Mirage #27 *** SPOILERS!!! ***

[Leonardo]

       
Ye have been warned! Thar do be Spoilers ahead!
         

arrr
 

Just had to find a reason to use the Pirate smilie!


 
 
Are you sure you want to read on?



 

Okay then, here we go....

Having gone to the comic shop (also having been Free Comics Day) then over to Aig's to watch the Kentucky Derby--Aig read her comic first. She was LOLing and cooing and stuff.
So after that reaction, as soon as the next commercial break came up, I read into it, there was Action Figure Size Don, running from the cat--as we'd seen in the ad and been expecting. But you can't deny the cuteness factor there. Especially when he gets picked up by that dude. "An' gimme that itty-bitty stick."
 
I have to say, I love how Lawson drew Don in these panels, he is adorably cute.
And I know I shall be bapped by our Don and the Tellos out there for saying that, but I can't help it.
And Don bites the guy! Nice. Maybe learned that from Raph?

Of course that cat is rather like someone's Phael Kitty.....I still say it would be funny to have that real Phael Kitty in a photo or two with a Don action figure....

And the dino Raph with little Don. What a contrast. What an unusual team up.
Is this where you can make Brains and Brawn jokes?
 
Seems like, with some help, they may have rounded that group of bad guys up....

Meanwhile, Mikey gets rescued, only to be drafted into something. Although he's apparently fallen in with a group that won't imprison him again.
Seems to me that group was rather late to rescue the Triceraton, Azokk, considering he'd been imprisoned for some time. But it may have been hard for them to locate him and then set up their operations?
Wonder what Mikey will be off to doing next with those guys....

As to Mikey's nightmare?
Potentially a number of symbolisms in there....
The monster that Mike begat?
"me" "me" "me"
So there was Mike, in love, and look what it got him?
Used and abused. Poor Mike. Even had his prize-winning smile damaged.

And then there's Leo....
Such excellence in dealing with what he has to do.

But a Shredder?!

   

Now remembering the old comments from Peter that Shredder was dead and staying dead...clearly there's a twist here. It's not going to be the THE Shredder that the TMNT fought and defeated and who then blew himself up. Then the Elite stuff with the worms and he's back and then Leo beheads him. Not THAT Shredder.
But they are in the Battle Nexus, which we readers don't have all the "rules" figured out yet, doubly so because it might not be exactly like the Toon, after all. Even if there was a reference to "The Daimyo" in the comic.
So if it's not somehow THE Shredder living on in some Battle Nexus dimension, which I think is an unlikely theory due to Peter's comments--it could be one of the Shredder Clones.
Karai....
Or if the comic follows a bit of the Toon, an Utrom Shredder....
Or...well, a number of other options rolling through my head right now, like things with Foot and Elite and ancestors or some kind of creature that assumes the form of feared enemy or....

Most likely, I'd say Karai. Considering she was clearly mixing herself and the Foot up into some weird things, from the books and the stuff Leo was finding out. Which lead Leo to the Battle Nexus....
That's my guess for now.

But it's always good to be open to a number of possibilities.

[Aignatius]

Seeing Don bite the guy's finger just cracked me up, especially after he heard the word "cut open". Understandably, they have issues when it comes to dissection.  
 (But cooing? I don't recall doing that!)

FWIW, IMO, it was a good story, though the first couple of pages of Mikey's dream were flipping annoying, because of what looked like sloppy pencilling or inking. Dratted angular quasi-post impressionist crap like that distracts me from getting into the story.
Erm, don't people usually improve their drawing style with time?  
I have, in the past, tried to see that particular drawing style from a more forgiving point of view, but that has worn thin. I look back on my former POV of Lawson's art as shallow, tentative, and sycophantic. That style might work fine in a more alternative art book format, but in regular comics, err...

BTW, Picasso did have a fine cartoon drawing style of his own, in his later years... I wouldn't compare Lawson with him.
 

[Andrew Modeen]

It may indeed be Karai -- this would continue Laird's intentional-or-not using of Gary Carlson's ideas & concepts from Volume 3.

Gary publically said that the "Lady Shredder" that appeared at the end of Volume 3 would be revealed as Karai.

Also, about the other (early) worm clones of Shredder in Vol. 1, #21, we only actually see ONE of the three of them get killed -- the four-armed one. The other two are just thrown off-panel, into explosions of questionable magnitude, or otherwise just left to the reader to assume "Oh, they're probably killed." So two of them could very well be at large.

[Darth_CJJ]

Maybe I can offer some sort of a theory here.

Remember how the warriors wore coins around their necks with Al Gore on them? That suggested that they were from an alterate reality all together. The BattleNexus is an alterate reality in the sense that you can't get there by traveling through space. So it seems then, that Laird is playing around with the idea that there could be an alternate reality where Saki never died. This Saki would of course be a *different* Saki, while being "the same" in some senses. This Saki would possibly have never even MET the TMNT. THAT would definitely be interesting.

I've been playing around with alternate reality theory quite a bit on my own, and it seems to me that its possible that being that the cartoon and the comic book are two seperate realities, it's POSSIBLE that they are going to intersect.

I don't think it's Karai or a female Shredder, because the feet and hands looked too big to be those of a woman.

Absaraka is probably a better person to talk to regarding alternate reality theory. I think that when Laird said Shredder wouldn't be coming back, he meant that the Saki of the Mirage timeline reality wouldn't be resurrected. That's all. To say that "Shredder" wouldn't ever return would be ridiculous, since "Shredder" is more of a concept/idea than it is a person. Sort of like whoever puts on the mask in the movie "The Mask" takes on that persona.

[Leonardo]

The Alternate Reality theory as you mentioned it is an interesting one. Another possibility to ponder until we find out.
What if Karai was trying to get the Shredder from another reality and bring him to hers?
Or, because the Foot did seem concerned over these alternate reality warriors, that the Shredder there was trying to come to hers and they didn't want that?
Then there's questioning if those warriors the Foot were fighting were pro or against the Foot in the other reality, or if they were the Foot over there? They're clearly against the Foot in the TMNT reality. And of course, we don't know if there really is a Foot clan in that alternate reality or not, yet.

It still comes back to the fact Karai and the Foot are involved in something with the Battle Nexus and the alternate reality, and it's not good for them.

Although with the space aliens on Earth and now mixing in alternate realities, gets hard to keep track of all this stuff.
 

[Darth_CJJ]

I'm sure that when we do find out, it'll be something so obvious that we'll all feel like idiots.

At least I will.