Mirage Comics

Finally. That' really all there is to say about NECA's long "lost" Foot Clan and Shredder figures from its planned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage line. After being shown off at trade shows in 2009, the figures for the Turtles' biggest foes never saw the light of day at retail for reasons many of us will likely never know. For years, the prototypes sat at NECA's New Jersey studio, offering but a glimmer of what could have been but never was. Then at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, NECA finally found a way to get Shredder and some Foot Clan soldiers out to the masses in the TMNT Arcade Set. A companion to the newly minted Turtles, the set was a hit with fans who'd been waiting for ages for these forgotten figures to arrive. Now, NECA has made another miracle happen, and will finally release Shredder and the Foot as originally intended at this year's New York Comic Con.

One of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the history of our planet is the question of what killed the dinosaurs. There is, of course, the leading theory that the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event was the result of a massive asteroid impact, something that's supported by a layer of sediment in the fossil record that includes high traces of iridium, and by the discovery of the massive Chicxulub crater, all of which amounts to a pretty compelling batch of scientific evidence. Personally, though, I don't buy it, and not just because of noted scientist Dr. Victor Fries and his assertion that the mass extinction was the result of the onset of an ice age. No, my doubts come from the fact that, like everyone else who read Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in 1989, I already know what killed the dinosaurs: It was the Ninja Turtles. Specifically, Leonardo. I know, I was surprised, too.