This just in from Mirage webmaster Dan Berger:

Howdy folks!

I'm back from vacation and Mirage C.E.O. Gary Richardson is back from the New York Licensing Show... so there's a bit o' news to tell.

First off, we've hit a snag with printing TMNT #4 - we hope that it will be out on June 26, but there's a chance we'll miss that by a week. Argh!

On to the news!

First off, the limited edition cold-cast porcelain TMNT statues are definitely going to be produced by Playmates Toys! I'll have some pix of the initial sculpture up on the site this week. Turtle Guru Peter Laird has already posted some on his "Blast from the Past" page if you wanna see 'em now:

http://www.planetracers.com/blast/blast60.html

Scroll down to peep 2 pix!

Leonardo will be the first of four pieces. As I noted last time, each statue will be on a base and each base will interconnect to form one big diorama.
The statues will be painted. Playmates plans to take orders for the statues at this year's San Diego Comic Con ( http://www.comic-con.org ) at Diamond Comic Distributors' booth through Diamond Select. The price range will be in the $100-150 range. Currently we're still discussing the edition number, but it's definitely planned to be a very limited release. The second figure (no decision on who it'll be yet), will be out around Christmas of 2003.

The Licensing Show itself went extremely well and the Turtles were the hit of the week! Gary and 4Kids spoke with tons of old school licensees who are lining up to get involved with TMNT 2K3! Expect to see a bit of nifty new Turtles merch in the first quarter of 2003 to coincide with the release of the new show and action figure line.. and then a flood of Turtly goodness should be available by Christmas of 2K3!

Unfortunately the video game contracts haven't been fully worked out yet, but we hope to have the scoop on the new games next month. We know - the wait is killin' us, too! =O)

News regarding the new TV series:

We've gotten in the TMNT story bible, which defines the direction that the show will take, the characters that will appear and the plot synopses for the first season. It's great stuff that will be both warmly familiar and cooly surprising! We're very excited about 4Kids' devotion to make the new TMNT cartoon the best ever - and from what we've seen so far, we're confident this will be the case! Whether you're an old school comics fan, original Turtle toon fan, or brand new to the TMNT altogether, this show will have something for you to dig! The animation studio that has been signed up has worked on the "Men in Black" and "Jackie Chan" toons (to name but two), so ya know that the animation will be some of the best to be seen on Saturday morning television!

Characters that will be appearing: the four original Turtles, Master Splinter, Aril, Casey Jones, The Shredder, The Foot and Baxter Stockman - sure, there's more - but some stuff has to be a surprise. =O)

That's it from the hallowed halls of Mirage for now!

Cheers!
Dan Berger
Mirage Studios' Official TMNT Web Site Dude
http://www.ninjaturtles.com