Frontispiece

A  (pronounced or ) is an illustration facing a book's title page. The Mirage Studios comics series Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is notable for always having a frontispiece at the beginning of every issue. These frontispieces often depict characters in random and sometimes quite outlandish situations, narrating an introduction to the story that follows, typically ending with "Let me tell you a story." Tales frontispieces could be very intricately illustrated, and were often made by a different artist than the ones who illustrated the cover art or penciled the comic pages.

Trivia

 * The plurality of Tales frontispieces were illustrated by Michael Dooney.
 * Episodes of the 2003 TV series would often employ a similar device at the beginning of each episode, where the story is introduced by one or more of the characters as narrators.