Thad reviews the online-distributed
TMNT #29, using an inordinate number of parentheses, possibly because he has been staring at LISP code all day.
The book has a strong Star Wars Cantina vibe, from Casey and the Utroms in New York (complete with Yoda cameo) to Leonardo and Oroku Yoshi in the Battle Nexus, with Michelangelo on the Triceraton ship feeling a little more Millennium Falcon-y.
More than anything it's designed to ease the reader (and presumably the writer) back into a series that's been on hiatus for the past two years. A fun vibe, some interesting developments with Casey, Karai, and the Warriors of Perfect Virtue, with some teasing on the Guardifriends too.
As for the presentation: the 10MB PDF is DRM-free, bookended by ads, and with an unobtrusively tiny serial number tucked into the margin of each page. It looks pretty decent zoomed to fullscreen (1024 in my case, though come to think of it this would be a perfect excuse to try out my monitor's rotating-screen feature -- maybe next ish), though the format makes the Photoshopped textures in the backgrounds much more obvious (and, to date myself, they look like something out of late-1980's MacPaint or HyperCard). It's also an ill-suited format for two-page spreads, of which there are two in this issue.
The story clocks in at a sizable 37 pages, with two pages of letters and a page of Laird on his soapbox.
I'm reserving judgement on his "remastering" of the original series until I see it (though the Special PBBZ Edition of issue #1 doesn't fill me with confidence). He makes a good point for why his motivation is not to slight Kevin, but what I'm more concerned about is whether we're looking at Star Wars Syndrome here. (He's already announced he plans to re-remaster #1.) For all that it "muddies" the inks, I think I prefer the old toning technique that doesn't look like something I did on a Mac Plus when I was 8, but again, I want to see what the finished product looks like before I start wailing about it. Curious as to whether the remasters will also be put up on Wowio; that'd beat paying for them. In the meantime, the
official website has lower-res JPG scans up to issue #9 of the original series (excepting #8 due to the Cerebus copyright).
Anyway. The book is free. Signing up for Wowio is a bit of a hassle, but worth it. Give it a glance. And if you'd rather not jump into the middle of the series, the first 28 issues are also free (though you can only download 3 a day).