TUPPER Mutant Ninja Turtles?!?

Also, when I wrote Chuck during the last "mailing window," telling him about my Ninja Turtle success, he replied (in part) with the following:

Hey Will,

First... Congratulations! I'm so happy and proud for you! I can't wait for the next interview, when I get the old question: "What's your typical reader like?"

"Well," I'll say, "one writes for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles..."

And my nephews are going to flip when I tell them at Thanksgiving, next week. They grew up singing that song until the whole family knew it.

So... wow. I'd like to copy your letter and put it in every box, just to reassure some people. But I won't.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thought that was pretty cool.

Thought maybe you might think so, too!

brother, that is fantastic. i remember drawing those like mad back in 1990. my best homie in tacoma, wa. still has them on his wall. we collected the then popular black and white thick paperback graphic novels. loved the art and the stories.

there are a few comic shops here in the city of Little Rock. Best believe i'll be picking up the copies. fucking nice, brother. fucking nice.
-kabol

i'm gonna take a look for it. i haven't been in a comic shop in a long frigging time. congrats and i may want to hit you up for a signed copy.

Gentlemen (and ladies, if you're reading)!

So I've been riding this hard-deadline on another thing (which, oh - I'm pretty sure I just [I]nailed[/I] ), so I've not had the time to reply.

Now 3:00AM on Tuesday morning, and I've got all the time in the world.

JKabol - Brother, you words work wonders for my fragile and frail ego. THANK YOU. Your friend has pictures you drew in 1990 up on his wall [I]still[/I]? That's just incredible.

JKuhlmann - Thank you as well. Let me know if you can't find it in stores (sometimes the TMNT are hard to come across). I'm sure we can figure something out.

Seriously and sincerely, thank you both so much. And thanks to the rest of you (oh, annonymous readers), too.

If you HAPPEN TO BE IN A COMIC SHOP this WEDNESDAY, please give TALES OF THE TMNT #33 a shot!

It rocks! :headbang:

And I'm NOT just saying that because I wrote a story in it.

Oh, wait...

Yes I am .

Take care. Later!

This was the news?
Well, congrats I guess. I was expecting something cooler, like you invented some flying shoes or something.

Oh man, of course I'll get this. I wish it was out today because I'm in the city and the comic bookstore is massive. I know nothing about comics but I know a little about the turtles. My favorite was the typical Michelangelo, so my father had gotten me real nunchakus, and years later I realize why. Within a week every part of body was bruised. I even gave myself a black eye, fat lip, and my nuts were impenetrable to blunt force trauma.

This is illustrations with dialogue, no? Did you do the illustrations? I'll go in today to see if I can get an early one. If not, I'll have to find it somewhere else. Or send you money so you can send it to me.
[IMG]http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r293/DrJekyll8MrHyde/Clip%20Art/turtleboy.gif[/IMG]

[font=courier]a day away. [i]Im excited ![/i][/font]

Holy crap! I thought you were just being silly about your turtles fixation in the movie thread.
This is fucking awesome.

I couldnt think of a cooler place to get your work out.

Edit: maybe one of those GI Joe/Transformer crossover comics would come close.

[QUOTE=Fiberoptic Jesus;972654]Holy crap! I thought you were just being silly about your turtles fixation in the movie thread.
This is fucking awesome.
.[/QUOTE]

Same here. BTW the drawings look awesome! I love how splinter looks on those comics. I will go and ask the comic book store guy here if he can bring it over here. I´m sure he will.. theres a good comic market here in argentina. Congrats man!
This brings a lot of memories to me. I didn´t even remember the guy in the Hockey mask! and he was one of my favourite characters.

Thanks, Gang. I love you guys.

But I totally hate deadlines!

And I have one - tomorrow - that has to get done [I]today[/I].

Which has pretty much taken away all my Turtle bliss (at least for now).

If you happen to come across the issue, it's killer. The main story is fantastic, and mine is...

Well, how can I be a fair judge of my own work?

I can't.

I'll tell y'all more later.

After this latest ulcer is over .

Take care!

Good job, Will! I'm an oldschool Turtles fan over here, been collecting the new Tales since #1. How did you manage to get your story published? How did you approach Mirage, etc?

Will! That’s an elegant little narrative you have there. The only thing I don’t buy is Donatello typing with turtle stubs; he’d have to invent gloves with spikes at the tips. Anyway, good good! Comic stores, or at least the one I was at, take TURTLES damn seriously. I ask the clerk, “Do you have turtle comics?” “Yes! Go to the back, left, straight to the end, right, top two rows. Got it?” When I get there all I here from the front, “You find them! Find them! Hey!” There was only one issue of 33, and I picked it up before the owner started shooting colored dice, or flinging garbage Pal kids like Chinese stars. (Ohh! They brought Garbage Pal Kids back! Good damn! Everything has a ten to twenty year regurgitator effect!) But yeah, seeing Will Tupper on the contents page was a trip. These were good bits: “Everything incredible began as elemental. Shouldn’t there be a better word for the opposite of ‘conflict?’ Shouldn’t there be a ‘Proflict?’” Plus: “And practice doesn’t make perfect! Perfect practice makes perfect!” I’ll send you my copy so you can sign it in color marker, doodle in the margins, and color in the pages. So well done again, great themes come across with limited words. I’ll never look passively at the turtles again, and when I uncover some turtle stuff from my youth you’re welcome to wear it. All right, I’m done.

I order it on my comic book store. It will arrive here on july.

One question about your name. Will tupper is you name? I thought it was a nickname. are you named like the guy on diary?

AHHHH!!!!

Information overload!

I'll handle these posts in backwards order, if you all don't mind.

kakunn: Thank you for ordering the book. Every reader matters, especially in an industry hurting as bad as comics have been lately. Deepest personal thanks from me to you.

And, yes. Will Tupper is my name. I suppose it IS a nickname; my full, "real" name is William David Tupper II. But that looks weird to me. So Will Tupper it is, has been, and always will be .

The guy in "Diary" was actually named after [I]me[/I]. There was a crazy raffle contest on this here website, a bunch of years back, and the five (or was it six?) winners all had characters in the books named after them. Of course I figured that my being in the book would help get me laid, right? WRONG AGAIN, MY FRIEND! Because of course Chuck had to make the fictional Will Tupper BALD!

I've a card from Chuck, down on my dresser, that he sent me a few years back. It's addressed to Will "Hairy" Tupper. Good stuff.

Dr. J & Mr. H: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! Glad you (mostly) liked the story. In my defense about the Donatello using the typewriter thing, you'd have to go ALL the way back to Issue 11 of the ORIGINAL Ninja Turtles comic. My all-time favorite comic, ever.

In it, Donatello rummages around Casey's Grandmother's old house, and finds a typewriter. April O'Neil writes in her journal (here I'm paraphrasing), "Don's writing too! He found an old typewriter up in the attic. I wonder what he's writing. Is it a journal, like mine? I'd love to know..."

Well, I was just a kid when I fell in love with that story, and it always left me wondering : what in the shell [I]was[/I] Donatello writing? That's what "Credo" is. It's what Donatello was writing. I've wanted to tell this story for 2 / 3 of my life.

I'm glad you liked the, "Practice doesn't make perfect!" bit. Here's a secret that NO ONE IN THE TURTLE COMMUNITY KNOWS, YET:

You know the horse that Leonardo ends up carving out of wood? Yeah, well. It's this horse, here, by the "other" Leonardo (Da Vinci):

[url]http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.visitgrandrapids.org/images/meijer_gardens-horse.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.visitgrandrapids.org/tour.php%3Ftype%3Dgroup%26tour%3Dgrandrapids&h=193&w=250&sz=16&hl=en&start=14&um=1&tbnid=Zh8d3KWAvbZg9M:&tbnh=86&tbnw=111&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDa%2BVinci%2BHorse%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den[/url]

WOW, that's a big link. But if you scroll down, it's the second pic.

And when Donnie says, "Maybe I'm the Thinker." He's totally coping this pose from Rodin:

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker[/url]

I'll PM you my address, also. So (if you're serious) I can sign, and um, deface your copy .

Cobalt: Thanks, man! Always cool to hear from old-school Turtle fans .

You asked how I got the gig. There's no way I can give you an entirely accurate answer here (this post is novel-length already), so a summary will have to do ya :

1. Read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on about comic scriptwriting. There's some great books out there, by Dennis O'Neil, Peter David, a couple volumes called "Writers on Comic Scriptwriting," all available on Amazon.

Also, I ALWAYS read "Write Now!" magazine, which you should be able to get at any comic shop. It is smply the BEST MAGAZINE ON WRITING for ANY GENRE I have EVER COME ACROSS. I love it so much, been looking for something like it for YEARS.

You can find out more about it, here:
[url]http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=60&zenid=d871b6928cc20f1614fc4e5e48af6161[/url]

2. Wrote some "smart" (i.e. asked good questions, spelled everything right, made them look like actual letters, rather than LOL ROFL-style Emails) letters to both Turtle comics. They all got published, which I suspect made me kind-of familiar to the Editors.

3. Wrote my first comic script: a 5-page story called "The Mother of All Anger." (It appeared in Tales of the TMNT #30, this past January).

4. Wrote - no joke - [I]ten different versions[/I] of my first pitch letter. In it, I wrote a great (I thought) hook, backed it up a list of all my previous publication experience. This was arduous, nerve-racking. But I did it .

5. Sent off pitch letter.

6. Waited.

And what happened then, the Editor of the Turtles book was actually possibly familiar with some of my nonfiction / journalism I'd written for a great magazine called Punk Planet ([url]www.punkplanet.com)[/url]. Someone close to him used to write for it as well, so I think maybe that helped give me an "in."

He told me to send the 5-page script in. I did.

And the rest, as they say, is history .

WOW.

I so bet the computer won't let me post something this long.

Here goes nothing. And thank y'all for asking, buying, supporting.

I hope to extend the same favor to you, someday soon.

Any chance we'll see you at ComicCon in San Diego this year?

I'm afraid not this year, no. I didn't even make it to the Motor City Comic Con this year!

But I will be there in 2008. Mark my words!

ONE MORE THING I forgot to tell y'all:

For those of you who've read (and those of you who will, soon), take a look at the last big panel at the end of the story. The one with Donnie typing? If you look, you'll notice there's a book there on the desk.

It's this one:

[url]http://www.amazon.com/Illusions-Adventures-Reluctant-Richard-Bach/dp/0440204887/ref=ed_oe_p/103-8228003-1960643?ie=UTF8&qid=1179903110&sr=1-1[/url]

[I]Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah[/I] is among the best things you could ever do with $7.99 (or cheaper, if you're a member of Barnes & Nobles frequent buyer thing, or Borders Rewards w / a coupon. You could get it for $5.60, if you wanted for a "30% off one item" coupon). It is [I]such[/I] a good book, packing so much story, so many ideas, so much yum in such a small little package.

I can't recommend it enough (say that a lot lately).

And years, years, and still more years ago, I sent Chuck a copy of another of Bach's books, [I]One[/I], for his birthday (to show you how long ago this would have been, this was back when he was still accepting packages). I'd recently finished it, saw a direct connection between Bach's work and Chuck's, and thought he might like it.

Well, when he (Chuck) wrote me back, he said thanks, that he'd read [I]One[/I] on his next long plane ride.

And (this is a direct quote) that he, "Really loved [I]Illusions[/I]." So, there.

You have two endorsements. One from someone who matters (Chuck). And one from someone who doesn't (me ).

Tupper, if they have it in Waterstones, I'll buy it just for you. Because your enthusiasm is making me smile, and also because I'm kind.

No, you're not accountable for a turtle typing, I'm just saying it would be damn hard to down right impossible. But if you read chuck's stuff, extending disbelief is OK. The horse reference went over my head. And who the hell is the black bad dude? And I'll tell you, when DOn finishes writing I don't know whether he's smiling, crying, or drunk.

How do you format a comic script? Is it dialogue with scene/panel explanations? So basically a mini-screenplay of sorts, cept for more scene description.

And corellion, if you can't find one over there I'll send you one from here, because I'm hateful.

corellion: you are kind. And I thank you for your kindness, whether you can find the comic or not. Kindness is far more important. Not enough of it in the world .

Dr. J & Mr. H: you are hateful. And I thank you for your hatefulness, and offering to buy corellion my Turtle comic. It is hatefully kind of you .

Right on with the extending disbelief bit. If a turtle is going to type, I imagine it would have to be [I]incredibly[/I] slowly. I'm sure the horse reference went over EVERYONE'S head, but so what. It wasn't all that important .

The "black dude," would be Dr. Baxter Stockman, an early TMNT villian. Who you can read all about, here:

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_Stockman[/url]

How do you format a comic script? Well, there is no one right, cut-and-dried way. Every writer does it a little different.

Here's a couple of the links I scoured over, before I began my turtle endeavors:

[url]http://www.devingrayson.com/samples.html#[/url]

[url]http://www.dixonverse.net/vault.html[/url]

Scroll down to "Scripts" on that second link, and that's pretty close to how I format my stuff. Chuck Dixon is pretty much a comic book legend, and when I was a kid I read his "Green Hornet" books like they were drugs and I was majorly junked-out.

Hope that helps. Let me know if I can be of any more assistance .

[URL=http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/showthread.php?t=28852]Ross found you a wife[/URL].:amish:

[QUOTE=Dr.Jekyll&Mr.Hyde;978480][URL=http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/showthread.php?t=28852]Ross found you a wife[/URL].:amish:[/QUOTE]

AAAAAAH!!! AAAH! AAAH! AAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!!

I was in Waterstones the other day dribbling over a collected bunch of Sandan comics they had in this little pack and some dude comes over and asks me if he can help, and I was like, "I'm just drooling thanks," and he laughs and says "No worries," and what do I notice upon his wrist but a TMNT watch! One of those plastic childish, probably retro, ones.
"Oh, I say, you like turtles?"
"Yeah," says he. "The comics but, I wasn't a fan of the films. I like the TV series."
"Hahah," I humour him. "Who didn't?"
"Yeah..." he says, about to walk away. I let him get a metre or so on me and then spring it.
"A guy I know wrote for the turtles."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Will Tupper is his name. [I]We're like dirty gay brothers.[/I]"
"Will Tupper? I'll look up his name when I get home, how did you meet him?"
[I]"In a gay bar."[/I]
"Is he from around here?"
"No, he's American. [I]We had passionate homosexual love.[/I] Maybe he was on holiday or something."
"Maybe?"
"Oh, shit, I'm gonna miss my train!" etc.

So in essence you made me look like a liar and a fool infront of some man. Everything in italics I didn't actually say, for the record. Just spicing it up a little. But yeah, well done Tupper. More people should be getting famous.

Best! Post! Ever!

Thanks, Corellion. You totally made my day.

Next time, though, you should put in all the gay stuff. That was by far the best part.

ps - after that post, [I]i would totally put out for you[/I]. like dirty gay borthers - yes!