Terrific Tie-Dye Tales For Turtles

by Vince Brusio

Imagine a three-ring circus seen through psychedelic lenses. That’s the best way to describe the multiple covers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Dimension X #1 (JUN170478). It’s a wild ride. Crazy. Kinetic. But not care-free. A lot of work went into this series. Editor Bobby Curnow is on the front line of producing this story for IDW Publishing, and while it’s his job to keep all the ducks in a row, he made sure to cut as much slack as he could for the writers. Chaos that’s later coordinated produces crazy and cool comic books that you never see coming, and always keep reading.

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Vince Brusio: Give us an idea as to how you coordinate with all the writers to put the Dimension X (JUN170478) storyline together for IDW. Do all the king’s horses and all the king’s men meet in one room to get on the same page? Or is it more of a one-on-one type arrangement, via phone or email? And what’s the advantage to your particular method of madness?

Bobby Curnow: With this project I assembled some prep material, meaning a list of relevant TMNT back issues that are important to the current plot, and an outline for the related storyline in the TMNT ongoing, which covered all of the characters involved. We also had our FCBD "Prelude to Dimension X" already in the can, so that was a helpful primer. So I just gave that material to the writers one-on-one and discussed from there. While the theme of the Dimension X event is the same for all of the issues ("The TMNT travel to a weird planet in every issue to find an even weirder witness that they need to get to Krang's Trial") the writers had full freedom to figure out what the planet and the witness the Turtles are trying to find are. So there was no need for major coordination between the individual teams. All the issues are stand-alone stories that work on their own. It was all actually a bit easier to get off the ground than our 5-week event last year, Bebop and Rocksteady Destroy Everything.

Vince Brusio: The artwork for this series on pages 154-155 of the June PREVIEWS is surreal to the Nth degree. In fact, “surreal” might be too tame a word to describe the chaos. This looks like something out of H.P. Lovecraft. Were any such references brought up when the plotting for this storyline was discussed with the writers? Tell us about the barometric pressure in the room when concepts like destabilizing the ecosystem of a planet was thrown onto the table as a plot device.

Bobby Curnow: Here's the thing: TMNT is weird. The weirdness is right there in the title of the property, and everything from the cartoon to the toys continued that legacy of weird. And Dimension X is perhaps the weirdest element in the TMNT mythos! So this was really our opportunity to lean into that weirdness that is so much a part of the DNA of the property. There's no real rules here in terms of what can and can't happen with these new witness characters or the planets they're from. So we really welcomed the writers getting strange. Nick Pitarra's interconnected covers are a great representation of the complete bonkers nature of this mini-series.

Vince Brusio: Recently IDW’s Ghostbusters 101 got into a dimension-warping type adventure. Is this new TMNT story an extension on that theme?

Bobby Curnow: I don't think so, no. We had the TMNT make their first travel to Dimension X back in TMNT #17, a little more than fifty issues ago. And the previously mentioned Bebop and Rocksteady mini-series dove head-first into interdimensional tomfoolery. So this kind of thing has been in our blood for a while! But Tom Waltz, who edits the Ghostbusters books, does the script for the TMNT ongoing, so we're on the same wavelength!

Vince Brusio: How much of a challenge is it to read dialogue from several writers who may have different ways of putting words into the mouths of the Turtles? How do you compensate/correct individual interpretations that have to jive within a single version of one voice?

Bobby Curnow: This is something I'm always surprised about-- people tend to nail the TMNT's voices pretty easily. Maybe it's just the fact that their dominate personality traits are something that have been around for several decades now. Occasionally I'll have a note like "Our Raph isn't so much of a jerk" or something along those lines, but it's usually pretty minimal from me. It all flows pretty smoothly, in my opinion.

Vince Brusio: This is a five-week event rolling out from IDW. So how do you manage such a project? Give us an idea about what your job duties are for managing this mini-series. How crammed is your calendar? How stuffed is your inbox? And how do you…do it all without losing your mind?

Bobby Curnow: This is my third consecutive annual five-week event (counting 2015's My Little Pony: Fiendship is Magic series), so I've picked up some tricks along the way. The main keys are getting started well in advance and spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are my savior! As discussed above, it helps that these are all pretty self-contained stories, so that minimized the exponential craziness something like this project can create. The other thing is that I just love TMNT and I love the universe we've created, and I've loved working with all of the creators involved. So while it's more books on my schedule, it's also more fun.

But yes, I've also been keeping my local bartender busy on Fridays too.

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Vince Brusio writes about comics, and writes comics. He is the long-serving Editor of PREVIEWSworld.com, the creator of PUSSYCATS, and encourages everyone to keep the faith...and keep reading comics.