TMNT New Animated Adventures #1

July 10, 2013, 8:12 pm

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Publication date: July 10, 2013

Story: Kenny Byerly

Art: Dario Brizuela

Colors: Heather Breckel

Letters: Shawn Lee

Edits: Bobby Curnow

Summary:

Down in the sewers, April is practicing the stealth lessons Master Splinter taught her, but she’s quickly caught by Michelangelo.  Splinter compliments her technique, saying that her skills as a kunoichi are improving.  April, however, is impatient and wants to use her skills in the field (mainly in trying to find her missing father).  Donatello jumps at the chance for a little alone time with April, asking if she’d like to join him on a stealth mission to a military junkyard for some parts.  April is happy to go, much to Leonardo’s disapproval.

At the junkyard, April puts on a dark wig to disguise herself in case she’s seen, then she and Donnie cross the barbed wire and begin skulking around.  Donnie says that the place is a dumping ground for failed, state-of-the-art military prototypes, as well as a great place for scavenging parts for his inventions.  Donnie yanks a diode module from a laser cannon and hands it to April, just as a guard comes by on his rounds.  The two flee for the exit, but April is cornered by a guard dog and taken into custody.  Donnie immediately calls his brothers for assistance in springing April.

Down in a sublevel facility, the Officer in charge questions April as to what she was doing with their diode module.  April insists that her name is “January McAndrews” and that she was just on a silly teenage dare.  The Officer points out all her ninja gear they took from her and demands the truth.

Donnie meets up with his brothers and they formulate a plan.  They want to get April out without being seen by the military, but also without hurting any of the soldiers (as they aren’t bad guys).  They start blowing up some of the prototypes to create a distraction, but it isn’t good enough to clear the entrance to the sublevels.  April overhears on a walkie talkie that someone is causing a disruption above and decides to help her friends out.  She tells the Officer that she’s really a spy and her friends have arrived to steal the military’s experimental laser cannon.  The Officer immediately orders all hands to guard the laser cannon, thus clearing the entrance to the sublevels for the TMNT.

Using smoke bombs, the Turtles begin subduing all the soldiers in the sublevels as Donnie deletes the security camera footage for the night.  In the confusion, April manages to judo-flip one of the guards, steal his key card and make a break for it (though she loses her wig in the process).  The Turtles find themselves chased into a corner and out of smoke bombs to hide with.  Luckily, April finds the power controls and shuts off all the lights.  The Turtles sneak/fight past the guards, find April and escape into the sewers through an access shaft.  As Donnie removes April’s handcuffs and they all head back to the lair, April gives Donnie a little gift: The diode module.

Later, Splinter expresses his disappointment with April for going on a mission she wasn’t ready for.  She apologizes, saying that she let her impatience get the better of her.  Leo gets her back, though, saying that she exhibited great ingenuity and skill in escaping.  Donnie then invites everyone into the kitchen to witness his latest invention: The laser pizza slicer.  He sets it too high, however, and slices the table to pieces.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT New Animated Adventures: Free Comic Book Day 2013.  The story continues in TMNT New Animated Adventures #2.

*The government junkyard was first mentioned in the episode "I Think His Name is Baxter Stockman."

*Michelangelo mentions how he isn't allowed to use smoke bombs because he doesn't appreciate them, a reference to the episode "The Gauntlet".

*April uses the T-Phone's automatic self-destruct command, first utilized in the episode "Mousers Attack!". 

*This issue was originally published with 5 variant covers: Regular Cover by Brizuela, Subscription Variant by Kevin Eastman, Cover RI by Ciro Nieli, San Diego Comic Con Variant by Tony Fleecs, and Awesome Con Variant by Steve Conley.

Review:

New Animated Adventures looks to be a fun diversion from all the continuity and long gestating story arcs of IDW’s main TMNT comic series.  While I don’t know how long it will keep to these brisk, one-shot adventures, I hope the format sticks around for a while.  Of course, the one-shot nature of New Animated Adventures is kind of necessary, as it has the unenviable task of trying to take place in-between episodes of the Nickelodeon TMNT cartoon series.  Easier said than done, honestly, as one creative time trying not to contradict another creative team without having any control over what that other creative team is doing… can’t be anything less than a headache.  The Free Comic Book Day 2013 issue of this series was already contradicted by an episode of the Nick cartoon that aired a week after the comic was released, for example.

Still, whether the folks behind New Animated Adventures decide to branch out and follow their own path diverging from the Nick show, or whether they stick to the “one-shot adventures in-between episodes” format, I think this looks to be a solid book.  It’s a bit like Mirage’s old Tales of the TMNT volumes, in that manner.

As for the story by Kenny Byerly (who is a writer for the Nick cartoon), I quite enjoyed it.  The Nick show’s April has been one of the better versions of the character, so I was happy to see this proper first issue of the comic devote the greater focus on her.  It’s always nice to see April with a few flaws, as writers tend to make her a bit overpowered in other universes (a tech guru as intelligent as Donatello and a ninja as skilled as any of the Turtles… yeah, that’s pretty overpowered).  Here, she’s still learning from Master Splinter and faltering in her training, as expected.  While I’m not entirely caught up on the show (as of this writing, I think I stopped watching around “The Pulverizer” and haven’t gotten back into it), the cartoon wasn’t devoting a whole lot of time to April’s actual training, so it’s good to see this comic picking up the slack.

Better yet is the way April manages to think her way out of a serious situation.  She never loses her cool and applies Splinter’s lessons to craft a more subtle strategy.  This method manages to SHOW us her intelligence and resourcefulness rather than TELL us about it.  Most stories that focus on her “hacker” skills to convey her intellect to the audience tend to fall among the latter (telling us, not showing us), as that sort of talent is a “take our word for it” deal in comics (much like “the character is really good at singing, we swear”).

In regards to the Turtles, I was pleased that they understood not to injure any of the guards (though they sort of do, anyway).  In this situation, THEY’RE the bad guys (stealing military hardware) and the guards are just trying to protect their property.  It may not seem like a vital distinction on the surface, but even a throwaway line where the Turtles acknowledge that they’re in the wrong and have to be “gentle” goes a long way in keeping them from looking like a bunch of bullies, jerks or criminals.

Dario Brizuela was the perfect choice for art duties.  He’d previously worked on Mirage’s second volume of Tales of the TMNT, where he did great work, but his art style wasn’t always an ideal match for the grittier material.  There’s one issue of his in particular, Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #67, where he tries to apply those exaggerated “anime style” facial expressions to the characters and it just wasn’t a good fit for that universe.  The Nick cartoon, on the other hand, employs over-the-top “anime style” reactions and expressions relentlessly, so Brizuela is free to indulge in that vice as much as he likes in this comic series.  The action’s well laid out and the characters emote both subtly and outrageously (the aforementioned “anime style” effects).  April still looks like a plastic mannequin, but that’s admittedly a problem inherent with her animation model and less Brizuela’s fault.

Overall, it’s good stuff.  Like I said before, it’s nice to have a TMNT book that’s “light reading”, so to speak.  And even though the events of the title are tied into a cartoon series you may or may not have seen, the stories seem perfectly capable of surviving on their own merit.  I certainly haven’t watched every episode of the show and I’m following these New Animated Adventures just fine.

Grade: B (as in, “But damn, April, you’ve got some big feet!”)

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Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #33

July 14, 2013, 6:05 pm

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Publication date: April, 2007

Plot: Peter Laird, Mike Manley, Steve Murphy

Words: Bill Moulage

Art: Mike Manley

Cover: Mike Manley and Eric Talbot

Frontispiece: Eddy Spurlock and Ryan Brown

Letters: Eric Talbot

“The Bait”

Summary:

Frontispiece: In a bar, Casey grips his hockey mask and leans over a beer.  Badly inebriated, he tries to talk about how he taught his sorrows to swim, but constantly slurs the words.  Despite his best efforts, though, he cannot forget the worst of his memories…

Down in the sewer lair, Splinter is meditating when he feels a disturbance in the force.  He projects his astral form to follow the bad vibes and they take him to the depths of the ocean.  Splinter begins to suspect the worst, when Casey comes storming in, screaming that Foot Soldiers kidnapped his infant daughter Shadow.  Casey asks where the Turtles are and Splinter informs him that they are off on a spiritual pilgrimage and cannot be contacted.  Splinter vows to help Casey and asks what happened.

Casey explains that he was taking Shadow through a walk in Central Park in her stroller, when a bunch of Foot Soldiers descended from the trees and attacked.  He fought off as many as he could, but they managed to separate him from the stroller and escape with Shadow.  Splinter finds it strange that they let Casey live and suspects they’re setting a trap, using Shadow as bait.  Casey and Splinter return to the scene of the crime in Central Park and find Shadow’s discarded stroller and stuffed animals.  Enraged, Casey tells Splinter they need to stop by his apartment to pick some things up before they hunt down the Foot.

A little while later, Casey emerges from his apartment with his hockey mask and golf bag full of blunt instruments.  Racing over the rooftops, he and Splinter follow the Foot’s tracks west toward an old factory on a pier.  Splinter says that the factory was the scene of a previous battle with the Foot and is most likely where the Clan’s trap will be sprung.

They sneak into the factory and begin taking down Foot Soldiers until one of the ninja accidentally lands an axe into some pump machinery.  There’s a huge explosion and water begins to rush in from the river.  Not just water, but hungry sharks and abnormally aggressive octopi, too.  Splinter feels supernatural forces at work and suspects that this entire ordeal has been orchestrated by…

The Shark Shredder!

Having merged with Mashima the Foot Mystic, the Shark Shredder was able to regrow himself.  He then got about plotting his revenge against Splinter and the Turtles, using Casey and Shadow as bait.  No longer needing Shadow, the Shark Shredder drops the baby in the icy water.  Casey dives in and rescues her, dodging the Shark Shredder’s tentacles and claws.  Splinter feels the presence of Mashima within the Shark Shredder’s consciousness and communicates with him spiritually.  Mashima is loathe to be trapped inside the Shark Shredder and desperately wants to end the abomination.  Splinter and Mashima then begin a psychic attack on the Shark Shredder while Casey attacks him physically, smacking him upside the head with a golf club.

The dual attacks succeed.  Mashima’s spirit is freed to the afterlife and the Shark Shredder collapses and impales himself on a broken beam, dying.  Mashima thanks Splinter for his help, vowing that he no longer thirsts for revenge.  Splinter forgives Mashima and wishes him well.

As fire fighters see to the scene, Casey and Splinter slip away.  Splinter returns Shadow to Casey (after she pulls on his whiskers).  All is well in the end, save that Shadow needs a diaper change.

Turtle Tips:

*Chronologically, I would place this shortly after TMNT (Vol. 2) #13.

*Mashima and the Shark Shredder last appeared in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #4, where they fought the Turtles and Splinter at the factory and were thought dead.

*The Turtles forged a truce with Karai and the Foot Clan in TMNT (Vol. 1) #61.  Obviously, the Foot Soldiers in this issue were loyal to the Shark Shredder and not Karai, hence the lack of acknowledgement to the truce.

*This issue was originally published with a back-up story, “Credo” by Will Tupper, Eric Theriault and Erik Swanson.

Review:

Well, it took forever, but Tales of the TMNT eventually sewed up the lingering cliffhanger from the end of the initial Shark Shredder arc.  Just be grateful the plot thread GOT a conclusion.  Most ongoing storylines in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) never received endings.

Anyhow, “The Bait” moves at mach speed to get everything established and concluded within 23 pages.  This sucker is in a HURRY.  Like many Tales stories, I do kind of wish it had been given two issues to flesh out its plot and conflict, but multi-parters were pretty rare in this book, so I guess it would be asking too much.  For as hectically paced as “The Bait” is, I think Moulage deserves some credit for managing to economically pack it all in there.

Moreso than the return of the Shark Shredder, I think the real value of “The Bait” comes in the unexpected and abnormal pairing of Casey Jones with Master Splinter.  Never was there more of an odd couple.  Sadly, the race to get the whole tale told in one issue somewhat squanders the potential for fun, as Splinter and Casey are rarely afforded the opportunity to play off of one another.  They get a few good lines in, and I rather liked seeing Splinter bonk Casey on the head with his staff to calm him down, but the opportunity for so much more humor was there if the story had just had the time to breathe.

Casey was portrayed really well in this issue, I think.  Though he “relapses” back to hockey-masked vigilante mode for possibly the first time since “City at War” (he put on a mask in Vol. 2 for one fight, but it wasn’t his hockey mask), his growth as a character isn’t forgotten.  He’s doing this to save his daughter, who was his whole reason for leaving the vigilante life behind.  Casey’s desperation to save Shadow is palpable and artist Mike Manley strikes some great expressions of fear and confusion on him (particularly the bottom panel of page 4).  The page 11 pin-up of Casey in vigilante mode was a nice piece, too, and his relapse feels like a suitably “big” moment.  Leaving the whole vigilante thing behind was a pretty major plot point of his arc during “City at War”, so it’s nice to know the writers for this story didn’t “forget” about Casey’ retirement and gave the moment the drama it deserved.  And considering how fast this story rushes by, actually stopping for a splash page feels especially “big”.

As for the Shark Shredder and Mashima, well, they’re kind of dispatched with too much ease.  The Shark Shredder makes his epic comeback on page 17 and he’s dead by page 22.  Still, for what little we see of him at the end of this story, I loved what we got.  When the Shark Shredder rises from the river and smashes the factory, he utterly disregards the welfare of all his Foot Soldiers.  In every panel, they’re seen hectically clinging to wooden support beams, getting swatted by the Shark Shredder’s tentacles, frantically swimming in terror from the man-eating sharks the Shredder summoned, and so forth.  It’s funny, but it gives a bit of personality to this monstrous, abomination of a Shredder, showing how little he cares for human life (he kidnapped a baby, after all) and how willing he is to callously sacrifice anyone and anything just to get revenge.

I think, conceptually, “The Bait” had the potential to be a lot better than it wound up being.  There are great ideas in here, like the oddball pairing of Splinter and Casey, and there are some big moments, like Casey coming out of retirement to save Shadow and the return of the Shark Shredder, but it rushes through them with a “let’s just get this over with” attitude that almost sinks it.

Grade: C (as in, “Can’t really excuse the scene where Casey drops to his knees and screams ‘NOOOOOOO!’ to the Heavens as anything other than terrible, either”.)

TMNT Villains Microseries #4: Alopex

July 17, 2013, 6:43 pm

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Publication date: July 17, 2013

Written by: Brian Lynch

Art by: Ross Campbell

Letters by: Chris Mowry

Editor: Bobby Curnow

Colors by: Ross Campbell and Heather Nunnelly

Summary:

Mutant arctic fox and Foot assassin Alopex watches over a New York high rise where a deal is going down.  Four rogue Foot Soldiers are selling trade secrets to a “ninja wannabe” in a business suit.  Alopex considers the Foot Clan to be her family and isn’t about to let that happen.  She crashes through the window, knocking out the “ninja wannabe” and confronting the four traitors.  She offers them each a weapon (a bo, twin katana, nunchakus and a pair of sai) and says that killing them as they fight with those weapons would be good “practice” for her.  She then puts on a blindfold and attacks.  As she slays each Foot Soldier, she imagines them to be one of the Turtles.  Finally, she takes on the one with the sai.  He begs for his life, but she tells him “there is no escape from the Foot” and kills him.

Back at Foot HQ, tensions are high.  The Foot Clan is at war and being attacked from all sides.  Alopex is called into the Shredder’s chamber and given new orders.  She is to destroy a research facility in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Alopex recognizes it as the facility where she was captured as a normal fox and experimented on; mutating her into what she is today.  It was the Foot Clan who saved her and trained her to be an assassin.

Alopex arrives at the abandoned facility and, with the Shredder’s permission, takes point.  She sets explosive charges, but is suddenly gripped with nostalgia.  Alopex remembers her family from when she was just a fox.  She was the hunter and gatherer for the family and was the toughest predator in the forest.  Toughest save for a mammoth polar bear, who terrorized her and all other animals in the forest.  Alopex catches a glimpse of one of her old family members, but it scurries away in fright.  She then smells something in the wind and races back to the landing zone.

Alopex finds the Shredder ordering his Foot Soldiers to raze the entire forest, killing everything in it… including Alopex’s old family.  Shredder tells her that she is to be promoted to a Chunin of the Foot Clan.  But before she can accept the role in her new family, her old family must be destroyed.  Enraged, Alopex attacks Shredder and slashes him across the mouth.  Shredder is impressed that she was able to draw blood, but feels she needs to be reminded of her place.  He quickly takes her down.  He then tells her that mutating a fox was his idea, as he admires the creatures, and that she owes everything to him.  Alopex concedes defeat and takes Shredder’s hand, knowing full well that there is no escape from the Foot Clan.

Flying off in the chopper, Alopex watches the forest burn below.  She vows to herself that she will fight by the Shredder’s side and serve him well, but she realizes what he is.  He is the bear.  And she promises that some day, she will kill him.

Turtle Tips:

*This issue takes place between TMNT (IDW) #23 and TMNT (IDW) #24.

*Though it isn’t stated, the “ninja wannabe” may be a member of the Savate ninja gang at war with the Foot.

*The two thugs (Bebop and Rocksteady) from TMNT Microseries #1: Raphael appear on page 7, panel 3.

*This issue was originally published with 2 variant covers: Regular Cover by Tyler Walpole, and Cover RI by Campbell.

*This issue was dedicated to the memory of Franco Urru, artist of TMNT Microseries #1: Raphael, the comic that introduced Alopex.

Review:

Alopex has been hanging around for a year and a half now, yet we’ve known so little about her.  Heck, lack of a concrete origin has been the least of her problems.  A year and a half and Alopex has yet to develop so much as a personality!

This installment in the Villains Microseries endeavors to rectify that oversight and accomplishes a so-so job.  We now know the full measure of her back story, but a personality…?  IDW’s still working on it.

For the past year and a half, Alopex has been Shredder’s right-hand thug and amounted to little more than a shallow henchwoman.  We now know what her motivations are (a misplaced sense of “family”) and she now has something approaching ambition (to kill the Shredder), and that goes a long way in giving her character, but a personality?  Alopex is just so dry and boring.  There’s nothing quirky or unusual about her, nor does she have any noteworthy dynamics with other characters in the book (beyond a generic “wants to overthrow the leader of the bad guys” shtick).  A Microseries like this is nice and all, but she really needs to be given time to develop in the ongoing series if IDW ever wants her to become more than just a flimsy henchwoman.  And that might mean taking a break from the six bajillion ongoing, intersecting storylines long enough to stop and develop a character (I love the complex narrative tapestry you’re weaving, IDW, but your characters are beginning to get lost in all the story).

Perhaps I’m being a shade unfair.  There are glimpses into a more interesting Alopex in this Microseries; she certainly is put through an emotional wringer and she has a crisis of conscience.  But more than that, I think what attracted my attention the most was the brief moment where she reflects on her cockiness as a “kid” (a normal fox).  While the bear represented a dangerous adversary, I think what it meant more to her was that it represented humility.  The bear was more powerful than she was, she had to plan her life according to its whims and no matter how great she thought she was, the bear was always higher up on the food chain.  And, as is so plainly stated at the end of this book, the Shredder is the new “bear” in her life.  Yes, he killed her family and is the one who had her experimented on in the lab, but I think what upsets her more is that he humbles her.  Alopex strikes me as being very proud and having to “suck it up” doesn’t agree with her.

That’s what I took away from the issue, anyhow.  It might be interesting to see Waltz or Burnham or Lynch or whoever run with the idea of an arrogant and resentful Alopex.  At the very least, it would give her a personality, and damn but she could use one.

Ross Campbell returns for art duties and he’s certainly a sight for sore eyes.  He’s one of the best talents in IDW’s stable, but one they don’t seem to find enough opportunities to utilize.  His rendition of Alopex is very different from the portrayal other artists have been giving her.  Folks like Santolouco tend to emphasis her viciousness, making her snarling and ferocious, but Campbell’s interpretation is highly reserved and, well, cute.  Also, really fluffy.  The approach works in its own way, as it makes her appear less like a blood-thirsty werewolf and more like a quiet and stealthy hunter.  I think there’s room in the world for both types of Alopex, as each has its visual strengths (I love Santolouco’s “holy shit she’s gonna eat you!” version), but Campbell’s take seems more appropriately “ninja-y”.  Also, I like that IDW’s artists have been consistent in Alopex’s androgynous look, fighting the urge to make her appear excessively feminine (when I said she was “cute” before, I meant that more in a puppy dog sort of way, not a pig-yiffing furry creep-o sort of way).

Lastly, I’m also grateful that Campbell elected to make Alopex’s purple butterfly mask look like fur markings and not that stupid domino mask Eastman designed her with.  With any luck, this interpretation will stick around and other artists will adopt it.

So, did this issue make Alopex more interesting?  Well, yeah, I guess, but only in  a rather negligible increment.  We know her origin and we know her goals and we know ABOUT her, but it feels more like this is a fresh starting point for the character.  It’s up to the writers to make her a character worth caring about now that the basics are out of the way… a year and a half since her introduction.

Grade: C (as in, “Can’t go without complimenting Campbell’s and Nunnelly’s colors, though, especially during the back half of the issue set in Alaska.  Excellent use of predominantly white panels to emphasis the bolder colors”.)

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #43

July 20, 2013, 1:10 pm

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Publication date: February, 2008

Plot: Peter Laird

Script: Dan Berger

Art: Jim Lawson

Frontispiece: Michael Dooney

Lettering: Eric Talbot

Cover: Jim Lawson and Steve Lavigne

“The Proposal”

Summary:

Frontispiece: In some dank pit, a Gollum-like creature shows off a ring which he covets.  The creature goes on and on about how life is a circle; that everything you do will eventually come right back around to you.  His whole life has been like that, he reflects…

At Foot HQ, Casey’s cousin Sid has joined as an initiate.  Scrubbing floors, he bemoans his lack of ascent amongst the ranks and begins bad-mouthing the Clan.  Two Foot Soldiers overhear him and start giving him a hard time.  Once they’re done, they storm off, mentioning that Mistress Karai has a new mission: To find a ring with a heart-shaped ruby called the Heartstone, a talisman of immortality.  Hearing this, Sid remembers that his grandmother had a ring like that and left it to Casey.  Sid sees this as his chance to win favor with Karai.

Down in the sewer lair, Casey is a nervous wreck.  He plans to propose to April and give her the heart-shaped ring his grandmother left him.  The Turtles try to tell Casey to relax, that he has nothing to worry about.  Suddenly, Casey gets a call on his cell phone from Sid, asking about the ring.  Casey angrily tells Sid he plans to give the ring to April at the farmhouse and to never to talk to him again.  At Foot HQ, Sid tells Karai that he knows precisely where his cousin will be with the ring.  Karai warns him that he had better not be mistaken.

As Casey and April head to Northampton (with April seeming rather wise to Casey’s scheme), the Turtles decide they’d better go along and help their buddy out.  Splinter gives them a suit which he tailored himself and offers to watch Shadow while they’re away.  The Turtles hope a train and ride the rails to Northampton.  Meanwhile, Karai and the Foot close in via helicopter.

Arriving at the farmhouse, Casey invites April out to the woods for a little picnic, unaware that they’re being watched by Foot Soldiers.  Settling down to eat, Casey tries to express himself to April, but he gets so nervous that he has to run off and empty his bladder.  As he does so, the Turtles sneak up on him and try to tell him not to spaz out.  They give Casey to suit so he’ll look dashing on his return (and save some face).  Casey returns to April, takes a knee and pulls out the ring, proposing.

Suddenly, the Foot attack.  A Foot Mystic secures the Heartstone and Sid confronts Casey.  Before things can get too heated, the Turtles show up and tell Karai that by attacking their friend, she’s breaking their truce.  Karai says that as long as they have the Heartstone, they’ve no more reason to be there and the Foot Clan vanishes.  Casey is bummed that he now no longer has a ring to propose to April with, but she tells him that she doesn’t need one.  Still, he wants to slip *something* on her finger, so April ties a dandelion into a loop.  Casey pops the question and April agrees.

Back at Foot HQ, Karai inspects the Heartstone and learns that it’s a worthless fake made from paste.  She crushes the stone, throws the ring at Sid and orders the Foot Mystics to punish him.  The Mystics proceed to use various magical torture methods on Sid, but despite their best efforts, they cannot kill him.  Now nothing but a small, twisted, Gollum-like creature, Sid is thrown in a prison cell for the rest of his life.  Clutching the ring, Sid realizes that it was never the Heartstone that granted immortality, but the ring-itself.

Turtle Tips:

*Due to Shadow’s age (and according to the editorial note from Dan Berger), this issue must be shortly after TMNT (Vol. 2) #13.

*Cousin Sid last appeared in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 1) #1.

*Chronologically, Karai last appeared in TMNT (Vol. 1) #61, where she brokered the truce between the Turtles and the Foot Clan.

*Although Casey and April become engaged in this issue, many years will pass before they finally tie the knot.  Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #67 takes place 3 years after this issue and April is still Casey’s girlfriend in that story.

*In the foreword for this issue, Berger says that Peter Laird had intended to plot a follow-up to this issue, showing us April and Casey’s wedding.  The story was never produced.

*The Foot Mystics which appear in this issue are designed after the Foot Mystics from the 4Kids TMNT animated series.

*This issue was originally published with a bonus pin-up, “Utroms in Love” by Dan Berger.

Review:

 “The Proposal” is an important story in regards to the growth of April and Casey, but from a narrative standpoint it relies on a lot of stupid coincidences to move the plot along.  Casey’s cousin Sid happens to have joined the Foot Clan.  Casey’s grandmother just happens to have inherited the Hearstone which Karai just suddenly decided she wanted (for no explained reason other than “POWER!!!”).  Then there’s the stupidity of Casey telling Sid over the phone the exact time and place where he can be found with the ring in his possession.  I think that last bit bugged me more than the string of coincidences that tied Casey, Sid and the Foot together.  “What?  Of course I have the valuable object you’re asking about!  I’ll have it in my pocket at 3:30 in the afternoon this Saturday in the backyard of the farmhouse in Northampton.  Did you get all that?  Good.  Now leave me alone because I never want to see you again!”

Sheesh.  I mean, I know Casey isn’t exactly a genius, but that sort of stupidity was more in-line with his borderline mentally handicapped 4Kids counterpart.

On the subject of Sid, I’d completely forgotten he was in this story until I reread it this afternoon.  While it was “neat” to see him dredged up from the depths of obscurity (having only made one appearance before this issue), I really didn’t care what his ultimate fate in the Mirage universe was.  It’s not like Sid was a particularly enthralling character to begin with.

Karai’s portrayal in this issue made me cock an eyebrow more than anybody else’s.  She’s ruthless, cruel and has zero tolerance for failure.  When was she ever like THAT in the Mirage TMNT comics?  During “City at War”, she was far more level headed than Oroku Saki ever was, distinguishing her from her predecessor.  In fact, she was rather accommodating and willing to compromise.  Yeah, she was the leader of a global crime syndicate, but having a newbie mystically shrunk into a freakish creature and then thrown in a jailcell for the rest of his life just because he failed?  That really didn’t seem like something she’d do at all.  Maybe if there were some other precedent of her behaving with such monstrous ferocity in another Mirage TMNT comic it wouldn’t seem so glaringly out of place, but save for Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #40 where she’s a senile old woman referencing stuff that never happened, there’s just nothing to compare this to.  In “City at War” she’s fair, generous and capable of love (grieving over her dead daughter).  In Volume 4, she’s mysterious and up to something, but a far cry from a psycho.  But in this story, she’s pure evil and that just isn’t right.

Maybe she was having an off day?

At least April seemed to be right on the money in this story.  From the second she steps into the issue, she’s suspicious of Casey’s weekend trip and seems to have a good idea as to what he has planned.  April’s supposed to be very intelligent in the Mirage comics, so it makes sense that she’d be able to see through Casey without any trouble.  And hey, it’s nice that she isn’t wallpaper for a change.

Anyhow, “The Proposal” is a nice chapter in the developing romance between April and Casey, if not a particularly well-written story.  Laird never followed through on the sequel teased during the foreword that would have shown us the wedding, but then, Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) rarely EVER followed through on its proposed sequels.  There are some cute moments in here, such as the Turtles trying to help Casey out, and Casey’s fumbling at popping the question wasn’t even remotely as obnoxious as when he did it in the 4Kids cartoon.  But other than that… eh.

Grade: C- (as in, “Cousin Sid was another casualty of Laird’s Gollum obsession during the ‘00s.  For more, see the talking velociraptors from Vol. 4”.)

TMNT (Dreamwave) #1

July 21, 2013, 9:19 am

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Publication date: June 2003

Written by: Peter David

Pencils by: Lesean Thomas

Inks: Erik Sander

Colors: Rob Ruffolo

Flats: Kenny Li and Sigmund Torre

Letters and design: Matt Moylan

VP/Editor in Chief: Roger Lee

President: Pat Lee

“Things Change”

Summary:

Fifteen years ago.  Two little kids (Johnny and Frank) are getting their photos taken in a booth.  Johnny wants each of them to keep one of the pics so that they’ll always remember that they’re best buddies for life or something.  Suddenly, a nearby truck gets blindsided by a car and a canister of ooze comes rolling out.  It hits a bowl of four baby turtles and sends them careening down a storm drain.  Johnny wants to go down and steal the turtles, while Frank wants to help the guy in the truck in case he’s been hurt.  A stranger walks past and is impressed with Johnny’s self-interested attitude.  He tells the kid to look up the Purple Dragons when he’s a little bit older.

The present.  Frank is a rookie cop, enjoying his first day on the job.  Walking his beat, he’s shocked when a robot (a Mouser) appears from below ground and snatches on old lady’s dog.  Frank grabs the leash, but is dragged into the street (past his superior officer, Sarge, who thinks Frank is putting on a show).  The robot drops the dog and Frank is nearly run down by an armored car.  He glimpses into the vehicle and thinks he sees Johnny driving.  It IS Johnny, who is now a Purple Dragon, but Johnny pretends like he’s never seen Frank before.  Frank returns the dog to the old lady, unaware of four strange figures leaping across the rooftops overhead.

Later, Johnny and the Purple Dragons shake down a store owner for some cash, stuffing it into the back of the armored car (unaware they’d just locked Raphael inside).  Two Ton (one of the Dragons) asks Johnny what the guy who hired them to do the job is like.  Johnny says he’s really scary but organized and will likely take them straight to the top.  Driving off, they pass Frank and Sarge in their squad car.  Frank wants to give chase, but Sarge insists the armored car did nothing illegal.

Elsewhere, the Purple Dragons park in an alley to deliver the case.  They’re confronted by Leonardo and Michelangelo, who start beating on them while Donatello picks the lock to the armored car to free Raph.  The Purple Dragons gang up on the Turtles, but prove no match for the ninja.  A unit of Foot Soldiers arrive and the fight looks like it’s about to really get started.

Not far away, Frank is whining to Sarge when the armored car (being driven by the Turtles) comes roaring by.  Leo throws the stolen money at the cops and the Turtles disappear.

At Foot HQ, Johnny desperately tries to explain himself to his employer, Oroku Saki.  Saki tells Johnny he will never have the chance to fail him again and rises from his seat.  As the doors close, Johnny screams in agony.

Back in the alley where the Turtles fought the Foot, Frank and Sarge are doing some investigating.  Sarge thinks it’s a waste of time, as who care about a bunch of gang members, anyway?  Looking around, Frank passes over the old photo of him and Johnny as kids.  He looks at it and realizes that… things change.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued in TMNT (Dreamwave) #2.

*This issue is an adaptation of the first episode of the 4Kids TMNT animated series, “Things Change”.

*This issue was originally published with a 4-page preview of NecroWar #1.  Like anybody gives a shit.

Review:

Oh great.  The Dreamwave series.  Might as well get this shit out of the way; it’s been lingering over my head for long enough.

I’m a bit conflicted about Peter David’s approach to this series.  I’m sure he was under some mandate from 4Kids Entertainment to make the comic a tie-in to their animated series, and that usually means dull episode adaptations.  So to David’s credit, while he adapts the episodes from the cartoon, he tries to show them from the perspective of different characters involved, so it’s still a “new” story.  Sometimes it works okay, as when episodes are seen through the eyes of recognizable characters like Baxter Stockman, and sometimes… we get the episodes through the eyes of nameless generics.

For those who have seen the episode “Things Change”, Johnny is the lead Purple Dragon with the blue hair and Frank is the cop designed after Kevin Eastman (while Sarge is the cop designed after Peter Laird).  While I think David might have been onto something with his “same story, different POV” approach, the fact remains that I bought this comic for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… not a couple of nobodies whose animation models probably didn’t even have names.  This is the very first issue of the series, meant to grab readers who want to relax with some TMNT action.  What they receive instead is the trite life story of two characters nobody gives a shit about.

And even the back story for Frank and Johnny is pretty awful.  The dialogue is stilted and insincere, as Johnny drops “best buddies for life” phrases incessantly, then goes off on some awkward rant about “looking out for number one if you want to make it in the big city”.  It’s way too clunky to make me care about these characters whom the issue is focusing on (again, this is the first issue of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic and it’s not even about the Turtles).

Speaking of the Turtles, since the actual episode of the cartoon this issue is supplementing is told from their POV, they hardly play into the plot of the story.  It is just assumed on David’s part that anybody reading the comic will have seen the cartoon, so he doesn’t bother trying to string their narrative together coherently.  One minute they’re jumping along the rooftop, the next Raph is in the back of the armored car somehow, then Raph and Mikey are arguing over something that David didn’t even bother to show in this issue, then the Foot Soldiers show up for a fight, then we skip the fight and it’s the Turtles just driving away.

There’s a LOT of narrative disconnect from their side of the story, and if you haven’t seen the cartoon, you won’t be able to “fill in the blanks” on your own.

As for Thomas’s art, well, this is Dreamwave we’re talking about.  One of the major problems they had (besides Pat Lee’s lack of business ethics) was a tendency to absolutely positively DROWN their line art in computer coloring and photoshop effects.  Picking out what’s going on in the line art can be a major hassle, as the colorists are competing with the penciler for the reader’s attention.  I’m sure being a colorist isn’t the most gratifying occupation in the comics world (right up there with letterer), but you’re there to compliment the line art, not try to show it up.

But if you can fight your way through the lense flares and make it to Thomas’s lines, then you’ll be met with some other obstacles.  Thomas is an artist who puts “style” above “fundamentals”, so while his character designs are expressive and his sense of posture is dynamic, he can’t get so much as a limp grasp on things like “scale” and “perspective”.  Just look at the truly awful attempt at foreshortening on Johnny’s hands on page 2.  It also seems evident that Thomas drew the characters and the backgrounds wholly separate from one another, then tried to combine them on his tablet after the fact.  So you end up with characters who don’t appear to be in the same plane of existence as the environments they’re supposedly standing on.  Cut and paste some clip art onto a photograph and tell me how that works out for you.

“But… But… My style!”

Guess I can’t argue with the old “style” defense.  It’s impregnable.

Anyway, the Dreamwave series is just bad.  From its very conception, it is incapable of standing on its own (you HAVE to have seen the 4Kids cartoon to read this comic) and while it earns points for a creative approach to storytelling, for the last time, people buy Ninja Turtles comics to read about the Ninja Turtles!

Grade: F (as in, “Frank, if you wanted an excuse to convince Sarge to pull the armored car over, you could have mentioned its complete lack of license plates.  Either Thomas forgot to draw them or the colorists drowned them out in photoshop effects”.)

TMNT (Fred Wolf) Season 3, Part 8: Review

July 23, 2013, 10:17 am

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FINALLY.  I thought I'd never get to the end of that third season from the Fred Wolf TMNT cartoon.

Here's my review of the last 5 episodes from season 3 at Adventures in Poor Taste.

Credit where credit is due, the season ended on a relative high note.  "Bye, Bye, Fly" was a favorite of mine as a kid, "Shredderville" had a pretty good twist at the end, and while the third-part finale was all over the place in terms of quality, hell, at least it gave us the Technodrome mowing down skyscrapers.

Dunno if I'm going to dive into season 4 immediately or not.  Might branch out and try the Nickelodeon cartoon, since it's almost done with its first season.

Awesome Turtle Picture #22

July 25, 2013, 7:52 am

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Here's an obscure one that even I had never seen until TMNT fan Adam Winters shared it with me yesterday.  It can only be found in the 2nd printing of TMNT (Vol. 1) #7 published January, 1989.  The piece is by a duo I can only identify as Hatten and Blacziunas.

And it is Donatello having a showdown with Wolverine (or a legally acceptable vague likeness).

Peter Laird's opening editorial for the 2nd printing doesn't even mention the new pin-up (hence why I don't know the first names of the artists), so it's pretty easy to miss.  They did a good job capturing Kevin Eastman's style on Don, though.

TMNT III manga adaptation Chapter 2 translated!

July 25, 2013, 7:39 pm

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Check out chapter 2 of the TMNT III manga adaptation courtesy of the Optical Internet Translation Gang!

This one was fun to translate, as you start to get an idea of how much the manga adaptation of TMNT III deviates from the actual movie.  It still follows the same general plot outline, but it's all quite a bit more exciting.  Lord Norinaga now has his own bumbling henchmen (Iron and Silver, pictured above) and the trip down to the dungeon for April's rescue is pepped up with Indiana Jones-style booby traps.

Thanks, as always, go to Adam Winters for the scans and Cryomancer of the Optical Internet Translation Gang for the text editing and clean-up.  I'll probably take a little time off from reviewing in the next week or two so I can translate chapter 3.  In the meantime, of course, that'll mean some Awesome Turtle Pictures to keep the place updating.

Enjoy!

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TMNT (Dreamwave) #2

July 28, 2013, 8:17 am

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Publication date: July 2003

Written by: Peter David

Pencils by: Lesean Thomas

Inks: Erik Sander

Colors: Rob Ruffolo, Shaun Curtis

Flats: Kenny Li

Letters and design: Matt Moylan

VP/Editor in Chief: Roger Lee

President: Pat Lee

“A Better Mousetrap”

Summary:

At the old O’Neil homestead, Li’l April is practicing to be a news reporter by interviewing her mom.  She asks what’s for dinner and Mrs. O’Neil says turtle soup.  Suddenly, the Ninja Turtles come bursting out of the pot as Mousers come crashing through the windows.  As the Turtles fight the Mousers, Li’l April wants to get a better look.

Now it’s the present (maybe) and Baxter Stockman is rehearsing the announcement of his new Mousers with his lab assistant, an adult April.  April is distant, feeling like only moments ago she was a little girl.  Baxter is not amused and wants to get the rehearsal right.

April is now in her Dad’s VW Beetle (with the oh-so subtle license plate “BMBLB”).  Mr. O’Neil refuses to let her attend journalism college, saying that her scores in science are too high to be wasted on the wrong major.  April reminds him that she’s already attending college and that she changed her major to science a while ago.  A manhole in front of them explodes and out pop the Turtles, still fighting the Mousers.

Back at the lab, April and Stockman record their demonstration of the Mousers.  As Baxter gives his speech, April sees Li’l April sitting in the corner playing with Ninja Turtles dolls.  The Raph doll warns April that her boss is evil.  April is incredulous, but the Raph doll reminds her of what just happened to her not a few minutes ago.

Now it’s the future (maybe) and April is running diagnostics on the Mousers.  She finds a transmission anomaly and wants to go over it, but Baxter tells her it’s nothing.  All the while, Li’l April is sticking a microphone in her face, encouraging her to use her journalistic instincts to get the scoop on Baxter.  April overhears Baxter in another room, talking to a mysterious benefactor.  After Baxter leaves for the evening, April messes around on his computer (at the behest of the Raph doll and Li’l April, while her father leans over her shoulder and tells her not to go through with it).  She finds the symbol of the Foot Clan and clicking it opens a secret elevator.  On the ride down, Mrs. O’Neil (still cooking dinner) warns her that things aren’t safe.

April exits the elevator to find a mass production line of Mousers.  Baxter appears behind her and tells her that she’s seen too much.  He sics the Mousers on her and they eat Li’l April (who tries to interview them).  Donatello (dressed as Sigmund Freud) thinks that its striking symbolism as April flees into the sewers.  She’s cornered by the Mousers and Mr. O’Neil tells her that this is where “reporter’s instincts” inevitably lead.  At the last second, she’s saved by the Ninja Turtles and faints.

April awakens a moment later, realizing the entire surreal, out of joint experience was nothing more than a dream.  She sees the Turtles and faints again.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (Dreamwave) #1.  The story continues in TMNT (Dreamwave) #3.

*This issue is adapted from the 4Kids TMNT animated series episode “A Better Mousetrap”.

Review:

A quick anecdote, but back in the summer of 2003, this was the first issue of Dreamwave’s TMNT series I bought.  And after reading it, it was the last.  I didn’t get the remainder of the run until a couple years ago when every single issue turned up in the quarter bin at my local comic shop (along with pretty much everything Dreamwave ever published).  So coincidentally, exactly 10 years has passed since I last read this comic.

Well, I didn’t like it then and I don’t much care for it now.

“A Better Mousetrap” is definitely an improvement over the first issue of the series, primarily because the focus is on an established character readers care about and not a pair of nobody’s who won’t have any impact on the series whatsoever.  Writer Peter David tries to crack the lens on this episode a little bit more; whereas before, we saw events from the cartoon through a different POV, now we’re seeing them through a different POV AND as part of a dream.

The disjointed effect is kind of neat, but it’s mostly incoherent.  Once again, David is writing these issues under the assumption that all readers have watched the animated series as a prerequisite.  If you’re coming into the Dreamwave comic blind, you don’t stand a freakin’ chance.  With that in mind, this issue is especially unforgiving to newcomers with its dreamlike “jump from one moment to another out of chronological sequence with no rhyme or reason” approach.

I think the desired effect was for us to learn more about this incarnation of April, but what all does David actually tell us?  That when she was a little girl, she wanted to be a reporter but her father wouldn’t let her?  That’s the long and short of it, really.  It explains her naturally curious nature, which is neat (and, of course, is a throwback to the old Fred Wolf cartoon and the live action movies), but aside from that, we’re afforded no greater glimpse into April’s personality or history.  If anything, the “dream sequence” effect seems to have been applied just to keep this from being a straight retelling of the episode and to try and jazz the story up a bit.

On the subject of Lesean Thomas's art, you can tell he lacks ambition (or motivation) and doesn’t like to step out of his comfort zone; namely, what he knows he can draw easily.  As a result, look at April throughout this issue.  I hope you like the ¾ view of her face:

 

Because that’s the angle she’s drawn in for practically every panel.   The same angle, over and over, with an expression that only slightly changes between what could very easily be cut ‘n paste work.  I mentioned this in my review for the last issue, but Thomas represents everything wrong with using tablets for artistic shortcuts.

And I honestly can’t say if the coloring is better or worse in this issue than the first.  On the bright side, I can mostly tell what’s going on this time around, but on the down side, there are so many “shiny” highlights added to the characters, I think Ruffolo and Curtis were under the impression that people are made of plastic.

Oh yeah, and once again, the Turtles are only guest stars in their own comic.  Sorry I’m saving that comment for the end, but it’s a problem epidemic to the entire Dreamwave series and I kind of think it ought to go without saying.

Grade: D- (as in, “Dreamwave, Dreamwave, Dreamwave…Couldn’t you do ANYTHING right?”)

TMNT (IDW) #24

July 31, 2013, 7:21 pm

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Publication date: July 31, 2013

Story: Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz

Script: Tom Waltz

Art: Mateus Santolouco, Mike Henderson (page 3)

Colors: Ronda Pattison

Letters: Shawn Lee

Editor: Bobby Curnow

“City Fall, Part Three”

Summary:

At Foot HQ, Karai’s geommu practice is interrupted by the Shredder, who tells her that it’s time to get to work.  Karai asks how the mutants will know where to find them and Shredder simply smiles.

At the hospital, Casey is dreaming of his deceased mother.  He apologizes to her for not being able to save his dad, but she tells him it’s alright and time to wake up.  Casey comes to and is greeted by the elated April and Angel.  Casey is weak, but wants to be caught up to speed on everything he’s missed.

Old Hob and Slash lead Splinter, Raph, Don and Mike to the waterfront, where Hob says the Foot are hiding out with Leo.  The Turtles aren’t so trusting, but follow him to a warehouse because they’ve no choice.  Before they leave, however, Mike gives Slash a candy bar in an effort to befriend him.  Slash enjoys the treat.

Hob picks the lock on the warehouse and ushers the Turtles and Splinter inside.  He immediately closes and locks the door behind them, not wanting to be inside for what’s about to go down.  No sooner do the Turtles realize they’ve been hoodwinked, the lights turn on and they’re addressed by Shredder, Karai and Alopex.  Splinter tells Shredder that no blood needs to be shed this night, but Shredder scoffs at the remark, telling Splinter that as they speak, his Foot Soldiers are consolidating power across the city by taking down street gangs and the Savate.  Splinter demands Leonardo back, but Shredder tells him Leo is “no more”.  Enraged, Splinter lunges at Shredder, but is knocked to the ground by Leonardo, now garbed in Foot regalia.  Leo tosses his blue bandana at Splinter, telling the rat that he is no longer his son.

The Turtles confront Leo, but he’s unmoved by their words and attacks each of them.  With little effort, he defeats them all in one-on-one combat.  He then moves to execute Splinter, but Shredder orders him to stand down, claiming the rat for himself.  The Turtles collect Splinter and try to make a retreat, but the door is locked and dozens of Foot Soldiers drop down from the rafters.  Suddenly, Slash comes barging through the wall, making an exit (and asking Mike for more candy).  The Turtles and Splinter escape, reluctantly leaving Leo with the Foot.

They reconvene on a rooftop with Old Hob, ready to wring his neck.  Hob says that the Foot employed him to lure the Turtles into the trap.  However, he says that sending Slash in to break them out was his own idea, squaring things with both sides.  The Turtles are in no mood to argue with Hob and let it go (while Mike gives Slash another candy bar).  Meanwhile, Splinter clutches Leo’s old bandana and looks out upon the city.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (IDW) #23.  The story continues in TMNT (IDW) #25.

*This issue was originally published with 5 variant covers: Cover A by Santolouco, Cover B by Eastman and Pattison, Cover RI by Freddie Williams II, Cover RE Jetpack exclusive by Eastman, and Cover RE Jetpack exclusive (Leo mask).

Review:

While the previous installment in “City Fall” had perhaps an excess of story, “Part Three” is lighter in that regard, being more concerned with the action.  “Dark Leo” (as the editor’s notes in the letters column calls him) makes his dramatic entrance and, for what’s already a plot point that’s hanging by a thread of credulity, the creative team has to make it look as convincing as possible.

And they do a pretty good job, all things considered!  Santolouco’s design for Dark Leo is perhaps a little busy, but if ANY comic book characters have an excuse to wear tons of pouches, it would have to be the Turtles (they need to store their smoke bombs and shuriken SOMEWHERE, after all).  I just wrote a sentence about Leo’s goofy-looking scarf and then immediately deleted it, because I just realized he’s simply adhering to the Foot’s fashion trend (both Shredder and Karai have the same red scarves, while Alopex’s is grey).  So good on Santolouco for that neat little detail.  

I dig Leo's new forearm guards as they seem pretty damn practical for a guy who gets in sword fights everyday and are a lot more useful than the standard knee and elbow pads the Turtles usually wear.  These guys are running into life-or-death battles, not going rollerblading on the boardwalk; they should probably take greater safety precautions.  Also, Leo now only has a single katana and two tanto (short swords) as his main weapons, which is a neat change-up.  Leo’s katana actually looks to be drawn as a proper katana for a change and not a ninjato (I know I always call them “katana” in my reviews, but that’s because they’re always identified as such in the comics, whether they’re consistently drawn to be ninjato or not).

It’s a pretty good design, I think, and Pattison balances the colors really well (mostly reds, blacks and greys).

Now, getting back to the subject of the story, there’s a bit less to talk about.  Dark Leo’s unveiling was cool and all, but I can’t help but feel the sequence was just a tad cliché.  Complete with a contrived excuse for Leo not to kill Splinter at the last second thanks exclusively to the villain’s hubris.  “Don’t kill him!  I want to do it myself!” is about as bullshit an excuse as “No!  I have an ingeniously over-complicated and ironic time-delay death trap I want to kill him with because it will be more amusing!”  If we’re ever going to take this Shredder seriously, he needs to be less like Cobra Commander.

To be honest, I was more interested in what Hob’s got going on than Leo’s turn to the darkside.  He doublecrossed the Turtles, but then he also sort of didn’t.  THAT was the one moment in the comic that stepped away from the string of clichés (don’t get me started on Casey meeting the ghost of his mom while in his coma) and took me by surprise.  Hob’s definitely growing as a character, as he’s actually demonstrating a glimmer of intelligence; playing both sides and living up to both ends of his bargains without fully doublecrossing anybody.  But there’s another reason why I’m more interested in Hob’s story than Leo’s and it’s nothing to do with the writing of this comic, but the current way publisher’s solicit and tease their upcoming books.

We already know what the next storyline after “City Fall” is going to be thanks to IDW soliciting its books months in advance.  We’ve already seen the covers.  They gave everything away during their panel at San Diego Comic Con.  I try my best to avoid spoilers by not going into upcoming issue threads on message boards and skipping multi-page previews that all the comic news sites post a week before the fucking issue hits the stand... But the viral marketing machines are MERCILESS and no matter how hard I try, something ALWAYS gets spoiled because IDW lets SO MUCH info about their future storylines leak online HALF A FREAKIN YEAR before the issues are even out.

This sort of shit is KILLING the storytelling in comics (not just TMNT, but any book that has the next 7 issues solicited a half-year in advance, fuckin spoiler-riddled covers and all).  Thanks to all the covers and issue summaries and various leaks and teases, I already know how Dark Leo’s story is gonna turn out and I’ve been actively trying NOT to spoil anything for myself.  I imagine the people who go out of their way to gather spoilers and leaks practically have the next 5 issues of TMNT sitting on their harddrives in some cobbled-together fashion.

But Hob’s storyline, at least as far as I can tell, hasn’t been completely blown by IDW’s hype division.  So there’s an actual sensation of mystery and suspense about it, which has me intrigued.  Hopefully I can read that story in the actual pages of IDW’s TMNT comic and not as an update on Comics Alliance or Comic Book Resources two months before the issue is published.  One can dream.

Holy shit, that was an annoying tangent.  Sorry, everyone; I didn’t mean to let the hate flow through me like that.  Please understand that my frustration is so fierce because I LIKE this comic quite a bit, so having vital story details spoiled for me really gets my goat.

Grade: C+ (as in, “Could be the first time I’m noticing this, but has Santolouco always drawn Mikey with little pouches on his belt to holster his nunchakus instead of the standard loops most artists draw?  I actually kinda like the little sacks, now that I’m noticing them”.)

Awesome Turtle Picture #23

August 4, 2013, 1:21 pm

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Here are some pieces that may not all be "awesome", but they're certainly rare.  This art (cover by Simon Bisley, interiors by Paulo Parentes Studio in Italy) was originally commissioned by Palladium Books for their second edition of the TMNT & Other Strangeness RPG:

Palladium wound up dropping the TMNT license due to low sales of the previous TMNT & Other Strangeness products and all this art went to waste.  They eventually published it in their collector's magazine, The Rifter (issue #9, 2000).

Intended to be contemporary to the TMNT franchise of 1997, you'll notice the Turtles all feature design elements from the short-lived, live-action Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation television series (the sashes with their initials on them, Michelangelo wielding tonfa instead of nuchaku).  Meanwhile, Casey Jones is garbed in his "star-spangled hockey mask", a fashion statement exclusive to the Image-published TMNT comics of the late '90s (Bodycount and TMNT Vol. 3).

April still looks like a relic of the '80s, though.

TMNT (Dreamwave) #3

August 6, 2013, 6:06 pm

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Publication date: August 2003

Written by: Peter David

Pencils by: Lesean Thomas

Inks: Erik Sander

Colors: Rob Ruffolo, Shaun Curtis, Stuart Ng, Susan Luo

Flats: Kenny Li

Letters and design: Matt Moylan

VP/Editor in Chief: Roger Lee

President: Pat Lee

“Attack of the Mousers”

Summary:

At a bank cleverly named “BANK”, Mousers tear through the vault from below and make off with millions of dollars in cash and jewelry.  As they return to Stocktronics, Baxter Stockman enjoys his success.  In the back of his head, however, he ponders that all of Man’s achievements have been made in the pursuit of women...

The past.  Baxter is a teenager in high school.  A geek at the bottom of the food chain, he’s bullied by the football jock Cirrone.  Baxter covets Cirrone’s cheerleader girlfriend, April, and plans to win her for himself by sabotaging the bully.  He reaches into his locker and pulls out a football.

The present.  Down in the sewer lair, the Turtles and April watch news of the bank robbery.  Mikey uncharacteristically spots teeth marks on the debris and deduces that the Mousers were behind the theft.  April spills the beans that she worked for Stocktronics, but when she discovered the Mousers, Baxter Stockman tried to have her killed.  Raph suggests they all head to Stocktronics and shut things down, not only to stop the robberies, but because the Mousers destroyed their original lair.  April then awkwardly recites the TMNT’s origin to them, having heard the story recently from Master Splinter.

At Stocktronics, Baxter receives a message from his mysterious benefactor.  Baxter mouths off to him, telling him that he procured the funds he promised and demands not to be bothered again.  The mysterious benefactor warns him about the price of failure and then signs off.  Baxter mutters that everyone is stupid but him, then takes a stroll down Memory Lane…

The past.  Hiding below the bleachers during The Big Game, Baxter whips out a device to guide his remote control football.  As Cirrone runs to catch the ball, Baxter guides it through the air toward the goal post.  Cirrone crashes into the goal post, breaking his arm and ribs and ending his high school football career.  Baxter gloats at the top of his lungs that his plan was a success and now, with Cirrone out of the way, he has a chance with April.  Unfortunately, his gloating gave away his entire scheme to the nearby cheerleaders (April amongst them) and band members.  Baxter is summarily curb-stomped by the angry teenagers.

Baxter awakens in a body-cast in the hospital.  He’s approached by Hun, leader of the Purple Dragons and an agent of the Foot Clan.  Hun tells Baxter that with guidance from his backers, he could one day have his very own company.  Baxter is intrigued and accepts Hun’s business card.

Some years later, at Stocktronics, Baxter is approached by April O'Neil, applying for the job of lab assistant.  He isn’t impressed with her until she tells him her name.  Rather attached to the name “April”, he decides to hire her.

The present.  The Turtles infiltrate Stocktronics and run a gauntlet of laser beams.  They interrogate Baxter, who is baffled as to what they are.  April tells him that they have enough evidence to put him away for years.  Baxter quickly recalls the Mousers and orders them to tear the building apart.  Don and April attempt to override the command while Baxter escapes down a secret passage.  As the building collapses, he bumps into Hun.  Hun clutches Baxter by the scruff of his neck and tells him he’ll have to report his failure to the Master in person.

At Foot HQ, Baxter tries to play things off as a minor setback, but Oroku Saki isn’t having it.  As Hun drags Baxter away to be punished, Saki tells his technicians to give a report from the Mouser memory banks.  The tech says that a Stocktronics employee, likely April, triggered a self-destruct on all the Mousers.  Saki awkwardly scoffs that there’s always a woman somewhere in the mix.  The tech then shows Saki the last image in the Mouser’s memory: a heat signature of the Turtles.  Enraged, Saki hurls a razor blade through a window.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (Dreamwave) #2.  The story continues in TMNT (Dreamwave) #4.

*The flashback in this issue covers events (the TMNT’s origin) from TMNT (Dreamwave) #1.  The destruction of the TMNT’s original lair by the Mousers happened in the cartoon episodes, but didn’t make it into these adaptations (despite being referenced in the dialogue).  I guess it wasn’t important.

*This issue is adapted from the 4Kids TMNT animated series episode “Attack of the Mousers”.

Review:

This issue is just all over the place.  Peter David wants to continue telling the episodes from the POV of a different character, but he’s also trying to do a better job of working the Turtles into the scripts so a book titled “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” can feature the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for more than 3 pages per issue.  There’s a terrible imbalance of perspectives in this installment, and despite an increased presence, the TMNT’s story arc seems more confused than ever (again, if you haven’t see the episode this comic is adapting, you are hopelessly fucked).  The lair got destroyed?  When did THAT happen?  April’s their friend now?  Guess that occurred off-panel.  And this Splinter guy sounds like a real cool dude; maybe we can meet him someday!

As for Baxter’s expanded origin, it’s probably the best of the “new POV” side stories David has written so far, in that it actually tells us something new about the established character.  Unfortunately, it’s really uninspired: Baxter was a nerd in high school who got picked on by jocks and now he uses his intellect for evil.  Wow, David, did you come up with that all by yourself? 

And the overarching “theme” is embarrassingly half-formed.  Baxter claims that everything a man does is to impress women and that, as muses, women secretly hold all the power in the world.  Okay, sure.  But David never develops this.  Baxter’s crush on (high school) April only comes up in two panels: When you see pictures of her in his locker and when he shouts that with Cirrone in the hospital, he can win April for himself.  While his actions are still motivated by the pursuit of a woman, any obsession or romantic inclinations on his part are barely touched upon.  And when Shredder coincidentallyrecites verbatim Baxter’s opening statement about how “there’s always a woman”, it reads like a total nonsequitor to what the Foot technician was telling him.  Why is Shredder going on about women-this and women-that when all the tech did was mention, off-handedly, that Stockgen employed an individual named April?  It is INCREDIBLY forced, and while it wouldn’t have “saved” this issue by a long shot, the whole thing might have read better if David had just dropped his oh-so-clever message about women.

Seriously, it’s not like Peter David was new to comics when he wrote this thing.  The guy had celebrated runs on the Incredible Hulk and X-Factor, for crying out loud.  Heck, I loved his original run on X-Factor in the ‘90s!  It’s pretty much the only X-book of the era that sincerely withstands the test of time as being genuinely GOOD storytelling.

So why the fuck are these Turtle comics so amateurish and terrible?  Did Pat Lee emit pheromones that made all his employees suck as badly as he did?

And on the subject of “sucking at their job”: Lesean Thomas, everybody!

Okay, so I’ve droned on in my previous Dreamwave reviews about how obvious it is that Thomas draws everything separately on a tablet and then tries to paste all the pieces together after the fact, but man, it just gets worse every issue.  Check out this panel where teenage Baxter is holding the remote control for his football device: 

 

Does it ACTUALLY look like he’s holding that thing to you?  It’s really clear that Thomas went so far as to draw even the handheld props separately and then cut ‘n pasted them onto the characters.

Or maybe it’s just the coloring?  That remote looks like it alone is in soft focus while Baxter isn’t.  Unfortunately, I don’t know which colorist to blame: This one issue had FOUR of them!  And one guy doing “flats”, so technically five.  Oh, and an inker.

“Too many cooks…” and so on.

And for anybody who says that Thomas’s lineart was perfectly fine and it was just the inept coloring that butchered his work, just look at these damn Turtles:

 

Boy, those sure are some dynamic expressions on the top panel!  I especially like the way the chin wrinkles make it look like they’re all perpetually biting their bottom lip.  And look at Raph in that bottom panel.  I spent WAY too much time trying to figure out where the hell his left hand went.  Eventually, I deduced that it was folding under his elbow joint, but if Thomas was aiming for an “arms folded” look, the composition is just awful.  The wrinkle lines on Raph's right arm are placed in such a bad spot, they look like lines extending from his wrist, terminating into thin air so that it seems like Thomas just didn’t bother drawing his hand.  The “arms folded” pose might have been clearer if, say, Raph’s right hand was visibly resting on his left arm, but that entire arm is blocked by two of Mikey’s fingers in the foreground, desperately trying to motion toward Raph.

The reason I’m scrutinizing this one panel is because EVERY panel has fundamental failures in basic composition and layout like this.  This is what happens when you draw your characters separately and then arrange them overtop each other in a panel.  You don’t plan ahead, vital details get cropped out or covered up, the characters look like they're floating over the environments instead of interacting with them and perspective?  FUCK perspective!  Perspective is for chumps!

Jeez, I expect this kind of half-assed cut ‘n paste junk from places like CTRL ALT DEL.  But then, I guess it was my mistake to hold Dreamwave to a higher standard than a webcomic.

Also, this issue is the first to include a letters page!  Incidentally, all the letters are so flattering and full of advertisements for Dreamwave exclusives (such as the ultra-rare, "get it now before it sky rockets in value" Pat Lee variant cover of TMNT #1), that I largely suspect professional mail-opener Matt Moylan wrote the letters himself.  Then again, I’ve read Li’l Formers, so I don’t think Moylan is clever enough to come up with such a scheme.

Grade: F (as in, “Fan art.  The fan art printed at thumbnail size in the letters page of this issue looked better than the actual art filling out its pages.  That’s Dreamwave quality in a nutshell, folks”.)

Turtle Power!

August 11, 2013, 1:15 pm

≫ Next: TMNT Fan-Comic!

≪ Previous: TMNT (Dreamwave) #3

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Originally published in: Turtle Soup (Vol. 2) #1

Publication date: November, 1991

Story and art: Rich Hedden and Tom McWeeney

Colors: Guy Romano

“Turtle Power!”

Summary:

Flying in the Turtle Blimp, the TMNT finally locate Krang’s secret base and prepare to attack.  Spotting them on his security system, Krang fires a harpoon missile which bursts the blimp.  The Turtles crash-land in the moat and then infiltrate the base through a sewage pipe.

Krang, thinking the TMNT are finished, returns to his fiendish experiments.  He feeds tainted dog food to a Scottish terrier, which mutates into a lumbering dog monster.  Krang bellows with joy, believing that he can sell his “retromutagen dog food” on the open market and use it to mutate an army of vicious monsters under his control.

The Turtles finally arrive on the scene and tell Krang the jig is up.  Krang sics the dog-mutant on them, but the TMNT take it down with a net.  They corner Krang, but he ejects from his bubble-walker with a rocket pack and escapes.  Suddenly, a countdown mechanism initiates and the Turtles escape the base just before it self-destructs.  Having foiled Krang’s evil scheme, the Turtles celebrate their victory with a catchphrase or two.

…In the real world, the entire adventure is revealed to have been imagined by a small boy named Bart, playing with his TMNT action figures.  Bart’s mom comes home and finds the living room a mess (the Turtle Blimp toy submerged in the aquarium and their Scottish terrier bound up in a blanket).  Bart’s mom scolds him for playing too messily in the house.

Turtle Tips:

*Fans often identify the dog-mutant as being Rahzar.  However, the monster is never named in the comic and the only similarity it shares with Rahzar is being a canine.  "TMNT II: The Secret of the ooze" (Rahzar's first appearance) was released in March of 1991, only a few months before this issue was published.

*A Roachmill comic (along with a TMNT comic) can be seen on the last page.  Roachmill was a title created by Hedden and McWeeney.

Review:

Hedden & McWeeney at perhaps their least offensive, “Turtle Power” is a fun little story with some REALLY lavish coloring by Romano.  In fact, I’d say it’s one of the best-looking stories in Turtle Soup #1, which is a pretty high compliment considering it keeps company with stories by Michael Dooney and Anderson/McCollum.

It’s a bit strange to be seeing all these Fred Wolf and Playmates TMNT-isms in a Mirage publication, but more surprisingly is that they’re implemented without any cheap jabs.  By 1991, the Mirage comics seemed desperate to distance themselves from the popular kids arm of the franchise, often taking potshots at every “Cowabunga” or what have you.  While one might interpret the ending as a subtle way of reminding the audience that the Fred Wolf and Playmates TMNT aren’t the “real” TMNT, I couldn't find any malice in it.  If anything, it was just a refreshing reminder that when kids play with their toys and tell their little stories, they don’t see the same things adults do when they’re watching.

Not a heck of a lot to say about it, other than that Hedden and McWeeney make a few errors (Leo and Don getting mixed up on page 2, Krang referring to regular old mutagen as “retromutagen” when retromutagen is supposed to undo mutations).  Still, the elaborate art and excellent coloring make up for any setbacks and at 6 pages, this kind of story is exactly as long as it needs to be.

Grade: I (as in, “I wonder why they colored the Turtles with red bandanas, though, if this was all a reference to the Fred Wolf/Playmates stuff?  Guess it was another error”.)

TMNT Fan-Comic!

August 16, 2013, 8:36 am

≫ Next: TMNT (Dreamwave) #4

≪ Previous: Turtle Power!

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Publication date: July 8, 2013

 

Story and art by Caleb Goellner and Buster Moody

 

"TMNT Fan-Comic!"

 

Summary:

 

A trio of Purple Dragons are absolutely tickled that they've finally been invited to the annual Foot Clan BBQ.  Only the cream of the criminal crop get invites and the punks figure they're moving up in the world.

 

Unfortunately, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Splinter have chosen to crash the shindig, pummeling the stooges before they can even get their homemade potato salad to the picnic table.  Splinter is especially livid, feeling that the Foot have committed an injustice so great, it requires the Turtles to make an uncharacteristic daytime appearance.

 

 

The TMNT lay waste to the gathering of super villains: Leo slices his way through some robot foes (Metalhead, Super Rocksteady, Mighty Bebop), Don flips a picnic table of hungry Foot Soldiers onto the unsuspecting Shogun Shoate/Chote, Mike cleanses the swimming pool (Merdude, Scale Tail, Armaggon) and Raph silences the musical entertainment (Antrax, DJ Krang and the truly villainous Vanilla Ice).

 

Finally, they confront Chef Shredder and trash his grill.  Why the outrage?  They're incensed that the Shredder would throw a pizza party and not invite them!  Shredder corrects them: This is a barbecue, not a pizza party.  Embarrassed, Splinter and the Turtles slink away as all the villains groan in pain and confusion.

 

 

Turtle Tips:

 

*Buster Moody made this comic viewable over at his blog.  Check it out!  Included are high quality download links, as well.  While you're at it, check out their creator owned comic, Task Force Rad Squad.

 

 

Review: 

 

There are a lot of great official TMNT comics out there, but I thought I'd extend myself a bit and spotlight some of my favorite fan creations (which are often just as entertaining, if not moreso, than many official publications).  This recent offering from Caleb Goellner and Buster Moody really caught my eye and I think it deserves some attention.

 

Look, I dig just about every iteration of the Ninja Turtle franchise, but I hold a special place in my heart for the weird micro-continuity of the Playmates action figure line.  That shit was just WEIRD; often too weird for even the Fred Wolf cartoon or Archie TMNT Adventures comic book, as they rarely included the toyline characters.  As an end result, many of the bizarre mutants with elaborate backgrounds (chronicled on the card backs) and even more elaborate designs... never got any fiction.

 

Well, beyond the stories I made up in my head as I played with my toys.  And really, what could possibly top those?

 

Goellner and Moody come pretty close, with this fan-comic being a really fun romp through the irreverent insanity of the Playmates toyline.  Just about every villain from the toyline is present at the barbecue (and even a few heroes who probably shouldn't be there, like the Fugitoid) and playing "Where's Waldo" with them is 90% of the fun.  I considered listing them all in the Turtle Tips section, but that'd just be ruining the game for everybody.  Some of the details present on the toy-accurate character designs really ought to be acknowledged, though.  I'm talking about obscure stuff such as Pizzaface's meatball-shaped Siamese twin, which was a part of his toy's prototype but dropped from the release sculpt.  Even Tatsu is there, in what appears to be his Konami video game design (he was a boss in TMNT: The Hyper Stone Heist for the Sega Genesis).

 

The art is lively and chaotic, but not a mess to read.  And the dialogue is a collection of weirdly strung together quips, catchphrases and non sequitors which make the juvenile strangeness of the proceedings all the more hilarious.  Shredder seems to be the only character with an ounce of self awareness.

 

It's only 7 pages (8 if you count the spread as two), but it's a really fun 7 pages.  The volume of Easter Eggs and sight gags give it a considerable re-read value and I've probably spent more time poring over this fan-made short than I have most full-length comics from official publishers (I don't know why I find the toy-accurate wind-up Mouser smoking a cigarette so funny; I just do).  So give it a look and maybe check out some of Goellner and Moody's other stuff.  You can claim you have better things to do, but you're lying.

 

Grade: I (as in, "I admit defeat in that I can't identify the two robots in the foreground that Leo beheads".)

 





TMNT (Dreamwave) #4

August 17, 2013, 2:38 pm

≫ Next: Mid-afternoon of the Living Dead

≪ Previous: TMNT Fan-Comic!

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Publication date: September 2003

Written by: Peter David

Pencils by: Lesean Thomas

Inks: Erik Sander, Rob Armstrong

Colors: Shaun Curtis, Yvonne Poon, Pamil Sunga, Alan Wang

Flats: Kenny Li

Letters and design: Matt Moylan

VP/Editor in Chief: Roger Lee

President: Pat Lee

“Meet Casey Jones”

Summary:

In his apartment, Casey Jones is pumping iron and listening to his neighbors next door.  The dad is tired and irritable with his son.  Casey flashes back to one of his last memories of his father…

The past.  Casey is a little kid, worried that his dad should give into the Purple Dragons and their protection racket, lest something bad happen.  Mr. Jones becomes violent and tells Casey that he’s playing on HIS team and that a Jones never gives in (nearly punching Casey in a violent rage).  Mr. Jones hears something and figures it’s the Purple Dragons breaking into his store.

Casey snaps out of his flashback and decides that it’s time to make the Purple Dragons pay.  He puts on his hockey mask and golf bag full of blunt instruments and goes to work.

The past.  Casey watches as his father’s store burns to the ground.  The Purple Dragon leader, Hun, then smacks Casey aside with the encouragement that his father pay up.

Prowling the streets, Casey spots some punks about to mug a woman (mother of the kid next door).  He beats them up, but even after they surrender, he continues to wail on them with his hockey stick.  Casey is suddenly subdued by Raphael, who tells him to chill out.  Casey isn’t in the business of being told what to do and bashes Raph over the head before chasing after the fleeing punks.

The past.  Casey breaks a bottle and stabs Hun in the leg with it.  Furious, Hun has his thugs beat Casey to a pulp.  Before being thrown out of the hospital because he lacked insurance, Casey is diagnosed with brain damage from the beating.  Shortly after that, Mr. Jones goes searching for Hun to get revenge and vanishes.  Casey’s mom then goes searching for her husband and vanishes, too.

Casey continues beating on the thugs until Raph intervenes.  Raph tells him that his heart is in the right place, but he’s meting out punishment with too much violence and not enough thought.  Casey still isn’t listening and the two of them thrown down.  Raph knocks Casey down, but Casey hits him with a surprise attack and flees on his motorcycle.  Before he leaves, he tells Raph to meet him in Central Park on Friday night to finish things.

Climbing the fire escape to his apartment, Casey overhears his neighbor about to get violent with his wife and son.  Casey smashes through the window, prepared to beat the man down.  The man stands between Casey and his family and vows to protect them from the vigilante.  Casey realizes what Raph was trying to tell him and runs away.

In his apartment next door, Casey overhears the family telling a cop about the masked psycho that tried to kill them and the son calls his father a hero for protecting them.  Casey drifts off into a delusional state, reassuring himself that his father and mother are still alive, just waiting for Casey to clean the streets of all the Purple Dragons before they can return.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (Dreamwave) #3.  The story continues in TMNT (Dreamwave) #5.

*This issue was adapted from the 4Kids TMNT animated series episode “Meet Casey Jones”.

Review:

This is probably the first issue of Dreamwave’s TMNT comic to actually be readable.  The story follows Casey Jones and gives us deeper glimpses of his past, while the Turtles are again reduced to cameo status, but I think the difference in this issue is that it doesn’t feel like there’s a larger story we’re missing.  Yes, there is an entirely separate subplot from the 4Kids episode that got excised (Raph coping with his own anger after nearly braining Mikey), but David wisely ignores all that crap and gives us just ONE plot to follow.  No confusion about stuff being references that we aren’t seeing; just a single coherent storyline.  A Dreamwave first, ladies and gentlemen.

While it’s still the familiar story from the 4Kids episode “Meet Casey Jones” (or Raphael microseries #1, if we're being honest), it’s interesting to actually SEE the relationship between Casey and his father that we’re told was so important, but the cartoon never bothered to explore.  There’s a rather shocking revelation involved, as we learn that the father Casey worshiped was really a violent, stubborn, frightening man.  There’s nothing pleasant about him, as he calls women stupid, puts his pride before the safety of his family and proceeds to teach Casey a lesson about courage by nearly punching a hole through his head. 

I think this did a decent job of illustrating Casey’s delusional state, as the person he’s describing isn’t the person he’s remembering.  In fact, it was satisfactory enough that the issue REALLY didn’t need to end on Casey desperately trying to convince himself that his parents are still alive and watching him and waiting to come back, but only after he cleans up the streets.  That was laying it on a bit thick (likewise with the overstatement of his brain damage; a briefer mention would have gotten the point across just as well).  I did like the dichotomy of the neighbor family; a violent, irritable father neglecting/abusing his son, but the son looking up to him regardless of treatment.

It’s likely a matter of coincidence, but a few elements from David’s expansion of the “Meet Casey Jones” episode seem to have seeped their way into other TMNT continuities.  Mirage’s Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #56 adapted the idea of Hun killing Casey’s father and burning down his store (something the 4Kids cartoon writers thought up), but the issue also incorporated the idea that Casey took on brain damage after the violent beating he took from the Purple Dragons.  To my knowledge, David is the first author to ever pitch the idea that Casey is legitimately mentally handicapped.  There’s also the portrayal of Casey’s father as a violent brute; something IDW adopted early on with TMNT (IDW) #1.  The two Mr. Joneses don’t share any similarities beyond that, but being a child-endangering scumbag seems to be a consistent portrayal for the character.

So yeah, on a script level, this was a pretty solid issue.  It overstates some stuff to get the point across, but all in all, it’s actually a GOOD expansion of a 4Kids episode.  So what brings it down?

The lousy art, of course.

I’ve gone on ad nauseum about Lesean Thomas’s numerous failings as an artist and I’m really in no mood to repeat the same old critiques.  All I will say is that he isn’t getting any better; Thomas is not an artist in any hurry to improve his craft.  In fact, believe it or not, he may actually be getting worse.  He copy-pastes the splash on page 1 and recycles it for the last page of the issue, repeating it to fill 4 panels.  Now, I understand the intent: to create a “Rorschach” effect between the first and last page.  But for the love of god, REDRAW the damn panel!  Even if there are just subtle differences between the two versions of the same basic layout, it still keeps the damn thing from looking like a cheap, lazy shortcut.

And once again, we’ve got 5 colorists and 2 inkers just to get a single issue onto the stands.  This thing is a mess of conflicting lighting, toning and photoshop effects between pages and panels.  Worse yet, most of the colorists on this issue are completely new to the book, making the look even less consistent than usual.  A competent publisher would assign a dedicated colorist to a title to maintain a steady look; that’s just a fundamental.  But then, Dreamwave went bankrupt for a reason.

Grade: D+ (as in, “Dreamwave once again posts fanart in the letters column that looks considerably better than the art in the actual comic”.)

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Mid-afternoon of the Living Dead

August 18, 2013, 8:37 pm

≫ Next: Raph n' Casey vs. Pizzaface

≪ Previous: TMNT (Dreamwave) #4

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Publication date: December, 1991

Originally published in: Turtle Soup (Vol. 2) #2

Story and art: Dave Garcia

Color: Justin Hampton

“Mid-afternoon of the Living Dead”

Summary:

Hip zombie host Abner Cadaver welcomes the readers to another installment of Oogah Boogah Theater.  Tonight’s story is called “Mid-Afternoon of the Living Dead”…

A meteor lands in the Ever-Rest Cemetery, but it’s no ordinary space rock.  The meteorite turns out to be an alien canister containing strange worms.  The night-crawlers work their way into the soil where the coffins reside.  The next morning, a pair of intrepid meteorite hunters trace the trajectory of the meteor to the cemetery.  They get out of their van to hunt for it, but are immediately attacked by flesh-eating zombies who have been resurrected by the worms.

At a nearby lake, the Ninja Turtles are on a fishing vacation.  Sadly, Mikey ate all their bait (mistaking it for anchovies), leaving them in a fix.  Raph sees a local shambling toward them and decides to ask him if he has any bait.  The man turns out to be a zombie, and what’s worse, he’s being accompanied by dozens of other flesh-eaters.  The Turtles whip out their weapons and make quick work of the undead creatures.

Later, the Turtles enjoy their fishing vacation, using the alien worms they retrieved from the zombie corpses as bait.  Abner Cadaver closes the story by reminding the readers that you are what you eat, and when the Turtles eventually sit down for a fish dinner, they’ll be indirectly eating the alien worms themselves.

Turtle Tips:

*The meteorite hunters, Kevin and Pete, are parodies of TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird (duh).

*Despite being a Mirage publication, the Turtles are wearing the multi-colored bandanas of their cartoon counterparts.  This was typical in many stories featured throughout Turtle Soup (Vol. 2).

Review:

Dave Garcia was another artist who popped up on various TMNT projects in the early ‘90s, was good, and then quietly disappeared from the franchise.  He wore a few hats while working on the series; mostly as an inker on early issues of Archie’s TMNT Adventures, but he tried his hand at penciling a few issues, too.  I thought his style was pretty solid, but he just didn’t get very many opportunities to work on the book, and several of his issues were during the dull cartoon episode-adaptation era.

“Mid-afternoon of the Living Dead” gives Garcia the chance to go a little bonkers, though offered only a scant 5 pages to do so.  He races through the story so quickly there hardly isn’t one at all (alien worms create zombies, TMNT kill zombies, the end).  I can’t really hold it against him, though, because again: 5 pages.

The faux Crypt-Keeper hosting segments with Abner Cadaver were a nice touch, adding a little oomph to what would otherwise be a rather bland short.  A bit of a waste, considering Garcia never did anymore of these “Oogah Boogah Theater” shorts, but it might have been a neat recurring feature had Turtle Soup survived past 4 issues.  I sure would have enjoyed more “Oogah Boogah Theater” segments than “Green-Grey Sponge-Suit Sushi Turtles” segments, that’s for sure.

Raph n' Casey vs. Pizzaface

August 19, 2013, 11:23 am

≫ Next: TMNT Villains Microseries #5: Karai

≪ Previous: Mid-afternoon of the Living Dead

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Publication date: August 17, 2009

Story: Zac Gorman and Scott Wygmans
Script and layouts: Zac Gorman
Pencils and inks: Scott Wygmans

"Raph n' Casey vs. Pizzaface"

Summary:

At a pizza parlor in New York, Casey Jones and Raphael sit down for some lunch.  Unbeknownst to them, the waiter taking their order is actually a Foot Soldier robot (cleverly disguised with a fake moustache).

 

The Foot Soldier delivers the order to the pizzeria's chef... Pizzaface!  Pizzaface prepares the pie in his usual unsanitary fashion, but adds a secret topping: TCRI Mutagen.

The Foot Soldier brings the pizza to Casey and Raph, who are revolted at just a glance.  Finally seeing through the Foot's clever ruse, Casey attacks the Foot Soldier, driving his fist through its robot head.  As Casey goes nuts, Raph taps him on the shoulder and alerts him to a much larger problem.  The pizza has mutated into a gargantuan, grotesque tentacle monster out for blood.


Turtle Tips:

*Wygmans made this comic available to view over at Go Green Machine.org back in 2009.  You can check it out here.


Review:

Man, I love this little comic.  It's a brief 3-pager, but Gorman and Wygmans put plenty of energy and personality into every panel.  You wind up spending so much time digesting each page that the comic feels three times its own length.

In case you haven't heard, Pizzaface is one of my all-time favorite characters who has never been utilized in any form of TMNT fiction.  So naturally, I ate this comic up (figuratively speaking; it's hard to maintain an appetite with Pizzaface around).  Gorman's script is pretty much a precise adaptation of Pizzaface's M.O. from the profile on the back of his action figure card; that he travels from pizzeria to pizzeria, poisoning pies in an attempt to ambush the Turtles through their one weakness.  The addition of a Foot Soldier robot disguised with nothing more than a fake moustache, and the scheme working, was a great callback to the absurdity of the Fred Wolf and Playmates TMNT universe.  While the comic is mildly violent and has some decidedly non-kid-friendly trappings, it doesn't for second take itself too seriously for its own inspiration.

One of the more impressive aspects to this comic is that the entire thing is done in pantomime.  The story is told through the composition and the character expressions, but you never have any trouble picking up on the jokes or the narrative.  I think the best sequence is on page 2, when Pizzaface receives the order and bakes the tainted pie.  Little details make the whole scene, such as Pizzaface's "Municipal Waste" t-shirt or (my hands down favorite panel) the way he smokes three cigarettes at once while he waits for the pizza to finish cooking.  Despite an extremely chaotic art style (that may put off some), the comic reads really intuitively and the layouts flow smoothly.  I think the only panel that felt like a "waste" was the second panel of page 1, focusing on all the weirdos populating the pizzeria (didn't seem to serve much purpose and panel 1 transitions to panel 3 perfectly fine without it).

Anyhow, short and sweet as it may be, this is one of my favorite TMNT fan comics.  If you haven't seen it yet, then check it out.  It's pretty damn cool.

Grade: A (as in, "And modern TMNT media thinks Pizzaface is too 'out there' for the franchise.  Hmph.")

TMNT Villains Microseries #5: Karai

August 21, 2013, 4:36 pm

≫ Next: TMNT New Animated Adventures #2

≪ Previous: Raph n' Casey vs. Pizzaface

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Publication date: August 21, 2013

Written by: Erik Burnham

Art by: Cory Smith

Colors by: Ian Herring

Letters by: Shawn Lee

Editor: Bobby Curnow

Summary:

At the Foot Clan’s training dojo in Westchester, Karai seeks the elderly instructor Toshiro for council.  Having been demoted from her position as the Foot’s second in command, she is unsure of her own future and is concerned about where her grandfather, the Shredder, is taking the Clan.  Toshiro suggests that to find her path for the future, Karai should look to the past.

The Past.  Under the guidance of her father, Oroku Yori, the Foot Clan has become a more modern criminal organization, more concerned with intimidation through lawyers than the old ways.  Even as a little girl, Karai is disgusted by her father’s complacency (and his habit of being bossed around by his lackey, Nakamura).  One day, while looking through her father’s vast library, she discovers “The Secret of the Foot”, an ancient text describing the Clan’s history and secret ninjutsu arts.  Karai spends the rest of her formative years studying the book in private while maintaining the façade of the perfect daughter for her parents.

One night, Karai has a dream.  She is approached by the spirit of Oroku Saki (who instructs her to address him as grandfather).  Karai believes him to just be a part of her dream and nothing more, but Saki slashes her across the hand and the pain proves that he is a true spirit.  Saki entices her to embrace the old ways of the Foot Clan by overthrowing her father and using the instructions in “The Secret of the Foot” to restore him to life.  Karai agrees to bring Saki back, but only after she has restored the honor of the Foot Clan on her own.  Karai awakens from her dream and finds scars from Saki’s attack on her hand, proving that she didn’t imagine the whole thing.

Karai spends the next few years gathering thugs and lackeys to train in the ninja arts.  She begins secretly hitting all of her father’s operations, crippling his incarnation of the Foot.  She then kills Nakamura as payback for his years of disrespect.  Eventually, the stress of trying to run his failed criminal empire gets the best of Yori and he dies.  Karai then swoops in and takes command of the Foot, reshaping it back into the ninja clan it once was.

The present.  Karai’s council with Toshiro is interrupted by Dark Leo.  Leo is unimpressed with Toshiro’s productivity, as the Shredder requires more bodies to throw at his enemies.  Karai defends Toshiro, but her disrespectful tone offends Leo, who reminds her of her place: Beneath him.  He brow beats Karai, who uses all her restraint not to attack him.  Seeing her resentment, Leo offers her the opportunity to fight him and prove that she’s better.  Karai eagerly accepts his offer and the two do battle.  As they fight, Karai senses something different about Leo; that he’s holding back his killer instinct.  He has many opportunities to kill her, but passes them all.  She sees this weakness and, thinking ahead, elects to throw the fight.  Karai accepts her place beneath Leo and the Turtle walks out, believing he has made his point.  Karai tells Toshiro that she now sees what she must do to take control of her future.

Two days later, at the Shorai Research and Developmentfacility, Karai gathers a gang of thugs who are eager to gain power.  She tells them that in order to gain that power, they must prove their worth.  One thug (with purple sunglasses and a Mohawk) asks what they have to do to pass her test.  She strikes him and says that the power will belong to the last one standing.

Turtle Tips:

*This issue takes place between TMNT (IDW) #24 and TMNT (IDW) #25.

*Karai was shown (in a flashback) resurrecting Oroku Saki with the “Secret of the Foot” in Secret History of the Foot Clan #4.

*The two thugs seen amongst Karai’s congregation at the end (Bebop and Rocksteady) last appeared in TMNT Villains Microseries #4: Alopex.

*This issue was originally published with 2 variant covers: Regular Cover by Tyler Walpole, Cover RI by Smith.

Review:

Karai, Karai, Karai.  Now there’s a character who has undergone quite an evolution since her debut back in 1992.

When Mirage introduced her, she was an equal to the Shredder in terms of rank and his replacement as leader of the Foot.  She shared no connection with Oroku Saki beyond that and was a fairly sympathetic character; not really a villain (she fought alongside the Turtles more than she fought against them).  The 4Kids cartoon introduced her most notable claim to fame, sort of fusing her with Pimiko of the Image TMNT series, turning her into the Shredder’s (adopted) daughter.  This aspect of her character would stick and become so well known, most folks incorrectly cite it as part of her Mirage history.  Her sympathetic qualities would remain and she’d undergo quite an arc across the 4Kids cartoon.  Likewise, the recent Nickelodeon cartoon has been doing wonders with her parentage and friend/foe relationship, but considering how recent the season one finale was to the writing of this review, I won’t elaborate at the risk of spoiling a great twist.  I will say that the Nickelodeon Karai is quickly becoming my favorite incarnation of the character, stupid hairdo and all.

Then there’s IDW Karai.  While the familial relationship to Oroku Saki remains, any traces of her sympathetic attitude toward the Turtles have been absent.  Even the “granddaughter” aspect has been superficial at best, as she’s shown nothing but resentment toward Saki rather than devotion (he had nothing to do with raising her, in this version).  So with her two most familiar qualities removed by IDW’s writers, this incarnation of Karai is also only superficial: Karai by name, but lacking any of her fundamentals.

And yet, as I pointed out in the beginning of this refresher course, Karai has always been a rather malleable character, prone to being transformed at the whims of the authors.  Still, without any fundamental Karai-isms to latch onto, this version of the character has rung rather hollow these past couple years.  Just a lot of arm-folding and pouting every time Shredder tells her to button her lip.

Burnham endeavors to flesh IDW’s vision of Karai out with this long overdue origin story which ties into his Secret History of the Foot Clan miniseries rather well.  We learn about Karai’s childhood, how Oroku Saki manipulated her into bringing him back from the dead and how she wrested control of the Foot Clan from her incompetent father.  It’s a very informative story and, character-wise, you can appreciate Karai’s perpetual frustration and resentment throughout past issues just a little bit more.  Shredder encouraged her to bring him back by feeding on her love of the past, but then proceeded to demote and demean her for not looking to the future.  In the end, she learns a valuable lesson about balancing tradition with ambition (and also that Dark Leo’s a prick) and important story arcs are moved forward.

And yet, Karai doesn’t feel like a richer character for any of it.  At best, she’s just another Starscream; a bitter second-in-command determined to seize leadership at any cost.  Her motivations (vengeance against Shredder for manipulating her) feel especially redundant on the heels of the Alopex microseries, which ended on almost precisely the same note.  If anything, all these micros and the main series seem to be accomplishing is diminishing the Shredder’s position as a competent villain.  I mean, just look at how he’s setting himself up!  He’s put all his faith in a brainwashed nemesis to lead him to glory, whilst simultaneously alienating his two trusted henchwomen to the point where they BOTH want to kill him.

Fred Wolf Shredder would be embarrassed.

Getting back to Karai, even though she’s a character who is always evolving, I think it’s important to maintain past elements into each incarnation.  Discarding her devotion to the Shredder and sympathy for the Turtles insures we won’t be sitting through another retelling of Karai’s crisis of conscience, but it also eliminates the only qualities to her character that were ever any interesting.  Take it all away and we’re left with just another scheming female ninja second-in-command out to overthrow the Shredder… and dammit, we’ve already got one of those!

On the subject of the art, Cory Smith turns in some lovely pages.  I may not be kind in my appraisal of IDW Karai’s character, but her design is my favorite and Smith has given one of her best renderings so far.  At times I felt her features were a little too sharp for the youthfulness the script was trying to get across (she looks a bit older than I think she was meant to be), but beyond that I’ve few complaints.  The action layouts were well done during the fight with Dark Leo, though I think the centerpiece to this issue was the page in which Karai assassinates Nakamura with her bow and arrow.  Herring’s colors compliment Smith’s lines nicely.  I particularly liked the softer pallet of the 3-page dream sequence.  It looked fuzzy and washed out, but only subtly so.  It’s nice when a colorist doesn’t overdo it.

Karai’s microseries left me feeling rather empty.  As an epilogue to The Secret History of the Foot Clan, it was certainly enlightening; straightening out the timeline of the Foot Clan’s resurgence and filling in any leftover narrative blanks.  But regarding the intended purpose, to give Karai some extra character, I felt it did just the opposite, robbing her of the elements which have made her stand out these past ten years.

Grade: C- (as in, “Could the graffiti on page 5, ‘Mutanimals Live’, be a sign of things to come?  Now THAT’S got me interested”.) 

TMNT New Animated Adventures #2

August 22, 2013, 7:27 pm

≫ Next: TMNT (Dreamwave) #5

≪ Previous: TMNT Villains Microseries #5: Karai

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Publication date: August 21, 2013

Story: Kenny Byerly

Art: Dario Brizuela

Colors: Heather Breckel

Letters: Shawn Lee

Edits: Bobby Curnow

Summary:

Down in the sewer lair, Leo is subjecting his brothers and April to an all-day “Space Heroes” marathon.  The others are spared when a storm blows through, disabling the satellite dish.  Leo curses nature, but Splinter reminds him that nature is something they are all a part of and that its forces should never be trifled with.  He says that this fact is best exemplified by the tree in their dojo, which survives on minimal sunlight and water through the tiniest drainage gate in the street.  Suddenly, the TV turns back on long enough for a news report from Carlos Chiang O’Brien *click* Gambe.  Apparently, an entire block on East 85^th Street has been overtaken by vines.  The Turtles and April pile into the Shellraiser and head out to investigate.

Arriving on the scene, April is immediately attacked by killer vines, but cuts herself free with her bladed fans.  Donnie finds people trapped in strange pods and comes to the conclusion that Snakeweed is back in town.  The Turtles and April start freeing the people before they can be turned into fertilizer, but Donnie calculates that they could never reach all the people on the block in time.  If they hope to save everyone, they’ll have to stop Snakeweed (as he’s the “root” of the infestation).

Snakeweed obliges by bursting through a wall Kool-Aidstyle and attacking.  As the Turtles take on the mutant plant-man, April keeps Gambe from filming them by stealing his mic.  Snakeweed escapes, swearing that once his “bud” blooms, humanity will be overrun with more plant mutants like himself.  Donnie spots the bud in question on a rooftop and figures it must be packed with Snakeweed spores.  Leo tells Raph and Donnie to go after the bud and keep it from opening while he and Mike try to take Snakeweed out.  April, meanwhile, is left behind to tend to the crowd.

Donnie and Raph proceed to fight their way up to the roof where the bud is stationed.  They have some trouble with killer vines, but Raph’s brute force is enough to get them past any obstacles.  Upon reaching the roof, Raph attempts to turn that brute force onto the bud, but Donnie stops him.  He warns Raph that if they burst the bud, the spores will spread.  Before Donnie can calculate a way to keep the bud from blossoming, more killer vines attack them.

Elsewhere, Leo and Mike track Snakeweed to Central Park.  They challenge the plant-man, but he easily takes them down.  Crashing into a sign advertising the turtle habitat at Central Park Zoo, Leo comes up with a plan.  He and Mikey proceed to lure Snakeweed to the turtle pond and keep him submerged in the water.  Consequently, this “overwaters” Snakeweed and all his killer vines and pods spread throughout the city wither and die.

With the vines dead, Donnie and Raph free themselves.  They’re met with an unpleasant sight, as the bud is about to bloom.  Thinking fast, Donnie and Raph grab a tarp and throw it over the bud so the spores cannot be released.

Back in Central Park, Mikey ensnares Snakeweed in his kussari-gama chain.  Leo then launches a grappling hook onto the tallest tree in the area and attaches the recoil mechanism to the chain.  Snakeweed is hoisted up to the top of the tree and immediately struck by a blast of lightning from the storm.  Snakeweed falls to the ground, turning to ash.

Later, with the storm passed, the Turtles and April resign themselves to the “Space Heroes” marathon.  Leo decides to pass on the marathon and goes to see Splinter (the Turtles immediately fight over the remote).  Sitting beneath the tree in the dojo, he tells Splinter that he was right about the forces of nature, which saved them all in the end.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT New Animated Adventures #1.  The story continues in TMNT New Animated Adventures #3.

*Snakeweed was shown transforming people into fertilizer in the episode “New Girl in Town”.  April received her bladed fan weapons from Splinter in “Baxter's Gambit”.

*This issue was originally published with 2 variant covers: Regular Cover by Brizuela, Subscription Variant by Ben Bates.

Review:

The Nickelodeon TMNT cartoon is by a wide margin the most “mutant of the week” animated series the TMNT have ever received.  People like to look back at the Fred Wolf cartoon as being a nonstop action figure-shilling machine for Playmates, but truth be told, that show was surprisingly reserved in its use of mutant villains.  They really didn’t show up all that often.  The Nick cartoon, on the other hand?  It got to the point where that show was creating a new mutant every week.  Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE most of the mutant villains the show has introduced, but c’mon guys.  Pace yourselves.

With that in mind, I do wonder how frequently New Animated Adventures will be utilizing these established villains?  Will it employ new villains?  Will it reintroduce classic villains the cartoon has no plans on using?  Only time will tell, I suppose.

In terms of the mutant baddies introduced in the cartoon, Snakeweed was the first and, to be honest, has probably been my least favorite of the bunch (next to maybe Spider Bytez; not even a voice over from Lewis Black can save that character from his terrible name and ridiculous design).  Snakeweed lacks the humorous quirks that have made the other mutants fun to watch.  He’s just so generic.

So needless to say, he doesn’t make for a very compelling enemy even in comic book form.  To Byerly’s credit, he pulls something of a fakeout, with the issue starting out like a retread of “New Girl in Town” before transitioning into a fresh scheme from Snakeweed.  But even if Snakeweed’s plan is grander this time around, the bad guy is still boring as all get out.

I dunno, I guess not all the villains can be “funny”, but when it comes to making them stand out… funny does certainly help.  Snakeweed’s not exactly an A-class foe of the TMNT as it is, so he could probably use an injection of personality.  Hell, even Spider Bytez has that “obnoxious jerk” thing going for him.

What I dug more with this issue was how every character got their own little moment to shine.  Raph’s brute force got him and Donnie through the building.  Don’s ingenuity kept the bud from spreading its spores even after it bloomed.  Leo’s resourcefulness took Snakeweed down using only the elements at hand.  And Mikey… Eh.  He helped.

April also seems to have learned a lesson from the previous issue.  The Turtles repeatedly tell her to be careful and stay where it’s safe and she never argues the point with them.  She received a bit of a humbling last issue, learning that she still isn’t quite ready for the same level of action as the Turtles.  Rather than have her conveniently forget everything she just learned a story ago, Byerly has the effect last into this installment.  It’s a subtle thing, but greatly appreciated.

Grievances with Snakeweed’s quality as a villain aside, New Animated Adventures is still good all-ages reading.  The self-contained issues feel like condensed episodes of the cartoon and just about everyone has a strong voice and personality.  Brizuela’s art is as fluid as ever and Breckel continues to be a great match (though she colors Raph’s bandana orange a couple times in this one).

And hey, “Space Heroes”.  That is the best running gag in the whole show.

Grade: B- (as in, “But imagine my disappointment when even though I’m a subscriber at my comic shop, I didn’t get the Ben Bates subscription variant cover.  That was a real bummer”.)

TMNT (Dreamwave) #5

August 25, 2013, 9:17 am

≫ Next: TMNT (IDW) #25

≪ Previous: TMNT New Animated Adventures #2

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Publication date: October, 2003

Written by: Peter David

Pencils by: Lesean Thomas

Inks: Erik Sander, Rob Armstrong

Colors: Shaun Curtis

Flats: Kenny Li

Letters: Matt Moylan

VP/Editor in Chief: Roger Lee

President: Pat Lee

Cover: Lesean Thomas, Erik Sander, Edwin Garcia, Rob Ruffolo

“Shadows of the Mind’s Eye”

Summary:

Brooding on a rooftop, Raph is ticked that he can’t be thankd by the people he helps; that ninja have to stay concealed in the shadow.  Seeing a cat stuck in a tree, Raph discretely throws his sai, cutting the branch so the cat can land safely in the arms of the little girl (Pammy) below.  Raph figures he deserves one small thanks; just one.  A vision of Splinter warns him not to, but Raph approaches Pammy anyway.

Fishing for praise, he tells the little girl that he cut the branch and saved her cat.  Pammy is grateful, then runs back inside her apartment to tell her mom all about “Raffle”.  Listening in, Raph hears the mother (Sheila Shaunston) tell Pammy not to lie and then a smacking sound.  Thinking Mrs. Shaunston is abusing her daughter, Raph leaps in through the window to yell at her.  Turns out Mrs. Shaunston was just swatting flies, but one look at Raph causes her to faint.  Raph panics and calls 911, but Pammy tells him that her mom faints all the time and that she’ll get better.  Raph decides to leave before he makes things worse.

The next night, Raph comes back to the stoop outside the apartment to check on Pammy.  Pammy tells him that when her mom told the paramedics about “an armored frog”, they took her away to the Belleview Psychiatric Hospital.  According to her daddy, Pammy may not be seeing her mom for a long time.  Raph promises Pammy he’ll make things right and leaves.

At Belleview, Dr. Benton is examining Mrs. Shaunston.  He hand waves away all her claims about “an armored frog” as nothing but a symbolic hallucination; the same sort of stuff he hears day in and day out.  He has a nurse escort Mrs. Shaunston to her room and then gets down to her paperwork. 

Suddenly, Raph appears in the doctor’s chair.  He threatens the doctor, telling him to release Mrs. Shaunston with a clean bill of health or else.  Dr. Benton responds by zapping Raph with a taser.  As Raph collapses, immobilized, Dr. Benton proceeds to have a mental breakdown.  He now sees that all the things his patients told him they saw were real.  He proceeds to put a “CURED” stamp on Mrs. Shaunston’s file, then casually exists the office.

Raph struggles to his feet and is greeted by the sound of gunshots from the roof.  A nurse outside the office says that Dr. Benton has lost it and gone to the roof with his deer hunting rifle.  Out in the street, pedestrians scramble as bullets strike everywhere.  Among them is Pammy, who has come toBelleview with her father to visit her mother.  Dr. Benton lines Pammy up in his sights, but before he can squeeze the trigger, Raph knocks him out.

Back at Pammy’s apartment, the whole family is reunited for a trip to the zoo.  Pammy tells her mom that “Raffle” was actually a nice armored frog.  Mrs. Shaunston says that, at the very least, he tried very hard.  Below them in the sewer, Raph is pouting over the chain reaction of misery his presence caused.  Splinter appears next to him to remind him that they do not hide in the shadows, but live within them as a part of them.  Raph asks Splinter if he ever wants more out of life.  Splinter tells Raph that wanting more isn’t his job, it’s his son’s.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (Dreamwave) #4.  The story continues in TMNT (Dreamwave) #6.

*This issue also included a promotional poster insert for “T4: The Turtlenator”.

Review:

Dreamwave finally takes a hint and gives the readers their first completely new story… And it’s more introspective character study stuff.  Whoopee.

Unlike the previous four issues, though, this one has the benefit of not trying to force a new story into the framework of an existing cartoon episode.  As a result, we get a pretty clean narrative from beginning to end.  As a oneshot story about Raph and his misguided attempts to get some recognition for his good deeds, it’s actually pretty amusing.  The domino effect of everything getting worse and worse the more Raph tries to “fix” things makes for a funny series of events.  Or, at least, I hope they were intended to be funny and not completely serious.

I think what bugs me with this story is more that David didn’t seem to have a clear idea how to end it.  The whole concept is that by involving himself, Raph only makes things worse and worse for everyone.  So you would think that the solution would be for Raph to suppress his ego and let things work themselves out.  But no, the lesson is obscured because Raph proceeds to meddle and meddle until things finally reach a more or less neutral position.

Well, “neutral” might not be the word for it, as Dr. Benton’s life is now completely destroyed because of Raph’s interference.  David struggles to find a villain for the issue and eventually settles on Dr. Benton.  But Dr. Benton never really does anything wrong until Raph drives him insane.  Up until that point he was just a guy working in a psychiatric hospital helping people with delusions on a day to day basis.  Okay, sure, he didn’t believe Mrs. Shaunston’s story about “an armored frog”, but why should he?

And then there’s that awkward, clumsy bit where Dr. Benton decides to stamp “CURED” on Mrs. Shaunston’s case file just to conveniently resolve her conflict.  Because that’s what it takes to get released from a psychiatric hospital, right?  A big red stamp on your folder that says “CURED”?

At the center of “Shadows of the Mind’s Eye” there’s a decent story, but it’s fumbled about way too much.  It’s hard to sympathize with Raph, because of how selfish and petty he's acting.  It’s hard to feel that a lesson has been learned at the end, because Raph solves the problem by doing the same stuff that caused it in the first place.  And it’s hard to feel like Raph saved the day at the end, anyway, when his actions drove a normal person nuts.

Dreamwave has mercifully pared down the coloring crew to just two people; Li on flats and Curtis on colors.  With less cooks in the kitchen, the pages are actually comprehensible for a change.  The colors are brighter and the lines are sharper; thanks in large part, I’m sure, to a 50% decrease in useless photoshop filters.  That aside, many of the same problems remain, such as everything being drawn separately on a tablet and combined after the fact, blah blah blah looks like shit.

Though man, Thomas is not very good at drawing facial expressions appropriate to the situation.  Here’s Pammy, telling Raph that her mother has been committed to a psychiatric hospital:

Why is she giving Raph the bedroom eyes?  And really, if you took that head all by itself, would you think it belonged to a 5 year-old?  Because it’s supposed to.

Anyhow, issue #5 is supposedly where Dreamwave’s TMNT comic turns a corner and improves.  However, it feels more like one step forward, two steps back.  Old problems are solved in exchange for brand new ones.  But who cares?  There’s only two issues left, anyway.

Grade: D+ (as in, “Decided to give the extra ‘plus’ there because of an included Simpsons quote and nothing else.  ‘Can’t sleep, clown will eat me’.”)