety of that era’s popular cartoon, but it’s a little kooky by those standards, whether by way of the translation or original script or both: the Turtles escorting a UNICEF train; commandeering a helicopter; skiing Foot Soldiers; an oddly kindly-spoken Krang…  Diab adds a traditional ‘tales’ framing front page and endpiece to set it in the elseworldsy-type vibe of the Tales of the TMNT books (hence its title), which just adds to the sense that there’s a lot of fan love bringing this forth.  Diab also adds a one page history on the Italian TMNT comics, of which, sadly, it seems like there might’ve been a nice handful of original offerings that will probably not be translated any time soon.

Available as a free download.