How Mirage's TMNT Universe ends, fictionally

I don't know how many Turtle fans there are on this site, or how many have any interest in the Mirage comics, but I wrote this up today for my Turtle blog and figured some people here might take interest in it:

The (mysterious) Future Era of the Mirage Universe


Basically, the ongoing Mirage TMNT universe, which began in 1984 with TMNT (Vol. 1) #1 and just ended this year with Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #70, would ocassionally give us glimpses at the mysterious future of the four Turtles.

Hints were dropped in various issues for 20 years, in a non-linear fashion and full of cryptic implications. It was all very confusing.

So I got all the info together and pieced the future into chronolgical order and, much to my surprise, there's actually a pretty coherent narrative in there (albeit with some contradictions).

If you have even a small curiosity about the Mirage TMNT universe, you might be surprised to see how depressing everyone's future is, particularly in the ways many of the Turtles are destined to pass away.

Don's death chokes me up every time. : (

Why did American animation stop outsourcing to Toei?

It sorta dawned on me the other day while I was thinking about the shows Toei worked on in the past (not sure what spurred that thought), that Toei hadn't been outsourced for an American cartoon in a very, very long time.

I tried to think of ONE American production during the 90s or later that they animated and couldn't think of one.

A web archive of Toei's resume of coproductions shows that they hadn't worked on anything since 1988's Superman series by Ruby Spears. I dunno how accurate that list is, since it doesn't include "Pryde of the X-Men" from 1989, which they animated, but still.


Any particular reason, if anybody knows, why Toei stopped being outsourced for American productions? I mean, during the 80s, it wasn't like just *one* studio in America outsourced animation to them. At some point in time, pretty much EVERY American animation studio, from DiC to Hanna Barbara to Ruby Spears to Fred Wolf to Sunbow used them at some point. So it can't be like every American animation studio at the dawn of 1990 got together and just decided, "Hey, those Toei guys? Screw em".

Did Toei actively stop outsourcing their work force for foreign productions in 1990? Like some corporate mandate? Did their services simply get to expensive? I know that by the 90s, a shift from Japanese to Korean and Filipino animation had begun, as studios there were more cost-effective (if not particularly as high quality as the Japanese studios).

I'm just curious and asking on the off-chance any animation enthusiasts might happen to know the deal. Weird that such a staple of American animation in the 80s just suddenly quit working on foreign productions, especially considering the volume Toei handled in the 80s must've meant it was very lucrative for them.

Why is this toy making my puppy cry?

Last Tuesday we got a new puppy, an 8 month-old chocolate lab/terrier (so he's like a regular lab only smaller and with a white tummy) named Moose.

He's adorable and awesome, but he's also a big wuss. He's so submissive he won't even play tug of war (he just hands the knotted rope over whenever I pull on it). I love him, though.


But anyway, we got him this chew toy and his reaction to it has me mystified.

It's a stuffed orange bone with a squeaker inside. Nothing special. He loves the thing and its the only one of all the chew toys we got him that he really invests any chew time in.

He loves gnawing on the thing and spends lots of time with it, but...

As he chews on it, he whimpers at it. And I don't know WHY. There's nothing wrong with his teeth, so he's not in pain. He's whimpering *at* the toy.

I thought at first that maybe the squeaking was scaring him (again, he's a wuss), but he whimpers regardless of whether it sqeaks or not. And he whimpers WHILE he's devouring the thing and looking like he's having a good time.

VHAT IST VRONG VITH MEIN PUPPY!?

Peter Jackson gets frustrated,

Or so reports IGN with some embelishment on my part.



I'm still bummed that Del Toro had to leave the project, if only because his visual style would have brought a harder edge of horror to the monsters and Gollum, which I would've loved (Gollum in "The Hobbit" is supposed to be threatening, as opposed to the comedy relief role he was reduced to in the LOTR series).

But, you know, I can't really say I have a problem "settling" for Peter Jackson, either.

I just want these freaking movies some time before 2020.

Are the Infinity Gauntlet sequels worth reading?

Infinity Gauntlet was one of those events that was going on in comics when I was a kid that I knew all about but didn't read at the time (my allowence was reserved strictly for the X-books of the day). And time went by and I just never got around to it until now.

I picked up the "Rebirth of Thanos" trade first and thought it was fantastic, particularly the "Thanos Quest" portion. I'm glad I read it before Infinity Gauntlet, otherwise I'd kind have been missing half the story. Plus, it helped me build an appreciation for Thanos as a character which I never really had before. I sorta just wrote him off as "Purple Darkseid" and never really paid him much mind.

Infinity Gauntlet was enjoyable because it played with my expectations. I was expecting it to be all about the bit hero team-up and just 6 issues of Wolverine and Cap fighting Thanos, but it wasn't. He knocked them out by issue #3, so I had no clue what to expect for the last half of the series. When all the celestial and god-like beings of the Marvel unvierse showed up en masse to confront Thanos I was pretty pumped and I was actually surprised at the twist they used to get the Gauntlet away from him. Didn't see it coming.

It was a good read.


But how are the sequels, Infinity War and Infinity Crusade? I know they don't have any George Perez art, so that's already a detraction, but I tend to hear nothing but negative remarks about the books. The only thing I know about them is that they're where the Doppelganger from "Maximum Carnage" came from. Not... terribly appealing.

I ask because they're a three-volume investment (Marvel split Infinity War into two trades) and that's kind of expensive. Infinity Gauntlet left the story in a good place and I don't really want to read any sequels if they aren't any good. I mean, I'll read a bad sequel if it's required to finish a storyline, but Infinity Gauntlet finished pretty well on its own.

Should I bother?