TMNT Entity

I won't let this show win! I will conquer the 1987 TMNT cartoon and review every single episode! Not because I want to, but because I HAVE to.

Anyway, check out my review of 5 more TMNT season 4 episodes over at Adventures in Poor Taste!

Contrary to that unflattering opening paragraph, this was a shockingly enjoyable batch of episodes. Slash, the Evil Turtle from Dimension X! Mona Lisa! Baxter Stockman! His twin brother... Barney Stockman?

I don't think he got an action figure.

Keeping with my routine, next up will be another run through the Nickelodeon TMNT cartoon.

Published by: Rip Off Press

Publication date: 1987

Story: Larry Todd, Mark Bode’

Front cover: Mark Bode’

Back cover: Larry Todd, Mark Bode’

Pencils: Mark Bode’

Inks: Mark Bode’, Bill Fitts

Special guest shots: Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Dave Sim

“Requiem for tha’ Mice”

Summary:

Officers Rocket and Stubbo are being chased through the Florida Everglades by the crimelord Tumeric Squeekle and his Contrat army (they smuggle hard cheese across the border, apparently). The Contrats are slowly killed off one by one at the blade of an unseen foe until Tumeric eventually weeds the assassin out. It’s Catztanza, a samurai or a police chief or something, I don’t know. Binding Catztanza, he demands to know where Rocket and Stubbo are hiding. The feline won’t talk, so Tumeric prepares to execute him.

Just then, one of the Contrats decides to sit down on what he thinks is a rock. Turns out, the “rocks” are the shells of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Upset about being roused from their nap, the Turtles spring into action, annihilating all the Contrats. Tumeric gets the upper hand on them, though, and aims a missile launcher in their direction.

Before he can fire, Rocket leaps down from the trees with a length of wire in his hands. He wraps it around Tumeric’s neck, strangling him to death. Rocket and Stubbo are reunited with Catztanza and some chick named Vermousa (or "Vermoosa"? They spell it two different ways in this issue). A job well done, they decide to take the Turtles to a bar to thank them for their assistance.

At the bar, the Turtles bump into their old pal, Cerebus! Cerebus is in no mood to deal with socializing, though he’s grateful the Turtles didn’t bring “that dippy broad” with them, this time. Unfortunately, Vermousa takes a liking to Cerebus and starts putting the moves on “Cereby”. Luckily for the Aardvark, the “crossover spell” wears off and he vanishes back to his universe.

Turtle Tips:

*Due to the overtly silly nature of this comic, I wouldn’t consider it “canon” with anything else in Mirage. But whatever.

*The above summary only covers the portion of the issue featuring the Ninja Turtles and Cerebus.

*The Turtles first met Cerebus in TMNT (Vol. 1) #8. They’ll appear alongside him one more time in The Savage Dragon #41.

*This issue also contained two “The Stories of Paco” bonus strips, by Mark Bode', J. Flores and Bill Fitts, as well as letters and fan art pages.

Review:

This is the only issue of Bode’s Miami Mice I’ve read and I’m not too inclined to go back issue bin diving for any others. Bode’ is an excellent cartoonist and his contributions to the “Guest Era” of TMNT Volume 1 were pretty enjoyable one-shots. This, however, is not some of his better work, relying on badly dated pop culture parodies to serve as inspiration for a tenuous narrative. I’ll concede that starting at the fourth issue left me at a disadvantage, but there are times when I couldn’t tell characters apart or even how they were jumping in and out of the story at random intervals. This was an early collaboration between Bode’ and Mirage, and he would definitely improve by leaps and bounds after just a couple more years.

As for the Turtles, I’m not really that interested in cataloging every single 80’s indie comic they made cameo appearances in, as that would just be inane and suffocating (they got around, back then), but this appearance scores some bonus points. Firstly, the Turtles are drawn by Eastman and Laird (while Bode’ and Fitts handle all the other characters and the environments). It’s interesting to see the two artistic styles clash like this and, while it isn’t perhaps the best stuff they ever put out, it’s vintage Eastman/Laird art nevertheless, and that’s always cool to see.

The second big attraction is a cameo from Dave Sim’s Cerebus; his second encounter with the Ninja Turtles (he even references Renet and their first adventure). Like the Turtles, Cerebus is drawn by his creator for his appearances and we get this weird art jam for two pages, as Bode’, Eastman/Laird and Sim all draw their characters in their own unique styles, coexisting together. It’s neat, but that’s about it.

From a storytelling standpoint, their inclusion in this tale is absolutely awful; guest appearances at their most gratuitous. While the Turtles at least randomly show up to save the day, Cerebus is nothing but a “hi” then “bye”, reminding everyone that he exists and then leaving.

Well, the good news is you can find most copies of Miami Mice in the quarter bin at your local comic shop (that’s also where you’ll find most non-TMNT Mirage comics). It’s a random, zany novelty and if you’re absolutely starved for more Eastman/Laird sequential TMNT content, then this might be your last stop before oblivion.

Grade: Meh.

Published by: Mirage Licensing

Publication date: Spring, 2003

Art: Michael Dooney (TMNT), Dan Berger (characters), Eric Talbot (vehicles), Dario Brizuela (headquarters), 4Kids production staff (“other”)

Coloring: Eric Talbot

Design: A.C. Farley

Text: 4Kids production staff and Steve Murphy

Editor-in-chief: Gary Richardson

Contents:

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

Leonardo

Michelangelo

Donatello

Raphael

Allies:

Master Splinter

April O’Neil

Casey Jones

The Sewer Lair

TMNT Vehicles:

Sewer Slider

Shell Cycle

Battle Shell

Foot Headquarters

The Foot Clan:

Shredder

Hun

Dr. Baxter Stockman

The Foot:

The Tech Division

The Ninja Division

The Elite Guard

The Mystic Division

The Purple Dragon Gang

Turtle Tips:

*There was no Vol. 2, at least so far as I know.

*This book was available only in Toys “R” Us stores. It also came with a set of 4 TMNT trading cards from Fleer.

Review:

Hey, here’s one of those things I forgot I even owned. Digging through my long boxes for some peculiar odds and ends, this little promotional comic (that cost $2 at retail) popped up with the other miscellaneous publications.

Based on the 4Kids TMNT cartoon from 2003, this sourcebook is a neat little thing and I do wish they had made more of them (DID they make more of them? I can’t find any info). It isn’t nearly as meaty as Archie’s TMNT Mutant Universe Sourcebooks, but it does cover all the basics from the first season of the 4Kids cartoon and the write-ups are generally pretty informative (though restricted to bios and lacking any technical data).

I imagine the text was taken mostly from the series production bible with additional flourish by Steve Murphy (the credits imply as much). The biographies summarize the basics of the characters, though neglect any sort of in-depth life stories; the show was just getting started, after all (for example, Shredder’s write-up hints that he’s more than he seems, but doesn’t elaborate).

On a few occasions, the bios seem at a loss to find anything noteworthy to say about a character. I think the worst is Donatello’s bio, almost a third of which is a generic retelling of the TMNT’s origin while the remainder is an exercise in the different ways one can word “does machines”. Splinter’s write-up also has an unfortunate spelling error, identifying his previous owner as “Hamoto Yoshi”. And because Steve Murphy cannot help himself, he manages to slip some public service announcements into a couple of the entries. Apparently, the Shell Cycle has “anti-pollution exhaust pipes” and the members of the Purple Dragons are only in a gang because they’re too stupid to know that gangs are totally uncool and you should avoid them, kids.

There are a few nuggets of characterization present in these write-ups that don’t seem to have found their way into the actual show. Michelangelo’s bio is full of this stuff. Did you know that he’s the most naturally skilled athlete of all the Turtles? His lack of training discipline offsets that talent, however, which is why he only levels out to “average” amongst his brothers. He also apparently loves music and mastered playing the guitar with only three fingers (THAT never showed up in the cartoon). April’s 23, in case you were curious. And apparently, the Mousers were originally intended to be used to rescue people trapped in wrecks or under fallen debris, hence their tunneling powers and prodigious jaws. I guess by the time the cartoon got around, their function was rewritten into being rat-catchers.

At only 15 pages (16 if you count the credits page), it was reasonably priced at $2, I suppose. And hey, a sheet of uncut trading cards, if you’re into that stuff. As a sourcebook, it could have been much better, but it’s clear that this book was aimed more at little kids and needed to keep the info uncluttered and brisk. You get to see all the Mirage guys drawing in the 4Kids style with credits as to who did what (I knew Dooney designed the Turtles for that show, but wasn’t aware of Berger’s, Farley’s, Talbot’s and Brizuela’s contributions to the design work), so even I found it somewhat informative and insightful.

Grade: I dunno… I don’t really grade sourcebooks.

Publication date: November 27, 2013

Story: Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz

Script: Tom Waltz

Art: Mateus Santolouco

Colors: Ronda Pattison and Ian Herring

Letters: Shawn Lee

Editor: Bobby Curnow

“City Fall, Part Seven”

Summary:

In the old theater, the Turtles and Splinter are getting thrashed by Bebop and Rocksteady. Shredder demands to know who these mutants are and Karai claims them, informing him that she had them created in secret to serve the Foot. Things look bleak until April shows up, equipped with Harold Lilja’s armaments (intangibility shield and anti-gravity gauntlet), burying the mutants in debris. Enraged, Shredder tries to rally the catatonic Dark Leo to fight for the Foot. Splinter tells Shredder to step away from his son.

In the parking lot, Casey steps up to his father, Hun. Hun tries to convince Casey that he’s a changed man, and by taking control of the Purple Dragons and joining the Foot, he can fix things between them. Enraged, Casey breaks his baseball bat over his father. Hun isn’t fazed, but rather he’s impressed by the fight his son is showing. Unfortunately for Casey, he split his stitches in the swing and Hun implores his son to surrender. Angel hits Hun with her tonfa and the Dragon gets ready to kill her in response. Luckily for our heroes, Old Hob has revived from his gunshot wound and found a rifle. He shoots Hun in the arm before Slash shows up and hurls Hun against a car, knocking him out.

Back in the theater, Dark Leo rallies and throws down with Raph. Raph disarms his brother and gives him a pep talk, assuring Leo that what he’s doing is not of his free will. After seeing another vision of Tang Shen, the words finally penetrate and Leo begins to recognize his family again.

Meanwhile, Shredder topples Splinter in battle. He accuses Hamato Yoshi of betraying the Foot Clan and refuses forgiveness. Before he can strike the finishing blow, Alopex pounces on him. She wants revenge against the Shredder for slaughtering her family. She’s about to slash Shredder’s throat when Karai nails her with an arrow.

April warns that the batteries on her gadgets are running out and she can’t keep Bebop and Rocksteady subdued much longer. Slash makes a new entrance through a wall and the Turtles and Splinter bail. Hob pulls up in his pickup truck and carts them all away as Bebop and Rocksteady give chase on foot. Hob has a grenade handy, though, and crushes their momentum. Hun, recovering, watches as Casey leaves with his “new family”.

Later, at Foot HQ, Antonio gives his tribute and loyalty to the Shredder. Shredder assures him that their business partnership will be mutually beneficial. After the mobster leaves, Shredder beckons Karai over for a private conversation. He accuses her of treason for creating mutants without his consent and that the consequence is death. Karai vows that what she did was for the good of the Clan, but submits to her punishment with honor. Rather than kill her, Shredder commends her and promotes her to Chunin.

Walking to the balcony to join Kitsune, Shredder explains the intricacies of his scheme. He used Leonardo to gain a psychological hold over the city. As citizens were currently in a state of fear regarding mutants, being seen to control a mutant gave him an edge. He also promoted Leo over Karai as a test to see how truly loyal she was to the Foot. Shredder says that family is not a birthright, but something to be earned. Karai has earned her place at his and Kitsune’s side.

Outside the city, the group parts ways. Angel has to go back to be with her dad in town, but wishes Casey a speedy recovery. Leo recoils from Splinter and gives the black bandana back to Slash. April says she knows a place they can go and the Turtles, Splinter and Casey pile into her van.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (IDW) #27. The story continues in TMNT (IDW) #29.

*The events of TMNT Villains Micro-Series #8: Shredder take place between this and next issue.

*This issue was originally published with 5 variant covers: Cover A by Santolouco, Cover B by Eastman and Ian Herring, Cover RI by Nick Pitarra and Megan Wilson, Cover RE Jetpack Exclusive by Eastman, and Cover RE Jetpack Exclusive bandanas and Foot Clan symbol.

Review:

“City Fall” is over and I’m left feeling rather conflicted about it. This was a BIG story. Add in the prelude and the issues of the Villains Micro-Series that supplement it (one of which isn’t out yet, but it’s the epilogue) and you have an epic 14-part story. FOURTEEN. That’s a pretty big story.

“City Fall” is the culmination of a LOT of plot threads that have been gestating for years. These storylines were almost like shackles in the back of your mind, chaining the narrative down. IDW could keep moving forward with the story, but there was always that voice saying, “When are they going to get to this? When are they going to address this again? They set this up two years ago so when is it going to pay off?” Now that all those shackles have been unlocked, it feels like the book is free to go and do whatever it wants.

That’s a good thing. IDW’s TMNT had been burdened with an excess of story and they were piling new plot threads on before they could even get to the old ones. It was getting cumbersome and I was finding myself forgetting about threads and events because there was just way too much to keep track of and nothing was getting resolved. “City Fall” knocks all of those lingering elements out in rapid fire succession in a huge explosive event and the weight has been lifted.

BUT, that comes at a price. It also means that “City Fall” had to cover a LOT of ground. There was just SO MUCH story to tell that the 7 chapters of the ongoing just weren’t up to the task. So we got over half the Villain Micros to pick up the slack. And even with them acting as “breather” chapters there was just a lot to keep track of.

At times, I think the characters fell victim to the excess of story. They had to get from one set piece to another and get the next act moving and then it was off to the next set piece and the next act and so on and so forth. The characters were all THERE, but they were diluted versions of themselves; strictly vehicles to keep the story moving before time ran out.

And that’s why I think “City Fall”, were it not for the Villain Micros, would read rather blandly. And I don’t envy those who are going to be picking up the “City Fall” trades which won’t be including the Micro-Series chapters. THAT’S where all the characterization is (not to mention a number of absolutely vital plot points). With just the ongoing by itself, Alopex is a henchwoman and nothing more; her glimmer of character came in her Micro. Without the Micro, Karai is just a resentful stooge upset about missing a promotion; the depth of her character and her set of values came from her Micro. Hun is just a guy lusting for power; everything about “wanting to improve himself and put away his demons” came from his Micro (save for him summarizing things in this issue for a clunky speech).

The ongoing series simply cannot be read in a vacuum, at least not at the “City Fall” juncture. All the vital characterization that makes these players more than just two-dimensional mouth pieces for dialogue necessary to get from Point A to Point B… That can only be found in the Micros.

In a way, it creates two very different reading experiences. Those reading just the ongoing are going to come away thinking these characters are very thin, their motivations spontaneous and ill-defined and that the story is nothing but action without any personality to it. But those reading BOTH titles, getting the full experience, end up with something much more fulfilling. Suddenly Karai is more than a spoiled brat, but a character that only wants the best for her family and her heritage. Suddenly, Alopex isn’t a brainless attack dog, but a victim who lets her sense of loss and need for revenge get the better of her. Suddenly, Hun, a giant power-hungry gangster, desperately wants to make good with his son and undo the years of neglect and abuse he inflicted upon him but in the only way he knows how.

These are GREAT characters!

But if all you’re reading is the ongoing, you aren’t going to get that impression. And it’s a conflicting thing for me, because I can’t claim the IDW series is failing in its characterization, because it’s not. However, it’s been so crippled with storyline overload that it has needed a supplementary series just to MAKE ROOM for the characterization. And that IS a problem. The stories should serve the characters, not the other way around. But like I said, now that “City Fall” is over, and so are the Micros, maybe the ongoing can spend a little more time with its cast so those out of the Micro-Series loop can get to know them again.

Hrm. And that brings me to another subject. While I believe “City Fall” succeeded in telling a big story that fulfilled the lingering promises of the past two years, there was one aspect to it that fell utterly limp.

Dark Leo.

I’m sorry. It just didn’t work. Maybe it was the way IDW solicited the next arc months in advance, cutting the suspense out from under the Dark Leo conflict by telling us EXACTLY when he was going to return to the good guys. That was a problem. But it was more that Dark Leo just didn’t seem to have a point. I mean, what do YOU think the intention of the Dark Leo subplot was? To fill Leonardo with regret for the wrongs he committed during his tenure with the Foot Clan?

But WHAT wrongs were those, exactly? What evildoing did Leo commit that will haunt him for the rest of his days? Accessory to murder? Larceny? Assault and battery? It just doesn’t add up to something so dire it would force him to feel like he totally betrayed his family and recoil from their love and support. But I guess you all can guess where I’m going with this.

Dark Leo didn’t kill anybody.

And I think that’s where it just fell flat. IDW’s TMNT have made a big deal about their code of honor; namely their “no killing” policy. The setup seems to be that when they DO take a life, it is going to haunt them and hurt them and burden them like nothing else. But every time we get to that threshold, the series pulls its punches at the last second and backs down. Leo thought he killed Slash, but Slash survived none the worse for wear. Leo joined the damn Foot Clan, but a plot device was crudely inserted about how “killing would break the brain-washing spell” so he was spared having to take a life. IDW keeps leading us to the big moment and then faking out rather than following through. Eventually, they may very well cry wolf one too many times.

I’m not a guy who DEMANDS blood and guts and death in his TMNT books. I think there have been more good Turtle stories written and told without gratuitous violence than those that have included a stabbing or three. But for Dark Leo to have paid off, Leo needed to do something terrible. Something he can never, ever take back. Victor of the Savate being captured and readied for execution seemed like that was going to be it. Dark Leo was going to kill him under the Shredder’s orders and that was the thing that would break Leo’s spirit.

But no. Shredder killed Victor.

Yes, they can mine Leo’s actions for drama and pathos in the upcoming stories. He joined the Foot Clan, he beat up his brothers, he helped Shredder takeover New York and he stood idly by while people died. Not things to be proud of, no, but they still lacked a punch. Leo didn’t badly injure any of this brothers. Leo didn’t stand by while INNOCENT people died (just gangsters). And Leo didn’t kill anyone. It’s just too weak to feel impactful or carry the kind of psychological and emotional resonance I know the writers were going for.

And hell, in the end, as the Shredder gives his big “How I did it” monologue to Karai, he expresses the true purpose of Dark Leo: Just to mess with everyone. And as a reader, yeah, I'll agree he definitely succeeded in that regard.

So that’s it. “City Fall” is over. It was a huge, bombastic epic that truly felt years in the making. However, it is not a story that can stand alone. Without the supplementary material to give the players depth, it rings hollow. If you have those stories, then you’re good to go. And if you don’t have those stories, then you’re at a severe disadvantage. Did I enjoy it, though? Yes, I did. It was a LOT of story and Dark Leo didn’t pay off for me, but it was EXCITING. Mateus Santolouco’s art was beautiful and I rarely found myself leafing through the pages unenthused.

Grade: C- (as in, “Come on Leo, cheer up. At least now you don’t have to wear a scarf in the summer, anymore”.)

Publication date: January, 2005

Plot: Steve Murphy and Eric Talbot

Script: Steve Murphy

Pencils: Jim Lawson

Inks and balloons: Eric Talbot

Cover: Jim Lawson and Eric Talbot

Frontispiece: Michael Dooney

Letters page art: Dan Berger

“Darkness Weaves”

Summary:

Frontispiece: In her bedroom, Shadow finds a diary she kept when she was a rebellious, rude teenager. She’s embarrassed by her bad attitude and frightened by how much she’s forgotten about herself in such a short a span of time. What frightens her more, however, are her memories of Sloane and Lilith, which resurface whenever the moon is full…

Down in the sewer lair, Shadow is watching a music video from her favorite artist, Lilith, who sings about female empowerment and supernatural gimmicks. As 11:30pm rolls around, Shadow sneaks out of the lair and meet up with her friend, Sloane, for a Lilith concert. She’s caught in the sewer tunnels by Raphael, however, and forced back to the lair. At about Midnight, while Raph is in the shower, Shadow successfully sneaks out. Raph finds the dummy under the sheets in her bed and goes out after her, only briefly stopping to tell Splinter what he’s doing.

On a street corner, Shadow meets up with Sloane and they head into the backdoor of a dingy club. There are hundreds of teenage girls gathered in the club, as it’s a female-only event; even the security crew is made up of women. Raph tracks Shadow down and hides in the rafters as Lilith takes center stage. Lilith begins one of her songs as security locks the doors. Lilith then produces a pair of knives, slitting her wrists and filling a goblet with blood. The goblet is passed around the girls, who seem to be in a trance from Lilith’s singing. As the goblet nears Shadow, a skylight opens up, revealing a full moon. The girls summarily transform into werewolves.

Having seen enough, Raph drops down from the rafters and the commotion he causes snaps Shadow out of her trance (moments before sipping from the goblet). The other girls woken from their trance all flee the club, dialing 911 on their cell phones as they escape. Lilith (now a werewolf, too), enraged at Raph and Shadow for ruining her ceremony, orders all her new minions to kill them. Raph passes Shadow a sai and the pair start (non-fatally) stabbing their way through the monsters. A werewolf crashes into Shadow in the chaos, pushing her forward with her sai. She accidentally stabs a werewolf in the gut, who transforms back to her human form: Sloane.

With one of their number dead, the werewolves rally and swarm Raph and Shadow. Luckily, the other three Turtles show up just in the nick of time. Leo says Splinter woke them up, fearing trouble, and they followed. As the fight continues, the police finally show up. Raph nails Lilith in the back as she attempts to escape with Sloane’s body. Lilith tells both Raph and Shadow that one day she will return for revenge. Both the Turtles and the werewolves then vanish before the cops can enter the building.

Epilogue: Shadow remembers how that little adventure marked the end of her tenure in New York City. April and Casey returned early from their vacation and forced her to move to the farmhouse and Northampton where it would be safer. She resented them for it and resented Splinter, who was left there as her guardian. She hated the Podunk town and everything about her situation. Eventually, she outgrew her childish rebel phase and came to love the place. However, she never stopped being afraid when the moon was full.

Turtle Tips:

*The story continues in Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #1.

*As Shadow says she’s undergone martial arts training, that places this story shortly after (the epilogue of) Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #69.

*Raph previously encountered a werewolf in Talbot’s short, “The Howl”.

*A stuffed toy of Fluffy from Michael Dooney’s “Gizmo” comic can be seen in the frontispiece.

*According to Steve Murphy in the letters page, the “Forever War” miniseries was slated for a 2005 release date. Yeah, no, that didn’t happen.

*Also according to the letters page, Splinter’s favorite DEVO song is “Beautiful World”. Take that knowledge with you to your grave.

Review:

“Darkness Weaves” is an interesting study on the character of Shadow Jones. Chronologically, it’s our first extended look at her as a teenager and it’s quite a change from when she was the adorable little tyke. The frontispiece strategically takes the edge off, as a five-years-older Shadow remarks about how awful she was during her rebellious teenage goth years. In that manner, the character in the book agrees with the reader, rolling her eyes as Shadow lays her bad attitude on thick, and keeps you from developing a dislike for her, as you know she’ll eventually outgrow it. It’s one of the better examples of setup in Steve Murphy’s case as well as one of the few times the frontispiece is actually meant to tie-into the following story (along with the epilogue narration, it creates a bookending sequence).

“Darkness Weaves”, ostensibly a standalone adventure, was retroactively sewn into a larger tapestry of stories, both to positive and ill effect. The negative half is that it spun off into the truly awful 4-issue miniseries, “Bad Moon Rising”. I’m not looking forward to reviewing those. On the positive side, it actually works as a superb follow-up to Dan Berger’s tale, “Dark Shadows”. That story also features an older Shadow reflecting on her youthful behavior with both embarrassment and wistful nostalgia, and as a story set in the distant future, focuses on her ultimate falling out with Raphael. It ends with a bittersweet epilogue, as contemporary-Raph learns about this fate and chooses to train teenage-Shadow in martial arts, even though he knows it won’t change things.

If you go directly from “Dark Shadows” into “Darkness Weaves”, you get a lot more out of this story. Suddenly, Raph’s overbearing parental attitude isn’t just droll irony about a former teenage rebel getting a dose of his own medicine, but a more heartbreaking affair, as he’s seen what the future holds for Shadow and desperately wants to keep her safe. And likewise, working chronologically backward in a way, as a reader you’ve just witnessed the tragic end of Raph and Shadow’s relationship, and NOW you’re bearing witness to all their bonding and friendship. For those reasons, “Darkness Weaves” is the perfect story to read directly after “Dark Shadows”.

But as a story on its own? Eh, it’s not so good. The story amounts to a cult leader luring girls to join her werewolf army and it all ends pretty quickly. There is a LOT of singing in this issue and for a printed medium that’s a problem. Murphy lays the lyrics out as poetry, but with the lack of a beat it can be difficult to keep the rhythm going in your head. “Music” in comics is best utilized in small doses; an entire issue filled with the stuff is just a pain in the ass.

Also, the lyrics sucked, but I won’t hold that against the comic. Raphael pretty much covered it:

Anyhow, “Darkness Weaves” is the perfect follow-up to a great story and the unfortunate prelude to a terrible miniseries. When taken all on its own, it doesn’t stand out particularly well, either. I will say, though, that Talbot’s inking in this was great and one of the better examples of how well he and Lawson go together.

Grade: C (as in, “Can’t say I listened to very good music when I was a teenager, either. It was the era of Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit.”)

Publication date: July, 2007

Story: Bill Moulage

Pencils: Jim Lawson

Inks and letters: Eric Talbot

Cover: Ross Campbell

“The Calling”

Summary:

At the farmhouse in Northampton, Raph and Shadow are watching “The Exorcist” and getting freaked. The doorbell rings and they’re greeted by a pointy-eared little girl named Lucrezia (“Lulu” for short). Lulu asks if they can help her find her mommy and Shadow immediately invites her in. Lulu asks if her dog can come, too, and said “dog” turns out to be a lumbering werewolf. Raph is about to attack the lycanthrope when it transforms back into a human: Sloane.

It’s been almost a year since Shadow accidentally killed Sloane, inciting Lilith, the leader of the werewolf pack, to swear vengeance. Sloane says that Lilith was able to save her soul, though her body is now undead, and that she knows Shadow stabbed her on accident. The two friends make up and Sloane gets dressed. Raph asks what’s going on and Sloane explains that Lulu is Lilith’s daughter. She was babysitting Lulu, but when she returned to the “den”, the entire place was trashed and the whole pack was missing (Lilith included). Raph reluctantly agrees to help, but only because Sloane is Shadow’s friend, and gears up with a golf bag full of Casey’s blunt instruments and various holy daggers and the like.

Lulu casts a spell and when they open the front door, they find themselves not in Northampton, but Nocturna: a world that exists in the shadows of Earth. Lulu blows a whistle and calls down some giant bats with saddles. They each take a bat to the sky, though the girls all have a good laugh at Raph’s poor riding skills. These antics go on for 6 pages.

Eventually, they’re attacked by a swarm of Opticarns: pterodactyls with giant eyeball heads that can suck your soul out of your body if you look at them long enough. Raph tells Shadow to draw her katana and gets ready to fight when suddenly he finds himself staring into an Opticarn’s eye, mesmerized…

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #7. The story continues in Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #2.

*Raph mentions that Shadow is seeing a guy named Jay (whom Shadow insists isn’t her boyfriend). Jay will appear (as Shadow’s boyfriend) in TMNT (Vol. 4) #2.

*Lulu asks Raph if he’s related to Tsou-T’an-Jin. The Turtles met Tsou in Tales of the TMNT( Vol. 2) #32.

*When Raph says his brothers aren’t around, an editor’s note indicates they’re caught up in “a tale as-yet untold”. Exactly what tale this was, I don’t think we ever found out.

Review:

Like Tales of Leonardo: Blind Sight, Raphael: Bad Moon Rising expands upon a one-shot story that really, really didn’t need a sequel. But whereas Blind Sight was expanding upon a genuinely good issue, Bad Moon Rising expands upon an issue that was absolutely mediocre at best.

We’re thrust into this adventure of dark fantasy and sword & sorcery out of the blue and it feels less like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story and more like a bad piece of “Twilight” fanfiction. Or “Underworld”. Or any one of those trendy “vampires vs. werewolves” things that are so popular for some reason. Writer Bill Moulage doesn’t seem to have done much work beyond a scant handful of TMNT-related comics in the mid 2000s. In fact, the only other credit I can find for him is for an issue of The Puma Blues, an environmental awareness comic Steve Murphy wrote back in the ‘80s. That leaves me with the impression Moulage got this gig through connections, not so much the quality of his pitch, because none of this is very good.

I guess a big problem is also the decompression. Its 28-pages, but you wouldn’t know it by reading it. Lawson endeavors to create a moody atmosphere through pages and pages of build-up at the start, but 6 pages of Raph and Shadow watching “The Exorcist” is really overdoing it (that’s more than 1/5 of the whole issue, right there). I mean, I understand what he was going for and building atmosphere in a tangentially horror-themed comic is fine… but there are limits. And it doesn’t help that Talbot screwed up some of the lettering for “The Exorcist” dialogue, giving the wrong lines to the wrong characters.

Likewise, Raph bumbling around on the bat-steed drags for 6 pages. Yes, 6 straight pages of tiresome comic relief and it’s all the same joke over and over again (“Ha Ha Ha. Raph just threw up. Ha Ha Ha. Raph is hanging upside down. Ha Ha Ha. Raph can’t control his bat”). Comic relief that uninspired really, REALLY shouldn’t go on that long. So yeah, this was a 28 pages comic… with 6 pages of characters watching TV and 6 pages of Raph acting like a doofus to elicit a cheap laugh.

But hey, we’re just getting started.

Grade: F (as in, “For Heaven’s sake, how much dialogue from a movie can you copy before it crosses the line from ‘sampling’ and becomes ‘theft’?”)

Publication date: August, 2007

Story: Bill Moulage

Pencils: Jim Lawson

Inks and letters: Eric Talbot

Cover: Ross Campbell

“The Taking”

Summary:

Before the Opticarn can suck out Raph’s soul, Shadow swoops in on her bat-steed and chops off its head (eyeball). The souls it had previously eaten all flee from the neck stump, distracting the other Opticarns and allowing Raph, Shadow, Sloane and Lulu to escape.

Reaching the metropolis of Nocturna, they stop by an All Night Mart so Sloane can pick up some cigarettes. While she’s lingering outside, she makes a private phone call. Back in the minimart, several hooded figures remove their disguises, revealing themselves to be shotgun-toting monkeys. They attempt to hold up the cashier and take a family of whatevers hostage, but Lulu uses her magic to stop their bullets in midair while Raph and Shadow knock them all out. The trio leave with their complimentary groceries from the grateful cashier and meet back up with Sloane.

Sloane leads them into the sewers where she says the entrance to the Den is. Lulu opens a magic elevator which takes them to the penthouse of a skyscraper. While Sloane fixes Lulu a snack, Raph and Shadow investigate the posh digs. Finding no clues or any sign of struggle whatsoever, Raph accuses Sloane of having some sort of ulterior motive. Sloane resents the accusation, as she really doesn’t know where Lilith or the pack disappeared to, as the Den is never left unguarded. Raph asks Lulu about her parents and she explains that her father is Gnostros, the King of the Elves. Her parents never married but have joint custody of her.

Investigating the roof, Raph finally finds a clue: the severed head of the pack’s pet wolf Clea impaled on a spike. Raph also finds a gigantic barn owl feather. Going back inside, Raph hypothesizes that whoever made off with Lilith and the pack, rode in on a giant barn owl and carried them off. Sloane is incredulous to the idea, at least until a giant barn owl lands on the top of the skyscraper. With its talons, it rips off the penthouse and flies away with it, leaving Raph, Shadow and the others no choice but to go for a ride.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from Raphael: Bad Moon Rising#1. The story continues in Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #3.

Review:

I’d say “the plot thickens”, but that sure as heck isn’t true. If anything, what’s passing for a “plot” in this book is being watered down to the point of total transparency. You can tell that “Bad Moon Rising” isn’t exactly brimming over with story and despite a 30-page length, this issue is desperate for content.

Moulage is trying his best to sell the wonder and bizarre wackiness of Nocturna, but he does so through a series of gimmicky and clichéd gags. You know, “they have supermarkets… but they sell WEIRD FOOD, NOT NORMAL FOOD!” Totally original stuff like that. I mean, Raph opens a bottle labeled “spirits” and a bunch of ghosts pop out! Haha! He didn't want ghosts, he wanted liquor! But the bottle said "spirits"! It's a pun! Get it?

All these corny Nocturna gags feel like they’d embarrass Beetlejuice.

And I wouldn’t have cared about the detour to the All Night Mart so much, as they needed to do something to establish how Nocturna is just like New York except full of spooky puns, it’s just that Lawson draaawwws iiiiiit oooooouuuuut. 10 pages, a third of this comic, is spent on the characters wasting time at a convenience store. You know that bit I was just telling you about? Raph drinking the bottle of spirits? That’s 2 pages. TWO PAGES of Raph drinking a beverage.

The issue‘s worst offense is that it’s just so BORING. You’d think Raph flying on a giant bat and fighting eyeball-dactyls would be exciting, but there’s no energy or charm to any of it. And Raph’s characterization in this story seems to be the repository for all the insipid “Nocturna is spooky and crazy!” gags. He’s the one who gets surprised and confused by every weird and goofy thing and is always complaining or being the butt of lame jokes. It makes you wonder why it’s just HIM, though? Why isn’t Shadow just as weirded out by all this supernatural craziness? There really isn’t any good reason for her to take to Nocturna so naturally and matter-of-factly (especially considering Raph’s lifetime of experience with supernatural critters).

It’s just a whole lot of cheap writing. TMNT has produced some bad comics in the past, but this is beneath even those.

Grade: F (as in, “Full moons turn lycanthropes into werewolves. In the real world, they transform bad writers into god awful writers”.)

Publication date: November 14 – December 11, 2013

Script: Ed Caruana

Art: Jack Lawrence

Colours: Jason Cardy

Colour assist: J. Stayte and E. Pirrie

Letters: Alex Foot

“Dropzone!”

Summary:

On a rooftop overlooking an industrial complex, the Turtles are keeping the Kraang under watch. Donatello thinks this is the perfect opportunity to try out his new Stealth Wing jetpack. The others chide his inventions for rarely working, but Donnie insists he’s got his calculations right. While playing with Don’s staff, the blade pops out and nearly slices Mikey in the face. Don awkwardly chuckles that he over-lubricated the blade mechanism then leaps off the roof.

Unfortunately for Donnie, the Stealth Wings get jammed and fail to deploy from the pack. He calls for help on his TPhone, but it’s too late. Plowing through a flag and bouncing off an awning, Don lands unconscious on the roof of a Kraang truck which proceeds to pull out of the complex. The Turtles chase after their brother, using the GPS signal from his TPhone to track him.

The truck arrives at a Kraang skyscraper facility and the alien robots notice the Turtle on the roof. They carry Don off to level 62, intent on dissecting him. The other Turtles arrive at the skyscraper, but find Donnie’s TPhone still on the roof of the truck. With no way of knowing what floor the Kraang took their brother to, they’ve no alternative but to check them all… one at a time.

They pass a Kraang speech orientation seminar first, then a mutation study lab where a giant three-headed, tentacled blob-monster dwells. Eventually, they arrive in the dissection lab. Donnie has just woken up, strapped to a table, and the Kraang are preparing to cut him open. The Turtles make short work of the Kraangdroids and free Donnie, but find their route of escape blocked. The Kraang have arrived through the elevator with reinforcements: the blob-monster.

With no other means of escape but the window, Donnie tells them all to hang on and he’ll carry them to safety on his jetpack. They remind him that the thing doesn’t work and they’ll all get killed. Donnie thinks for a moment and realizes that if the Stealth Wings jammed, that just means they needed some lube. Remembering that he over-lubed the blade mechanism of his staff, he uses that excess lubricant to grease the wings.

The blob-monster closing in, the Turtles have no choice but to trust Donnie and grab onto him as he jumps. The Stealth Wings deploy and the jetpack works perfectly… until Donnie flies directly into lamppost and sends them all careening into an open dumpster.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from Nickelodeon TMNT (Panini) #7. The story continues in Nickelodeon TMNT (Panini) #9.

*Donnie’s jetpack first appeared in the episode “The Mutation Situation”.

Review:

As much as I’ve been enjoying Panini’s TMNT comics, they are a bit guilty of overusing the Kraang as antagonists. Their goofy speech patterns make them fun to read and their various machinations give them a variety of schemes to thwart, but they’ve so far featured in 5 of the 8 issues of this magazine. It’d be nice to see the other villains get a little more attention, is all.

That said, this was another tightly scripted story littered with some good gags. This is one of those cases where I wish the Panini comic had more page space in the magazine, as the bit where the Turtles check out each floor one-by-one had the potential for a lot of great sight gags. In the end, we only got two, but they were both pretty funny (I especially liked the Kraang giving English lessons).

Each floor investigated was punctuated with a scene of Donnie on the dissection table and the Kraang getting closer and closer to filleting him (their redundant speech patterns being the only thing delaying his vivisection). It was a good balance of suspense and humor, which is one more reason why I’d have liked to have seen the gag extended. But hey, they only have so much room to work with; I understand.

Another good story, I just hope to see a little less of the Kraang in the future.

Grade: B (as in, “But while I’m starting to notice Caruana’s formula (an aside made in the first couple pages will become highly relevant in the last couple pages), I still dig the pacing of his stories and it works well in this shorter format”.)

Publication date: September, 2007

Story: Bill Moulage

Pencils: Jim Lawson

Inks and letters: Eric Talbot

Cover: Ross Campbell

“The Catch”

Summary:

In the penthouse being carried off by the giant barn owl, Raphal and co. (Shadow, Sloane and Lulu) lament their inability to do anything about it. The giant barn owl is suddenly attacked by an unkindness of giant ravens (I looked that one up!) and it drops the penthouse into the sea. A giant jellyfish rises from the water and its membrane cushions the impact and forms an airtight bubble around the penthouse. As it submerges, the jellyfish emits a knockout gas, putting all inside to sleep.

When the group awakens, they’re greeted by a beautiful woman named Oceana. Lulu recognizes Oceana and realizes that they’re all in her father’s palace. Lulu’s father, Lord Chiton, welcomes the group to his kingdom of Atlantia. Inviting the group to a banquet, Lord Chiton vows to use all his resources to track down Lilith and her Pack. He then offers Raph some sea anemone whiskey and while the Turtle gets shit-faced, Lord Chiton sneaks away from the feast. He meets up with Sloane in a dark hallway and the two continue in their romantic affair in secret.

Later, Raphael wakes up and finds all his weapons sharpened and ready for him. Lulu greets Raph, Shadow and Sloane with good news: Lord Chiton’s spies have located where Lilith is being held captive and he is leading an attack to rescue her right now.

On the surface, Lord Chiton and his armies lay siege to an island occupied by a tower. Lord Chiton calls in his giant horseshoe crabs to begin assaulting the tower with catapult-launched depth-charges.

Back in the palace, Raph wants to join in the attack, but the guards won’t let him leave. With the guards start to get viiolent, Raph draws his sword and slays them. Reinforcements respond to the noise and Raph and the group flee. Lulu uses her magic to barricade them in a room, then creates a magic bubble which they use to ride out of the palace and into the ocean.

At the battle, Lord Chiton’s forces begin scaling the tower, but they’re suddenly attacked by giant bats.

Meanwhile, the bubble surfaces and floats up the backside of the tower to a top floor window. The bubble pops and the group enters the tower through the window. Raphael takes point in the search for Lilith, only to fall through a trap door. Down in the pit, Raph finds himself approached by a trio of beautiful vampire girls, who mesmerize him with their sultry antics.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #2. The story concludes in Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #4.

*Raph and the other Turtles previously encountered vampires in TMNT (Vol. 1) #29.

*The Atlantian warriors dressed in lobster armor bear a passing resemblance to the Malacostra from Casey Jones #1 and Casey Jones #2. Any actual relationship between them is up to speculation.

*Likewise, the fish-people seen amongst the Atlantians may or may not share a relationship with the fish-people of TMNT (Vol. 1) #28. I guess we’ll never know.

*Wait… what? Last issue, Lulu said that her father was Gnostros, King of the Elves, and that he and Lilith never wed. In this issue, Lulu’s father is addressed as Lord Chiton, ruler of Atlantia, and he refers to Lilith as his ex-wife.

Review:

Jeez, if this comic doesn’t care enough to keep track of itself then I can hardly muster the enthusiasm to do it, myself.

This issue continues with the same shtick as the past installments, with Raph deadpanning complaints about the supernatural and how much he hates it. His gimmick seems to exist for no other reason than to elicit cheap exposition from other characters so they can explain everything as it happens (for reader benefit, of course). And on the subject of explaining everything as it happens, this issue is just a mess of that stuff. Raphael narrates the entire sequence where they’re caught by the jellyfish, describing the images we’re looking at one panel at a time. His observations are stilted and inane. “Yeah, and now they’re beginning to let out some sort of smoke. No, not smoke. Gas. But… But what kinda gas…?”

You know, I’m sure Lawson could have just drawn the room filling with smoke and the characters falling asleep. We could have figured the sequence of events out just fine on our own, thanks.

And it’s obvious from one look at Lord Chiton that he’s up to no good, so there really isn’t any suspense to this issue as the villain and conflict are brutally telegraphed (not that subtlety was this comic’s strongpoint, as I’ve previously expressed). This issue amounts to little more than a whole lot of running around as characters awkwardly and clumsily describe the artwork to us.

And just to prove that Moulage is already fresh out of ideas, this installment ends in very much the same way as the first issue of the miniseries: Raphael getting swarmed by supernatural creatures and hypnotized by their powers, his fate hanging by a thread.

If it weren’t for the Ross Campbell covers, there’d be absolutely nothing redeeming about this miniseries at all.

Grade: F (as in, “For what it’s worth, there’re only 2 pages spent on Raph drinking a beverage in this issue. That’s an improvement, I guess”.)

Publication date: October, 2007

Story: Bill Moulage

Pencils: Jim Lawson

Inks and letters: Eric Talbot

Cover: Ross Campbell

“The Win”

Summary:

The vampire femmes are about to sink their teeth into the mesmerized Raph when Sloane, in full werewolf form, comes barreling through the wall (with Shadow and Lulu behind her).

Outside the tower, on the battlefield, Lord Chiton confronts Lord Incubor, leader of the vampire armies and kidnapper of his ex-wife (Lilith).

Back inside the tower, Sloane and Shadow tussle with the vampires until Raph gets his wits back. They beat up the ladies and demand to know where Lilith is being held. After getting directions, Raph and friends run off. Once they’re out of sight, the vampire women laugh amongst themselves then make a call on their cell phone.

On the battlefield, Lord Incubor receives the message. He tells Lord Chiton that they need to extend the battle another 15 minutes, then they can play out the rest of their drama. Lord Chiton is pleased that the plan is running so smoothly.

And back in the tower, Raph and the rest find Lilith’s cell guarded by a horde of zombie werewolves. Sloane thinks they’re the missing members of her Pack and refuses to fight them, leaving the rough stuff to Raph and Shadow.

Outside, Lords Chiton and Incubor throw a phony one-on-one match, with Incubor coming out the loser. The vampire forces retreat and the Atlantians declare victory.

Inside, Lulu opens the cell while Raph and Shadow keep the zombie werewolves busy. Lilith is inside and Lulu unshackles her mother. Sloane helps Lilith out of the cell and the Pack leader soothes the zombie werewolves. Although they are not of her Pack, Lilith extends an invitation for the creatures to join her. Sloane asks what happened to their Pack and Lilith explains that she ordered them into hiding the moment the Den came under siege. Lilith thanks all for helping to rescue her, vowing to help Sloane regain the missing piece of her soul and calling off the vendetta against Shadow and Raph in gratitude.

Outside the tower, Lilith is reunited with Lord Chiton. Chiton explains that even though they are divorced, he still cares for her and would never let the mother of his child fall into enemy hands. Raph seems incredulous.

Later, in Atlantia, everyone has gathered for a victory banquet. While Rah unknowingly drinks a glass of sea cucumber jizz (really), Sloane quietly excuses herself from the table. A moment later, Lord Chiton asks his wife (Oceana) to excuse him and steps away from the feast. Shadow and Raph share a suspicious glance and slip away.

In a dark hallway, Chiton meets with Incubor and the two exchange briefcases. Incubor is paid handsomely for both throwing the battle and for performing his part in the entire kidnapping scheme. Sloane then steps out of the shadows and takes the briefcase from Incubor. It contains her soul, which she asks Chiton to reinsert into her body through undisclosed sexual acts.

After Incubor leaves, Raph and Shadow come out of hiding and demand to know what just went down. Chiton says that getting his mistress back her soul was only a part of the scheme. Chiton has had joint custody of Lulu for some time, but hasn't exactly enjoyed sharing his daughter with his ex-wife. By having Lilith kidnapped, thus thrusting Lulu into mortal danger, then “risking everything” to rescue his ex-wife, Chiton believes the ruse will work in his favor at the next custody hearing.

Raph and Shadow are incensed at having been used as pawns in such a petty domestic feud. Lord Chiton is unapologetic and reminds them that if they’d like to return to Earth, they’d best keep these details a secret. After Chiton and Sloane exit, Raph and Shadow both share a few curses of impotent rage, realizing they’d been hoodwinked.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #3.

*The politics of the supernatural world as well as the aggressions between the vampires and the werewolves will be seen again in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #39.

Review:

Looking over “Bad Moon Rising” in its entirety, I’m going to try (TRY) to give it some credit. I think what Moulage was going for was something akin to the outer space adventure arc of TMNT (Vol. 1) #4 through TMNT (Vol. 1) #7. The rhythm of that arc involved the Turtles getting thrust into a strange setting, desperate to find a way back, and caught in the middle of a larger war between opposing alien forces. That arc also set up the landscape of the various extraterrestrial entities (the Utroms, the Triceratons, the Federation) and their relationship with one another. It was world-building stuff that would prove important in the long run, establishing a broader mythology outside of just the TMNT and the Foot Clan.

“Bad Moon Rising”, by all appearances, wants to do that very same thing, but with the supernatural elements of the Mirage universe. We’ve got vampires, werewolves, Atlantians, Zombies, Elves (I guess?) and all manner of fantastic creatures, with this tale ostensibly explaining where they come from and their political relationships with one another. The difference is that this story really, REALLY sucks.

As something intended to flesh out the paranormal side of the Mirage universe, it doesn’t seem interested in tying all that much together, either. The Atlantians seemed like an opportunity to explain the origins of the fish-people from “Sons of the Silent Age” and Volume 2, but no effort or reference is made to that effect. And I can’t say I’m very surprised Moulage didn’t try to incorporate ideas from the larger universe into this one and tie everything together; the guy couldn’t even keep his own ideas straight between issues of this miniseries. Lulu went from being an elf to an Atlantian between issues and likewise her father’s identity (and relationship to Lilith) changed completely, too.

It’s just a clumsy, amateurish mess and beyond a single reference in one issue of Tales of the TMNT, an issue that was published concurrently with this miniseries, absolutely NONE of this supernatural world-building shit ever comes into play again. This story doesn’t make the Mirage universe richer or more coherent, it just brings down the Mirage catalog’s grade point average by being absolutely terrible.

As for this individual issue, there are moments that just made me set down my comic and rub my brow until the frustration dissipated. When this issue opens, the first 2 pages are actually a redrawn repeat of the last 3 pages of the previous issue (Raph coming to in the pit and then being seduced by the vampires). Moulage even paraphrases the dialogue from those pages. Yes, “paraphrases”. Not “copies”. So you end up with the same scene, played twice, and Raph speaking slight variations of the same lines between them.

You know how in some TV shows, a character will say something like, “Time to die, scum!” and then pull the trigger of their gun right before the commercial break? Then, when the show resumes after the commercial, they’ll play that same scene again, except this time the character says, “You’re dead, dirtbag!” before pulling the trigger? Well yeah, it’s like that and it makes you wonder “why”? Didn’t Moulage have a copy of his own script sitting next to him? Couldn’t he have used the same dialogue?

And for that matter, why are the first 2 pages of this issue a repeat of the last 3 pages of the previous issue, anyway!? Now we’re just paying twice for the same content.

The entire conflict being a sneaky custody battle might have been clever, but by the time we got to the end of this thing and the curtain was lifted, I just couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. Doesn’t help that the big twist was preceded by Raph drinking a glass of semen.

“Bad Moon Rising” was a bad comic and I assure you, it is 100% skippable. Even if you include Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #7 in your collection, this story adds nothing to it or the Mirage universe at large. Buy it at your own risk and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Grade: F (as in, “Finding myself in total agony as I suffered through this thing, my only respite came from reading Lord Chiton’s lines in Tim Curry’s voice”.)

Publication date: December 4, 2013

Story: Dan Duncan and Paul Allor

Script: Paul Allor

Art: Dan Duncan

Colors: Ian Herring

Letters: Shawn Lee

Editor: Bobby Curnow

Summary:

At a Foot Clan council meeting, Karai informs the Shredder of their increase in profits since the Foot consolidated all criminal activity in New York. Karai reports some losses in soldiers, but dismisses their sacrifice, as everyone has to die eventually. Jokingly, she looks to Shredder and says “almost everyone”. Disarmed by the comment, Shredder ends the meeting abruptly and leaves.

Kitsune comes to him and says that whenever his resurrection is mentioned, he becomes insecure. She says it is a weakness that could be exploited unless he openly discusses his death and resurrection with her. Oroku Saki concedes and takes a seat with Kitsune, who inquires where his soul went when his body died.

The past. Saki finds himself in the afterlife where all souls must eventually go. He is welcomed by a demon child who warns him not to disturb the natural order of the land, lest he surrender his soul for all eternity. The demon child mocks Saki, telling him that he cannot cheat death forever and that, in the end, he WILL lose his soul.

Brushing off the child’s words, Saki roams the wasteland and finds only the shambling spirits of vanquished warriors who do not appear to have any motivation and barely any thought faculties ("reflections of their former selves"). He leaves them be and heads toward a great castle dominating the skyline. Saki finds the castle guarded by demons and decides that if he must bide his time in the afterlife until his resurrection, he’d prefer to do it as the absolute ruler.

Saki attempts to rally the warrior spirits to lay siege to the castle, but his scheme backfires. The mindless spirits want only to fight and Saki has now made himself a target. He battles the hordes and calculates the weakness of every combatant, defeating them one-by-one. However, they begin to overwhelm him with sheer numbers and after falling off a cliff, Saki finds that he is losing control of the situation.

Realizing that these warrior spirits are doomed to follow their basic instincts, he deduces that they crave leadership as much as they crave battle. Taking a dominating stance, he commands the souls to stand down. The warrior spirits pause and Saki tells them that if they crave battle then they can slake their thirsts on the armies guarding the castle.

He leads the warrior spirits to the castle and they do battle with the demon guards. With the guards distracted, Saki infiltrates the palace and makes his way to the throne room. He finds an elderly king in samurai armor sitting atop a throne. He challenges the king, who rises to the occasion and attacks. Saki is unimpressed by the old man and fatally stabs him. Saki casts the corpse of the king to the ground and claims victory.

The demon child then appears before Saki and thanks him for surrendering his soul. The demon child then removes the helmet of the old king, revealing Saki’s own countenance, withered with age. Saki is confused and the demon child explains. Yes, he will cheat death again and he will return to Earth and he will command armies. He will rule the world and populate it with mutants and monsters. Eventually, though, he WILL succumb to death, permanently, and when he returns to the afterlife he will take back his throne. But time in the afterlife is not linear and eventually he will be encountered by his younger self, who will kill him in a battle… THIS battle. And in doing so, Saki’s soul will be lost and he will spend eternity restlessly wandering like the other warrior spirits.

The present. Saki concludes his story to Kitsune. She suggests that it was all merely a dream, though the lesson is perhaps one he should meditate over. Saki agrees and dismisses her. What he didn’t tell Kitsune is that he has been troubled by this vision every night since his resurrection and has found the spirit of his older self haunting his every move. Saki concludes that his fate is not set in stone and that he CAN alter the outcome of his final battle. Staring out over the city, he confidently declares that when the time comes, he will slay his younger self and rule over eternity.

Turtle Tips:

*This issue takes place after TMNT (IDW) #28.

*The Shredder's death and resurrection were seen in TMNT: Secret History of the Foot Clan #4.

*General Krang (or perhaps just another Utrom) can be seen in the vision of the future the demon child projects, doing battle with the Foot Clan. Presumably, that’s a story we can all look forward to, some day.

*This issue was originally published with 3 variant covers: Regular Cover by Tyler Walpole, Cover RI by Duncan, and Subscription Cover (blank).

Review:

With this epilogue, “City Fall” at last concludes. A massive 14-part affair, I’ve already said my piece about the storyline in my review for issue #28, so I won’t repeat myself. This story, incidentally, hasn’t much to do with the actual “City Fall” arc and instead feels more like an overdue epilogue to the Secret History of the Foot Clan miniseries (much like TMNT Villains Micro-Series #5: Karai did).

I’ll admit that “where Shredder’s soul went while he was awaiting resurrection” wasn’t a question at the top of my list to be answered, but Duncan and Allor spin a pretty good yarn from it, regardless. In all the science fiction stuff that’s been going on in the main IDW book lately, from aliens to mutants, it might be easy to forget that there’s a strong supernatural undercurrent to this TMNT universe. With the Turtles being reincarnations of deceased children and all the various resurrections going on, IDW’s TMNT are pretty well built on a foundation of spirituality. So even though it’s a question I never thought to ask, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a question worth addressing. If you’re going to have ghosts and zombies and demons in your universe, then you ought to explain where they come from and where they go, I suppose.

Though perhaps a tad telegraphed by the samurai armor, the identity of the king and the cyclical nature of the story presented a decent twist. The lesson isn’t that the future is written in stone (the demon child says that Saki rules the world and destroys civilization and I’m doubtful that’s going to happen), but rather that Saki is playing into the demon’s hands and dooming himself by making the wrongchanges. There are any number of ways he could wriggle out of that final battle in the castle, but buckling down and determining to slay his younger self probably isn’t the way to go (to say nothing of the time paradoxes that would result in, should he succeed). Whether the IDW narrative ever returns to that proposed endgame is something only time will tell.

Now, there were some troubles with the story that kept me somewhat distracted as I read. Firstly, why is Kitsune asking Saki what being dead was like and where the spirit goes? She underwent the exact same resurrection routine that he did; she should be as experienced in this field as he is. I suppose there are any number of ways to circumvent that critique. Kitsune was trying to get Shredder to discuss what’s been bothering him, so maybe she was playing ignorant of the afterlife to elicit a therapy session. Or, since she suggests it was all a dream, maybe it actually WAS all a dream and your soul doesn’t go anywhere when you die. OR, since Shredder says that he didn’t immediately have these memories when he was resurrected, and Kitsune hasn’t been back on her feet as long as he has, her own memories of the afterlife just haven’t returned yet.

But all No-Prizes aside, I think the issue could have been mooted with a slight rephrasing of the dialogue. Rather than claiming ignorance of where the soul goes upon death, she could simply be ignorant of what particular circumstances Saki found himself in after he died.

My second criticism, and the one I found more distracting, was the idea that the dead can die. Saki was already dead and in the afterlife, so what does it matter if the warrior spirits stabbed him and beat him up and threw him off a cliff? Yes, he addresses that he can feel pain… but he’s already dead. That really dulls the suspense of the various fight sequences in this issue as there just isn’t a whole lot for dead people to worry about when they get injured. I think the demon child tried to explain it at the end, that when you “die” in the afterlife, you lose your faculties and become a mindless wanderer for all eternity like the warrior spirits outside the castle (a “reflection of your former self”, as Shredder worded it). The consequences were a bit confused and still relied on the visuals of “dying” when you’re already dead, which is a concept I just couldn’t buy. Your mileage may vary, though.

It was nice to see Dan Duncan back for a full issue. He really shaped the early issues of the IDW series so he’s always a pleasure to see again. His style is naturally very dark with a lot of messy ink work to it, so he struck a good tone for the setting of this particular issue.

All in all, as a Micro, I’m not sure how much we learned about the Shredder’s character. He’s driven to rule and has no lack of ambition (he makes ruling planets sound like small potatoes when his ultimate goal is to rule the afterlife). The inner monologue as he carefully disarms and dispatches each enemy illustrates how crafty and experienced he is in a fight (I wish he’d actually DISPLAY some of that ability in his skirmishes with the Turtles, who keep getting the better of him). But in the end, his undoing seems to be something as simple as his ego; the very ambition that drives him to rule all inadvertently dooms him in eternity, as he refuses to walk a humbler path.

I dunno if all of that was necessarily news to me, but it was certainly a solid deconstruction of his character.

Grade: B (as in, “But if the wandering spirits had already died after they originally died and then they died a third time fighting the demon guards… what happens to them then? Is there some sort of upper limit for how many times you can die in the afterlife? Is it like having extra guys in a video game? Or by this comic’s own rules of death in the afterlife, do you just get a little stupider every time you die?”)

Publication date: November, 2004

Plot: Steve Murphy

Script: Dean Clarrain (Steve Murphy)

Art: Chris Allan

Letters: Eric Talbot

Frontispiece: Dan Berger

“Scars”

Summary:

Frontispiece: Sitting in a graveyard after dark, Cha Ocho peels an apple and thinks about how he’s tasted the fruit from the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge… and found the flavor to be bitter. He decides to tell a story to all the fools out there who haven’t had a taste, yet…

1984. Chinatown. Heading home from karate practice, a 9 year-old Cha Ocho is excited to show his mom the moves he just learned. He leads her into an alley so he can have room to show off, which of course gets them cornered by a street gang. Before the four muggers can kill them, Leonardo drops down from the rooftops and takes them out in 5 seconds. Cha tells Leo he wants to be just like him when he grows up. Before vanishing, Leo tells Cha “No you don’t”.

1998. St. Thomas Church. Cha, now a police officer, weds the love of his life, Kate. Sometime after that, they’re down in the Times Square subway station, waiting for their train. A perp comes running by the platform being tailed by two transit officers. Cha decides to let the officers handle it. Suddenly, the perp pulls out a gun, fires at the officers, misses, hits Kate and the impact sends her reeling off the platform, onto the tracks, where she’s promptly run over by a train. The perp escapes.

1999. The 17^thPrecinct. Cha is furious at the Police Chief for putting Kate’s murder in the cold case files. The Chief tries to level with him, that there simply isn’t any forensic evidence or available suspects and that the force has to move on to other cases. Cha demands to be put on the case to keep it going, but the Chief reminds him about conflict-of-interest rules; that he’s too close to the case to be involved in it. Cha throws down his badge and quits the force in anger.

2000. The Foot Clan training center in Brooklyn. Cha passes his final exam and is initiated into the Clan by Karai.

2001. The 17^thPrecinct. Using his newly acquired Foot Soldier training, Cha sneaks into the file room and leaves with the info on his wife’s case. He’s stopped on the roof by Leonardo, who had a feeling the Foot Clan hadn’t gone legit like they claimed. Cha recognizes Leo and tells the Turtle how he inspired him. He then explains the whole story about why he’s stealing the file and Leo agrees to assist him.

Down in the lair, Cha and Leo look over the clues and come to the conclusion that Lawrence McKinney is the likeliest suspect, as he “fell off the face of the Earth” shortly after the time of the murder and was never able to be found for questioning. Cha wants to hunt McKinney down like an animal and Splinter reminds him that he should consider whether he is out for vengeance or justice. With Don working on a project, Mikey reading comics and Raph with a broken arm, Leo is left to accompany Cha on his task alone.

They do some sleuthing and clues lead them to the Dockside Bar, where McKinney is reported to hang out. Cha puts his katana to a patron’s neck and demands answers. The patron says that McKinney has been homeless ever since an incident a few years ago and hasn’t been the same. Cha storms out, figuring the “incident” was his wife’s murder. Leo reminds Cha to cool it, as he nearly killed the patron back there in his anger.

The pair search every homeless shelter in the city and they eventually come to the last on the list: St. Thomas Church. Climbing the stairs, they find McKinney sleeping in a box and Cha immediately places his blade on the homeless man’s neck. Cha reminds him of the murder and McKinney confesses. Before Cha can kill him, Leo holds him back, allowing McKinney to run and hide in the church. Leo tells Cha that killing the man would be dishonorable; against the Bushido code he swore to when he joined the Foot. Cha smashes Leo in the mouth with the hilt of his sword and runs into the church.

Cha confronts McKinney on the altar. McKinney pulls out a pocket knife and swears it was an accident; that he’s been living with the guilt of what he did all these years. Cha promptly chops off McKinney’s hand and holds his sword up to his neck. McKinney stutters a plea for forgiveness which Cha denies, decapitating McKinney.

Witnessing this, Leo tells Cha that he went too far; that he committed a dishonorable act. Leo tells him that there is no honor in killing for vengeance. Cha reminds Leo that he and his clan killed the Shredder, TWICE, as an act of vengeance on their own master’s behalf. Leo counters by saying that their acts of vengeance only created a cycle of violence that got many innocent people killed. Leo then lays down his swords and picks up McKinney’s pocket knife. He tells Cha that he’s going to “teach him a lesson”. The two fight and Leo counters all of Cha’s sword attacks with the dinky knife. He then breaks Cha’s blade with the knife and slices a huge gash across Cha’s face. Leo tells him that he’ll have to wear that “mark of shame” for the rest of his life and vanishes.

Sometime later, Cha reflects. He considers how he used to hate Leo for what he did, but now he only pities him. He pities the Turtle for living a repressed, suffocated life. Trapped in the sewers, Leo can never experience the beauty of the surface world. And trapped within his own outmoded dogma and self-righteousness, he isn’t able to see the world in anything beyond simple black and white. Cha feels that Leo’s life is even lonelier than his.

Sitting down at Kate’s grave, Cha begins peeling an apple and starts to tell her a story about heroes and villains and those who fall somewhere in between…

Turtle Tips:

*This story takes place during the Mirage “Volume 3” era, very close to the beginning of TMNT Volume 4, given the date of 2001.

*Cha Ocho will appear again in TMNT (Vol. 4).

*The Turtles killed the Shredder in TMNT (Vol. 1) #1, again in TMNT (Vol. 1) #21, and their acts of vengeance eventually spiraled out of control into the “City at War”, beginning in TMNT (Vol. 1) #50.

*I don’t think we ever learn the circumstances behind Raphael’s broken arm.

*This issue also included a back-up story, “The Raisin’” by Muphy, Lawson and Talbot, and a bonus pin-up by Chris Herndon Dan Berger.

Review:

With the power of retrospect at our fingertips, just about everything involving Cha Ocho seems really, really embarrassing.

When Peter Laird introduced him in the pages of TMNT Volume 4, he seemed to think that he really had something with this character. Cha Ocho was treated like he was sure to be the. Next. Big. Thing. He was going to be the breakout character of TMNT Volume 4 and Tales Volume 2 and become as famous an addition to the recurring stable of TMNT personalities as Baxter Stockman, Leatherhead and the Rat King.

Yeah, well, that didn’t happen.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) would introduce a lot of new characters, built up like they were a shoe-in for the. Next. Big. Thing. Characters like the Foot Mystic trio, the Mistress, Hamato Yoshi’s niece and so on. But the reality is that introducing a character is the easy part. Cultivating them into interesting personalities that readers would want to latch onto and care about for years to come? That takes time and dedication. Mirage’s staff had the time, but not so much the dedication. At least, not to the new characters they were introducing in rapid succession with lots of trumpeting fanfare. Cha Ocho is just another one of those discarded “next big thing” characters; excitedly introduced and then quickly forgotten.

So with that in mind, this issue here is an extended origin story for a character who will proceed to do absolutely, positively NOTHING in the future except glower in the background and sneer awkwardly at Leonardo. I suppose what you’re better off doing is categorizing this story in the same vein as Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #46 and Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #65. These are all stories that chronicle the lives of various members of the Foot Clan and how their antagonistic interactions with the Turtles have affected them. These sorts of stories try to add a sense of humanity to the faceless villains by fleshing out their home lives and backgrounds. So I would recommend reading “Scars” in that context and not as the overblown origin story to “The Sensational Character-Find of 2004”.

“Scars” is a better story than I remembered it being in the past, at least when it comes to the climax, as Cha and Leo trade lessons and morality nuggets back and forth. From Leo’s point of view, he’s been there and done that and can say from experience that vengeance never solves anything, but that violence begets more violence. Unfortunately, he’s a total dick about it, wrapping it up in monologues about honor and the Bushido (by the way, “Bushido” is not ancient scripture, but imperialist propaganda commissioned in the early 20^th century by the Japanese military to better indoctrinate nationalism and the glory of dying for one’s country into the population) and then scarring Cha with a “mark of shame” so he could think about what he’s done.

While Leo may have meant well, he’s still projecting his own personal experiences onto another individual and rarely are two people’s situations entirely comparable. And Leo can talk all day and night about “what he’s learned” over the previous two decades, but that doesn’t take away the fact that he’s killed countless scores of people, himself. It’s hard to take exposition about the evils of killing seriously from a murderer. And ANYWAY, Leo’s own example about the cycle of violence caused by vengeance killings doesn’t even hold up if you’ve actually read “City at War”. Do you know how Leo solved his cycle of violence problems and earned that sweet Foot Clan peace treaty? By killing and killing and killing until eventually he killed everyone that could cause shit for him.

He is NO moral high ground to be looking up to and has no business applying “marks of shame” to anybody.

Then there’s Cha, who kills a man as he surrenders and begs for forgiveness and swears that the murder he committed has haunted him ever since. Yeah, that’s not so cool. BUT, if McKinney had REALLY felt just awful about killing Kate, why didn’t he turn himself in during the 3 years since? Dude had his chance to make things right and pay his dues. This was just the consequences catching up to him.

I think the idea was that this was supposed to be a crossroads for Cha; he could have walked the path of a “hero” if he spared McKinney’s life or he could have transformed into a “villain” by seeking bloody vengeance. Or, at least, that’s the black and white view Leo seems to use. In his inner monologue at the end, Cha expresses that things just aren’t so conveniently black and white and though he killed the man who murdered his wife, that doesn’t necessarily make him a villain, either.

Now, what BOTHERS me is that all this is like a bad “What If” issue of Spider-Man. Murphy (under his “Clarrain” pseudonym) doesn’t even try to hide the source of inspiration, with Cha deciding not to stop McKinney when he had the chance because of a “not my job” excuse and that selfish choice backfiring tragically. But when Peter Parker tracked down the burglar who shot Uncle Ben, he chose to spare his life and become a hero. When Cha Ocho tracked down the perp who shot Kate, he chose to decapitate him and become, I dunno, a Foot Soldier with personality or something.

It’s all a bit labored and confused and I’ve had plenty of discussions with other fans who came away with totally different interpretations of this story. I think just by virtue that fans can talk about the issue and make cases for their various readings, that “Scars” is successful in its endeavor. There’re shades of grey in both sides of the conflict and neither Cha nor Leo are wholly vilified or righteous in their actions. Of course, what this really means is that we’ve got two jerks yelling at each other and you may not care if either of them are right or wrong because they’re both such douches.

As for everything else, we have Chris Allan artwork and that’s always a plus. He seemed to get saddled with a lot of the lousier scripts during his contributions to Tales Volume 2 and that was sort of a shame. And speaking of “lousy scripts”, Murphy was really struggling with the dialogue, here. Cha is obnoxious in his slang and trash talk, saying things like, “I got more juice than Minute Maid and Tropicana combined!” and “I’m chilling. I’m a regular Mr. Frosty”. Yeesh.

“Scars” is… eeehhhh. I remembered it being a lot worse than it actually was and the morality struggle between two deeply flawed yet arrogantly self-righteous individuals is interesting to read, even if you may not come out thinking either of them was “right”. Great art from Chris Allan, so it’s got that going for it regardless of any other setbacks you may or may not detect.

Grade: C (as in, “Cha Ocho is just such a silly name. Not Sgt. Bananas or Mondo Gecko levels of silly, but still pretty silly”.)

Publication date: September, 2005

Plot: Steve Murphy, Eric Talbot, Jim Lawson, Peter Laird
Script: Steve Murphy

Pencils: Jim Lawson

Inks/letters: Eric Talbot

Frontispiece: Fernando Pinto

Letters page header: William Potter

Cover: Jim Lawson and Eric Talbot

“Hell’s Blacktop”

Summary:

Frontispiece: While dodging numerous ninja weaponry, Mikey considers how he’s never been a “car guy”. He likes cars, but just as a way to get from point A to point B. Casey, Raph and Don are huge car fanatics, though. All this reminds him of the first time he drove cross-country on a road trip…

At a gas station in Colorado, Casey dotes over his beloved ’57 Chevy Bel Air (which had belonged to his dad before he inherited it). Shadow comes out of the minimart and rejoins Casey and Mikey on their road trip. As they continue moving, Shadow looks over the journal of her mother and, continuing the entries in her own words, laments that she never got to know her. They eventually arrive at the cliff where Casey spread Gabrielle’s ashes. Shadow finds some branches and builds a makeshift cross as a memorial for the mother she never knew.

Back on the road, Casey sees a guy on a ’72 Moto Guzzi V-7 Sport go flying past at 110. Casey is impressed by the bike, though his passengers don’t share in the enthusiasm. Shadow is lost in an issue of Fortean Times, a supernatural magazine. This particular issue has a feature on highway apparitions. Casey blows the idea off as superstition, while Mikey is interested to hear more.

They stop at a roadside diner and Casey and Shadow take a seat at the bar (after promising to bring Mikey back some grub, later). A pair of local old timers recognize that the pair aren’t from around these parts and decide to warn them about Von Clutch. They say Von Clutch is a ghost who races foolish folks for their souls and that he can’t be beat. Casey has had enough of ghost stories and orders his food to go.

Later that night, beneath a full moon, Casey suddenly sees a woman standing in the middle of the road and swerves into a ditch to avoid her. Shadow insists the woman had no head, but Casey nixes the idea. The Chevy mysteriously won’t start back up again and Casey takes a look under the hood. Meanwhile, Shadow walks off into the rocks to go pee. After finishing up, she finds a disembodied skull half-buried in the dirt and brings it back to show Mikey.

Suddenly, they’re met by Von Clutch (a big-headed, bug-eyed greaser in a ’55 Ford) who challenges them to a race. A gaggle of ghosts encircle the group (including the biker from earlier) and they all claim they lost to Von Clutch and now have to serve as his entourage for all eternity. Von Clutch mocks Casey’s Chevy, which is all it takes to incite Casey to participate in the ghostly drag race.

As they speed down the highway, Von Clutch takes the lead and things look bad. Shadow notices the woman in Von Clutch’s passenger seat (Darlin’) is the same headless woman from earlier. Shadow asks Mikey to pass her the skull while Casey pulls up next to Von Clutch. Shadow tosses the skull at Darlin’, who proceeds to fit it back onto her neck. Darlin’ tells Von Clutch that now that her head has been restored, the curse is lifted and they can continue on their way to Heaven. Von Clutch forfeits the race and drives off into the sky. The other spirits thank Casey for freeing their souls and depart.

Casey tells Shadow that was good thinking and they all get back on the road. Casey wishes Gabrielle could see how smart her daughter has grown. From a cliff overlooking the highway, the spirit of Gabrielle watches as they drive off into the distance.

Turtle Tips:

*This story takes place toward the end of the Mirage “Volume 3” era and near the start of TMNT Volume 4, judging by the date in Shadow’s journal entry (May 10, 2001).

*Gabrielle (Shadow’s mom) died in TMNT (Vol. 1) #58 and Casey spread her ashes off the cliff in that same issue.

*To counter Casey’s skepticism, Shadow mentions the time she fought werewolves in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #7.

*The Turtles and Casey encountered the Mutato-Heads, strange extradimensional hot-rodders based on the art of Big Daddy Roth, in TMNT (Vol. 1) #30. Von Clutch is likewise based on the art of Roth, but otherwise he and the Mutato-Heads share no further connections.

*The characters of Von Clutch and Darlin’ are owned by Funatix!, Inc., an intellectual property mill founded by Peter Laird and staffed with Mirage employees while otherwise not being an arm of Mirage. According to the opening editorial, Von Clutch would appear in another Funatix! property called “The Howlers”. Dunno if that ever panned out or not.

*This issue also featured a bonus comic, “Apocalypse Vow” by Murphy, Lawson and Talbot.

Review:

Well, it takes 18 pages to get to Von Clutch, 6 pages for the stakes of the race to be established, and then 4 pages for the actual race itself. So yeah, 24 pages of buildup for 4 pages of action. And the race ends in a sudden forfeit, too. How unsatisfying can you get?

To be fair, there’s some good stuff in those 18 pages (EIGHTEEN PAGES) of setup. Shadow visiting the cliff where Casey spread Gabrielle’s ashes and contemplating that she never knew her mother; that was some nicely poignant stuff. Prior to this, we’d never gotten any scenes where Shadow thought about Gabrielle, so it’s sweet to see how she imagines what her mother might have been like and tries to develop a connection with a person she never knew. Likewise, cliché as it is, the bit where Casey and Shadow visit the diner and get the lowdown on Von Clutch from a pair of old timers was appropriate mood setting.

It just… it boggles the mind how this stuff could take 18 pages. Everything else is padded with inane conversations about gummi bears, Casey acting stupidly skeptical (when there’s no reason for him to be, given his experiences, other than Murphy needing SOMEONE in the cast to play the part), two pages of Shadow squatting and peeing because we needed to see that, and masturbatory moments where Lawson and Laird wallow in their self-indulgent boners for Moto Guzzi (their joint hard-on for that particular brand of crotch rocket is absolutely obnoxious. Yes. We get it. Harleys suck and Guzzis are better. NOBODY CARES).

I just can’t help but feel there was a much more economical way to tell this particular story without losing any of the substance (Shadow pondering what Gabrielle was like being the real heart of this tale). Or at the very least, there must have been some other way to distribute the plot elements of this story so that the actual race isn’t truncated to a meager 4 pages. It’s just not very well plotted at all. And is there any excuse for that when the credit for “plot” belongs to four different people?

Also, if all this seems a little like déjà vu, then I guess that means you’ve read “Sky Highway” by Rick Veitch. That was the story that first established Casey’s obsession with his Chevy and it also featured him in a high-speed battle against supernatural creatures inspired by the art of Big Daddy Roth. “Hell’s Blacktop” dredges up Casey’s obsession with his car (which hadn’t been a factor since “City at War” used it as symbolism for his character growth) and once again pits him against knock-offs/parodies/homages (take your pick) of Big Daddy Roth monstrosities. In a way, “Hell’s Blacktop” feels almost insultingly insincere. You see, Rick Veitch was one of the only contributors to the Mirage TMNT (Vol. 1) “guest era” who outright refused to sign Eastman and Laird’s “mandatory retroactive work-for-hire contracts”. As a result, Mirage (now Viacom) does not have the rights to reprint any of Veitch’s issues, at least not without having to pay him royalties (something they really, REALLY didn’t want to do).

So we get this thing: Superficially the same story (Casey obsesses over his Chevy, fights Roth-monsters), but with the caveat that Mirage owns it wholesale. The opening editorial even includes a boastful paragraph about how Peter Laird, via Funatix!, owns these characters outright, nah nah nah.

While I doubt there was all that much malice in the creation of this story, “Hell’s Blacktop” does somewhat feel like Mirage endeavoring to create a version of “Sky Highway” that wouldn’t require them to pay Veitch a thin dime. It wouldn’t be the first time. A year after Veitch created the character of Bloodsucker, Mirage employees created the identical character Wyrm save for one vital distinction between the two: Wyrm didn’t require royalty payments to Veitch.

Anyway, even if you divorce “Hell’s Blacktop” from “Sky Highway” in both story and real world controversy, it’s still not very good for all the reasons I discussed at the top of the review. It has some intriguing ideas and at least one valuable moment to Shadow’s growth as a character, but spends the first 2/3 of the book wasting time for no discernible reason and then squanders the action because it ran out of room.

Grade: D (as in, “Don’t worry. If you wanted more ramblings about the superiority of Moto Guzzis, TMNT Volume 4 is just around the corner!”)

Publication date: January, 2008

Script: Dan Berger

Artwork: Jim Lawson

Frontispiece: Michael Dooney

Lettering: Eric Talbot

Cover: Dan Berger and Dave White

“The Curious Case of Mr. Jones”

Summary:

Frontispiece: All four Turtles stand triumphantly atop the severed head of a gigantic robot. One of them (Leo? Raph?) waxes on about how the organic body is made up of 60% water and how “water and oil don’t mix”. He considers all the robotic enemies they’ve faced in the past and figures the saying is very true. In fact, their pal Casey Jones has had a few run ins with crazy robots on his own…

At an unknown facility, a pair of Government spooks arrive via helicopter with a man in handcuffs, wearing a sack over his head. They take the prisoner to an interrogation room and remove the sack, revealing him to be Casey Jones. Casey is livid about being apprehended by the Government and the spooks assure him that he is not in any trouble. However, as a matter of national security, they insist that he disclose in detail the events of the past 24 hours. Casey is uncooperative, at least until the spooks offer him $5,000 for his story. Enticed, Casey tells them about what he and his friend “Raphatello” (“Raph” for short) encountered after dark last night…

While walking through the woods, Casey is intent on discussing which Olsen twin is the hottest (something Raph would rather not think about at his age). Suddenly, a meteor crashes into the forest and they run over to investigate. What they find in the smoking crater is a flying saucer of the George Adamski persuasion. The saucer opens and out stomps an angry robot with an exhaust pipe on its head. The robot immediately attacks them with its extending arms and laser eyes.

Casey puts on his hockey mask while Raph pulls out his sais and the two fight back. After breaking their weapons on the robot’s impervious armor, they realize they may need a better strategy. As the robot flings Raph into a pond, Casey comes up with an idea. Grabbing a rock, Casey dodges the laser eyes, leaps into the air and slam-dunks the stone into the exhaust pipe on the robot’s head.

The robot begins spewing smoke out of its eyes and mouth. Panicking, it runs back to its saucer and flies away. Casey’s celebration is cut short, however, when he’s spotted by a Government helicopter…

And that brings us up to speed. The spooks are pleased with Casey’s story and slip him a briefcase. However, they want to know why he was so nonchalant when going face-to-face with an alien. Casey rolls his eyes and insists that EVERYONE knows aliens are real, so what’s to be afraid of? The spooks seem even more pleased with that response than the preceding story and give him a lift home on their helicopter.

The chopper drops Casey off on the roof of his apartment building. Raph is waiting for him and wants to know what happened. Casey tells Raph that movie rentals for the night are on him and displays the briefcase of cash.

Back at the unknown facility, the spooks reveal that they aren’t affiliated with the Government at all: They’re Utroms! Thanks to Casey Jones’s testimony, they have determined that the Earthlings are ready for First Contact. As an aside, Rogro compliments Glurin on his design of the robot. Glurin thanks him and says he was inspired by Earth’s cartoons.

Turtle Tips:

*According to the opening editorial, this story takes place 3 weeks before TMNT (Vol. 4) #3, which would actually put it shortly before TMNT (Vol. 4) #1, considering how densely serialized those earlier Volume 4 issues were.

*The Utroms will initiate First Contact in TMNT (Vol. 4) #5.

*Glurin will appear again in Michelangelo: The Third Kind #1.

*This issue also featured a bonus pin-up, “Cats and Dogs” by Chris Herndon and Dan Berger.

Review:

You know, I really wish there were more of these light comedic issues of Tales of the TMNT Volume 2. They’re a fun break from all the heavier storytelling, that’s for sure, and even though some of them fit into a larger overarching narrative (as this one foreshadows events in TMNT Volume 4), they’re still good standalone reading. Moreso, I really like it when Lawson applies a more exaggerated, cartoony style to his characters. As with “Spinal Tapped”, “The Curious Case…” is a good example of how much more energy and animation his pencils have to offer when he isn’t taking himself or the story too seriously. The "skull and crossbones" dialogue boxes from the robot were a nice throwback to the Foot Super Soldiers from the Archie TMNT Adventures series (who also "talked" with such symbols).

I’ve only spoken to Berger a couple of times, but he’s always struck me as a guy of good humor (and patience), and you can see that attitude in most of the stories he’s written. While he’s offered some of the darkest and most profound tales in the TMNT catalog, he’s also penned a number of the goofiest and most entertaining. There’s fun to be had in Casey’s narration, as he fumbles with things like covering up who Raphael is (trying to come up with a “full name” and only managing to squish the other TMNT’s names together).

The actual fight with the robot is a brisk affair and the humor during that segment, as mentioned, is left up mostly to Lawson’s pencils. Still, the trash talk that Casey and Raph lay down while fighting is surprisingly amusing, whereas that sort of stuff is usually bland and tiresome. While they’re getting trashed by the robot, I think my favorite exchange is, “We may need a better plan!” “Yeah – One with dental.”

There isn’t a whole lot else to talk about in this story. It foreshadows the First Contact event that would define much of TMNT Volume 4 and, I think, marks the first chronological appearance of Glurin, whom we’ll see much of in the Volume 4 era (both in TMNT and in the Tales issues set during that timeframe). I do wonder about Glurin’s decision to test out the robot on Casey Jones, of all people. Surely he must have been aware that Casey doesn’t qualify as an “average” Earthling, at least when it comes to how he’d react to aliens and monsters and stuff. But perhaps that was part of Glurin’s strategy all along; purposely choosing a test subject he’d know to be okay with the idea of aliens because it might speed along the decision to initiate First Contact.

Anyhow, this is a rather unassuming story and it’s comic relief, no doubt, but its humor is well staged and I think Lawson’s contemporary style is at its best when it isn’t taking itself seriously.

Grade: B (as in, “But I love it when Casey’s mask emotes like it’s his face; the old Fred Wolf cartoon used to do that”.)

Publication date: November, 1993

Story: Bob Burden

Pencils and inks: Jim Lawson

Letters: Mary Kelleher

Colors: Mary Woodring

Cover: Jim Lawson and Steve Lavigne

“Part One: Land of Green Fire”

Summary:

A super storm has recently ravaged the eastern coast of Central America. The Turtles and Col. Blade are on their way to the decimated town of Santa Baloona to help the locals. To get there, they’re travelling in a blimp they absconded with after a team-up adventure in which they defeated Mr. Cadaverous and his Blue Santas.

After fishing the cow from “Bonanza” out of a tree, they set down on the roof of the US Embassy and the Ambassador takes Col. Blade aside for a debriefing. They meet with Professor Daub, an archeologist. The Ambassador explains that a unit of the US Military called the I-Team went missing somewhere in the Abecero Peninsula and they need to be found. Col. Blade reconvenes with the Turtles and says that they and Professor Daub are deploying immediately for a special mission.

At Mysterymen HQ, following a shrunken head/protein shake/ice cream incident, the team receives a top secret call to arms. Apparently, thousands of years ago, there was a highly advanced, nigh-mythical city called Botaquaxal, hidden in the Abecero Peninsula. It vanished somewhere around 948 AD and all attempted expeditions to locate it ended in tragedy, as the investigators all vanished. Recently, a dentist bought an artifact at a flea market and after x-raying it, found "something". That clue incited the Pentagon to send the I-Team into the Abecero Peninsula. When the super storm hit, it caused an earthquake, revealing a lost city. However, the I-Team’s last transmission wasn’t very hopeful, as the radioman screamed about flaming people burning everyone to death.

Flaming Carrot rallies the Mysterymen (Screwball, Bondoman, the Shoveler, Mystic Hand, Mr. Furious, Star Shark, the Zeke’s and the Spleen) and they take off in their aircraft, the Flying Wing (after donning sombreros suitable for a Central American vacation). As the other Mysterymen take turns flying the Flying Wing, the Shoveler does some meteorological investigation. He determines that the super storm didn’t follow any natural weather patterns but appears to have originated right from the Abecero Peninsula.

Via blimp, the Turtles, Col. Blade and the Professor find the I-Team’s campsite (but only after Raph wails on a saxophone he found in a locker). They investigate and find no signs of life, save some meals that appear to have been suddenly abandoned. The surrounding jungle appears likewise abandoned, without any traces of animals. What they DO find are the personal effects of the I-Team (rings, watches, fillings) sitting atop small piles of ashes, indicating they were incinerated almost instantly.

Searching, they eventually come across the unearthed city. Oddly, all the ancient buildings appear to be made of a strange plastic substance with magnetic properties. As Mikey skateboards the ruins, he spots a tower jutting out of the sea not far from the coast. Spying through binoculars, Col. Blade notices equipment abandoned outside the entrance to the tower, indicating people had recently been there.

They decided to break for pizza and investigate the tower the next day. Sleeping, Mikey has a strange dream about a prospering city, shadowy halls and a flaming man. He’s awoken by Leo’s screaming. Leo exclaims that while he was taking watch, a tiny man made of green flame attacked him. Leo wasn’t lying, as the flaming man pops out of the bushes and attacks again. Leo attempts to cut it in two, but his swords have no effect. Col. Blade pulls out his gun and aims for what looks like a heart in the center of its chest. Blade shoots the heart and the flaming man vanishes. Professor Daub laments that they didn’t try to communicate with the creature. Suddenly, Raph is startled and points to the sky as lights approach.

Turtle Tips:

*This story continues in TMNT/Flaming Carrot #2.

*The Turtles last encountered the Flaming Carrot in Flaming Carrot (Vol. 1) #27.

*This issue featured an opening editorial by Michael Dooney explaining the origins of this miniseries. Apparently, Burden came up with the idea while doing the first TMNT/Flaming Carrot crossover. It took several years to hammer out the final script, but apparently it was tossed around as two-part black-and-white miniseries, a giant sized annual and a 150-page graphic novel. They eventually settled on the 4-issue color miniseries format.

Review:

So yeah, as I’ve confessed in the past, I’m really not much of a Flaming Carrot fan, so this 4-issue miniseries isn’t going to be easy for me to get through. Bob Burden’s style of writing relies way too much on just being random for the sake of being random. I’ve heard people call it “stream of consciousness” or “post modernism” and things like that, but to me it just reads like a game of Mad Libs and there’s nothing particularly clever or creative about that. Raph playing the saxophone for two panels because it’s so random. The cow from “Bonanza” makes a cameo because it’s so random. Shrunken head in the protein shake because it’s so random. The issue is just full of stuff like that and after 32 pages, it gets pretty tiresome.

There’s at least a stronger story behind this second TMNT/Flaming Carrot crossover than their first team-up. The fact that an at least semi-coherent plot is necessary to move the miniseries along, the narrative exposition overshadows much of the random nonsense, so it’s a bit easier to digest.

As with his last turn at writing the Ninja Turtles, Burden doesn’t appear to understand any of their individual personalities. In fact, I don’t think he’s even aware that the Turtles HAVE individual personalities. They all speak with interchangeable “cowabunga” and “radical, dude” dialogue and never display any of their talents or unique traits. These are the Turtles you would see in merchandising on paper cups or bed sheets during the early ‘90s; vacuous corporate mascots spewing catchphrases and demonstrating no sense of characterization whatsoever.

It makes me wonder just why Burden even wanted to do these TMNT crossovers? He clearly wasn’t impressed by the characters because he doesn’t treat the Turtles AS characters. In fact, they’re all so bland and excruciatingly “wacky” that they could be substituted with any given member of the Mysterymen and it wouldn’t change a single thing about this comic. I guess Burden just wanted the extra boost in sales having his name associated with the TMNT during “Turtlemania” would no doubt promise. A lot of guest creators did that back in the day and their contributions can be a pain to sit through. It was just easy money, back then.

This second TMNT/Flaming Carrot crossover is extremely long and tedious and just not my cup of tea. I know Burden has his fanbase, but no matter how I’ve tried, I just don’t see the appeal in his writing style. It strikes me as being shamefully lazy.

Grade: D (as in, “Dude! Radical! Gnarly! Cowabunga! Now guess which of those catchphrases correspond to which Turtle”.)

Publication date: December, 1993

Story: Bob Burden

Pencils and Inks: Jim Lawson and Neil Vokes (pgs. 1, 23-28)

Letters: Mary Kelleher

Colors: Mary Woodring

Cover: Jim Lawson and Steve Lavigne

“Land of Green Fire: Part Two”

Summary:

As the Flying Wing zooms over the TMNT’s camp, Mr. Furious suddenly loses power on all the instruments. He order all the Mysterymen to bail save for himself, Flaming Carrot and Bondoman, who stay behind to manually work the wings. Once they glide far enough away from the camp (and the ancient ruins) the instruments begin working again. Mr. Furious sets the Flying Wing down and, after reconvening with the Spleen and the Zeke’s, they decide to hoof it toward the camp.

Meanwhile, the Turtles and Col. Blade are pretty spooked after the buzzing their camp received from the strange plane. The Turtles split up and journey into the jungle to check things out. Raph winds up getting into a tussle with the Shoveler, who proceeds to trick him into jumping off a cliff. Raph lands right next to Screwball, who panics and flies away on his rocket-boots.

Elsewhere, Donatello has a run-in with the Mystic Hand, who scares him off with his flying, disembodied hands. Star Shark rolls into camp and meets up with Col. Blade. Recognizing the Colonel as an American soldier, the Mysteryman explains everything. Raphael, meanwhile, has begun trailing another green flame-man. The flame-man escapes, but leads him to the Flying Wing. Mr. Furious and the Zeke’s are about to open fire when Flaming Carrot stops them. He and Raphael know each other and the two trade information.

Back at camp, all the Mysterymen have been rounded up and both groups brought to speed. The Shoveler, taking watch, sees activity off in the distance. Mr. Furious concocts a way to draw all the little green flame-men toward them so they can deal with them all at once. They set the area with traps and drive the Flying Wing and all its weapons near a clearing. They then throw all their green flares into a bonfire, hoping to attract the flame-men. Meanwhile, Flaming Carrot opens a lemonade stand to serve all the thirsty flame-men.

The plan works and the flame-men converge on the bonfire, creating a rainbow in the night with their weird energies. Michelangelo tries to scare them off with a flamethrower, but finds that by feeding flame-men mass quantities of fire, they only get bigger. Luckily, shooting the flame-men in the “heart” still causes them to snuff out and the giant is destroyed.

Col. Blade takes charge and hands out artillery to everyone, including the Turtles (Screwball, meanwhile, dresses like a character from McHale’s Navy because he’s just so silly). However, it may not be enough as hundreds of flame-men storm the clearing with no signs of slowing down…

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #1. The story continues in TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #3.

*Vokes was mistakenly not credited in this issue.

Review:

One of the anonymous comments for my review of last issue said that I pretty much repeated everything I wrote in my review for the first TMNT/Flaming Carrot crossover. And you know what? They were right.

The problem is that there’s so little new material worth discussing between these crossovers. Burden’s style of humor is bland and repetitive, his characters are bland and interchangeable and his plot is bland and underdeveloped. Bland bland bland. It’s hard to muster up new and exciting ways to describe the same ole shit.

And this second installment in the miniseries is definitely the same ole shit. Everyone is boring and all the jokes are excruciatingly tiresome and stupid. Ha ha ha. Flaming Carrot opened up a lemonade stand. Ha ha ha. McHale’s Navy was a show that existed.

Just about the only improvement worth noting in this issue is the changeover in art. Lawson was kind of phoning it in and his economical style was looking rushed and dull (he was doing TMNT Volume 2 at the same time, so his plate was probably a little full). There’s no energy to any of his panels, which makes reading the groan-worthy story all the more tedious. But then suddenly in the last handful of pages Neil Vokes picks up the baton and there is a WILD shift in art styles. No attempt is made to harmonize their incongruous aesthetic approaches, just BAM! Vokes takes over.

And the story becomes much more palatable. All the same stupid jokes and cardboard characters are there, but Vokes at least breathes some life into them with his manic and fluid pencils. What had been a really sleepy “action” scene when Lawson began drawing it suddenly turns into something with energy and pizzazz when Vokes takes the reins. Does it save the issue? No, but it at least reduces the pain.

Luckily, Vokes stays on for the remainder of the miniseries, so we’ve at least got that to look forward to.

Grade: D (as in, “Does anybody in any of Burden’s comics have a fucking personality? Do those exist in his universe?”)

Publication date: January, 1994

Story: Bob Burden

Pencils and Inks: Neil Vokes

Letters: Mary Kelleher

Colors: Eric Vincent

Cover: Jim Lawson and Steve Lavigne

“Land of Green Fire: Part Three”

Summary:

In the clearing, the group is struggling to gun down the army of flame-men, but they’re running out of ammo. Suddenly, flame-men reinforcements arrive via river, riding giant leaves. After sinking a few, the Mysterymen and the Turtles realize that water can extinguish the flame-men. After cannibalizing the fuel pump from the Flying Wing, they hose down the flame-men and send them into retreat.

In the aftermath, all that’s left of the extinguished flame-men is protoplasmic goop which the Professor describes as being like giant amoebas (and which the Zeke's describes as smelling like Corn Flakes). The Shoveler and Star Shark, who were attacked by the flame-men, say that they weren’t burned but instead drained of energy, like they were being absorbed. Screwball panics when he can’t find his pet shoelace Sherman, but it turns up in a bag of Fritos. In the morning, Mystic Hand, Bondoman and the Spleen decide to stay behind and try to reassemble the Flying Wing while the others return to the I-Team camp and search for more clues. Shortly after they leave, the Spleen sees something lurking in the woods and Mystic Hand goes to investigate.

Fiddling with the I-Team’s radio, the Professor determines that the electromagnetic static that brought down the Flying Wing is spreading out from the ruins and may soon envelope the whole world. They also find Polaroids of the I-Team getting along with the flame-men and keeping them as pets. Flaming Carrot presumes that once the I-Team ran out of things to feed them, the flame-men turned on them. The group decides to head to the ancient ruins, leaving Screwball, Leo and Don behind to guard the camp. Searching the tents, they find one of the flame-men sleeping on a cot.

At the ruins, Mikey recalls the dream he had about the ancient city and follows his memories to a hidden opening in one of the buildings. At last inside the previously impenetrable buildings, Col. Blade orders Star Shark to stay and guard the door while they split into groups: He, the Professor, Raph and Mike will go in one direction while Flaming Carrot, Mr. Furious, the Zeke’s and the Shoveler go in the other. Col. Blade’s group stumbles upon paydirt quickly, finding skeletons of strange creatures, albeit ones with gold fillings that imply a greater intelligence.

At the camp, the flame-man introduces himself as P.F.C. Layton Sykes of Anniston, Alabama. He says that he was once a member of the previous investigation into the ancient ruins. His team encountered the flame-men, who ate anything but plants. When they ran out of food to feed them, the flame-men devoured him and his men. They were absorbed into the flame-men who ate them, merging their consciousnesses. Don asks if he remembers eating himself and, if so, then what do humans taste like? Sykes says “like chicken”.

Back at the ruins, Col. Blade’s team finds a chamber with a hole blasted into it by a flamethrower (indicating the I-Team had been there). Inside are hundreds of glowing eggs, each containing a flame-creature. The Professor joyously announces that they must certainly be looking at beings from another planet.

And at the Flying Wing, Mystic Hand returns with news that he found nothing. Suddenly, a trio of cloaked, spectral figures comes floating their way.

And back again at the ruins, Flaming Carrot’s team finds a huge pod with a glass lid. Inside is what looks like a 9 foot-tall werewolf clad in a jumpsuit and boots. Ignoring their better judgment, they open the pod and release the werewolf. The monster chucks Flaming Carrot, the Zeke’s and the Shoveler out a window and into the sea. Tearing a pipe off the wall, Mr. Furious charges the werewolf.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #2. The story concludes in TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #4.

Review:

As I said last time, Neil Vokes’s pencils really do improve this miniseries and it’s at least not as much of a grind to get through as before. He tries to put a lot of fluid motion and energy into his pages, even when the characters aren’t doing anything, and he succeeds in providing the characters with personality when the writing all but refuses to do so. Vokes has a nice cartoony, squash-and-stretch style that lends to some manic expressions that befit the absurd goings on. He’s a much better fit for the material than Lawson was, I’ll say again.

But aside from the art, it’s hard to believe a story about superheroes and mutants battling flame-monsters in a ruined city could be this boring. A lot of it has to do with the excessive dialogue and narrative text that Burden, er, burdens the pages with. Characters have to think about or announce what they’re doing and narration has to describe what we’re looking at as if we were blind. I guess it’s supposed to be this faux Silver Age gimmick or something, but it slows everything down. As do all the pointless, random jokes like Screwball’s pet shoelace, the Zeke’s smelling Corn Flakes in the protoplasmic goop and Donatello setting up a tired “tastes like chicken” gag.

And did I mention that it takes the characters 8 pages to realize “water puts out fire”? Because seriously.

So when I said earlier that this second half of the miniseries is less of a grind to get through, that doesn’t mean it still ISN’T a grind to get through. Because it is.

Grade: D (as in, “Does anybody still find ‘tastes like chicken’ jokes funny? Anybody?”)

Publication date: February, 1994

Story: Bob Burden

Pencils and Inks: Neil Vokes

Letters: Mary Kelleher

Colors: Eric Vincent

Cover: Jim Lawson and Steve Lavigne

“Land of Green Fire: Part Four”

Summary:

Mr. Furious dukes it out with the alien werewolf only for the beast to back off once it sees hiss Free Masonry ring. Being a Mason itself, the werewolf runs away. The Mysterymen, the Turtles and Col. Blade eventually catch back up and ask Mr. Furious what the deal with the werewolf is.

Back at the Flying Wing, the Spleen, Bondoman and Mystic Hand are under siege from the spectral figures. The spirits are blasting beams of ice at them, encasing the jet. The Mysterymen flee into the jungle with the specters close behind.

At the ruins, the werewolf is desperately trying to communicate with the team via dance, but they can’t interpret him. Don, Leo, Screwball and the flame-creature Sykes show up. After a brief bit of exposition, Sykes has a chat with the werewolf in its native language. The werewolf then devours Sykes and collapses. Star Shark comes down from his lookout post and tells everyone that the Flying Wing is under attack. Leaving the werewolf behind, the Turtles and the Mysterymen return to camp.

They reach the Flying Wing, but have no idea what happened. The werewolf then catches up with them and explains everything… in English! He says his name is Chontre Mac and he’s an alien from a planet that exists within the center of the Sun. He says that there are a diverse number of races from that planet and all have the ability to absorb the minds of those they devour (hence how he was able to learn English by eating the flame-creature that ate Sykes). Chontre says that long ago, his people came down to Earth to set up a colony and built this great city. However, civil war erupted and most of his people retreated back to the Sun. Chontre was chosen to sink the city deep into the Earth so that its technology and culture could be preserved, putting himself in cryogenic stasis so he could keep watch.

Chontre is happy to be awake again and, seeing that there are no more warring Sun people on Earth, feels that now is the time to share the technology of the lost city with humanity. Suddenly, Mystic Hand’s disembodied hands float over and motion everyone into the jungle. They find Mystic Hand and Bondoman frozen in cryogenic ice (which Chontre assures them will defrost to no ill effect in a day or two). The Spleen, who fainted, wakes up and describes the ice-blasting specters. Chontre says that the specters are the Eikers, the faction who incited the civil war. When the city was unearthed, it sent a signal into space. Responding to it, the Eikers traveled down from the Sun to regain the lost technology and invade the Earth. The electromagnetic beam that has been shutting off all technology on Earth was a homing beam from their mother ship. Chontre explains that the only way to stop the invasion is to re-sink the city so the Eikers have nothing to home in on.

Screwball then calls down from his lookout post that the Eikers are coming. Chontre says that they’re an early scout patrol. He urges the Mysterymen and the Turtles to lead the aliens to the nearby river where the additional humidity will react with their freezing powers and force them to take tangible form. The plan works and with the Eikers finally solid, Col. Blade is able to kill them all with machinegun fire.

Chontre leads Col. Blade, the Professor and Mr. Furious back into the main hub of the ruined city where they found him in cryo-sleep. Chontre mans the controls to re-sink the city, telling the others to leave so they don’t become trapped, too. The controls malfunction and Chontre laments that the only way to re-sink the city now is for two individuals to man separate emergency controls simultaneously. The Professor volunteers to stay behind, jumping at the chance to go into suspended animation and awaken centuries from now in a brave new world.

Blade and Furious escape the building just as it and the rest of the city sink back into the Earth. Everyone’s electronics begin working again, proving that the Eikers have lost the signal and retreated from their invasion. Col. Blade gives a salute, praising the selfless sacrifice of the Professor.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #3.

*The Turtles will meet Flaming Carrot again (or appear in the same crowd as him, anyway) in Savage Dragon #41.

Review:

When it comes to Burden’s style of writing, it’s always a mystery as to what will be important to the plot and what is just a dumb throwaway joke. Last issue, they made a big deal about Screwball’s pet shoelace Sherman surviving the fire-creature attack, but Sherman never appears again. The Zeke’s mentions that the protoplasmic goop left behind by the extinguished fire-creatures smelled like Corn Flakes… an aside which proved to be foreshadowing once we learned that the fire-creatures were fused with the I-Team and the Zeke’s was in fact smelling what the I-Team had eaten before they in turn were eaten by the fire-creatures. And in this issue, Mr. Furious and Chontre both share Free Masonry rings, which ends their battle as soon as it starts, but no further value is every contributed to that connection.

It’s… just a mess. I guess you could say it “keeps you on your toes”, as you never know which random asides will pay off in the end and which will go nowhere, but more often than not it all just amounts to a bunch of pointless references and droll gags. I’m guessing the Free Masons were supposed to have been descended from the Sun people’s lost civilization? That seems the likeliest explanation, but the connection is never solidified and considering all the other random bullshit going on in this miniseries, it could just as easily have been another stupid attempt at silly humor (like Chontre trying communicate via dance).

The miniseries never knows what tone it wants to strike and it becomes really difficult to invest in anything. When the characters are capable of cartoonishly pulling lemonade stands out of thin air, it’s hard to take any suspense in the action seriously because the surrounding scenes are so silly and absurd. The ending wants us to feel the drama of the Professor’s sacrifice, but how can we when, again, everything else has been so goofy and self-aware? It’s a tone deaf comic in terms of mood

I’ll bring it up again, but I just don’t see why this miniseries begged to include the Ninja Turtles at all. By this concluding chapter, they’ve become nothing more than crowd-filling bodies. They contribute nothing to the resolution and scarcely offer any dialogue (or, at least, any dialogue that sounds unique to them). For the umpteenth time, I’ll repeat that the Turtles could have been substituted by any other four members of the Mysterymen and it wouldn’t have changed this comic one little bit. Hell, the cast was already bloated so much that you could remove the Turtles entirely and it would make no difference. They are entirely superfluous to everything going on around them and are more like baggage than characters.

To be frank, Mirage’s offshoot material released to supplement their various ongoings were never very strong; lots of goofy oneshot Specials and the occasional miniseries for the Hell of it. Turtle Soup and Plastron Café are probably the only limited series that are worth a look, and being anthologies, even those are dicey in their content. This Flaming Carrot crossover is just another in that long tradition of “why did they even bother?” Burden doesn’t make the most of his opportunity to work with the Turtles and the whole thing just leaves me feeling cold. Vokes’s artwork is the only positive angle to this entire endeavor, but even he can’t salvage it.

Grade: F (as in, “Flaming Carrot… such a dull, lifeless, uninteresting character, Hollywood didn’t even include him in the movie based on his own fucking comics”.)

Publication date: December 18, 2013

Art: Kevin Eastman

Colors: Ronda Pattison

Contents:

Full-page reprints of all Cover Bs by Kevin Eastman from TMNT (IDW) #1 thru TMNT (IDW) #26.

Review:

IDW is notorious, NOTORIOUS, for their habit of glutting the market with variant covers. Dozens and dozens of variant covers like 1992 was making a comeback. It is insane.

As an individual who doesn’t collect variant covers, however, I can’t say that its ever really bothered me. I know it ticks off fans who want to collect “one of everything”, but jeez, I cannot afford to be that kind of fan.

But IDW’s a pretty cool group of dudes, so they’ve also begun releasing cover gallery collections priced the same as a regular issue. I’ve picked up a few of these for some of my other IDW subscriptions (the one with the talking horses you internet people either love or hate) and it’s exactly the kind of system for a person like me. Alas, they don’t collect ALL the variant covers (this one is just themed around Eastman), but I can survive.

Nothing to grade; just thought I’d point this baby out since it might have slipped through the cracks with today’s two other TMNT releases. Looking over Eastman’s B covers chronologically, it’s funny to see how much more, well, INTERESTING they get as time goes by. For the first 4 or 5 issues, he really has nothing to say (partly because those issues were so decompressed and plot-less). Once the series began to actually develop characters and stories and unique set pieces, suddenly his covers become livelier and escalate beyond bland pinups of the Turtles mugging the camera in awkward poses.

For those who want the variant covers but don’t want to bankrupt themselves actually buying them AS variant covers, then this collection should be your first stop.

Grade: N/A (as in, “Now if IDW plans on doing more of these Eastman-themed collections, I’ll have to ask the lady at my shop to put aside any cover in my box BUT the Eastman ones. I just hate to be picky, though…”)

Publication date: December 18, 2013

Story: Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz

Script: Tom Waltz

Art: Ross Campbell

Colors: Ronda Pattison

Letters: Shawn Lee

Editor: Bobby Curnow

“Northampton, Part 1”

Summary:

As they pull onto a dirt road in the van, April and Casey discuss how things have been going. Casey feels he’s getting better now that Don’s re-sewn his stitches and April thinks all their wounds can heal if they just keep out of New York City for a while. Driving up to a barn on April’s old family farm, they wake the Turtles and tell them they’ve arrived at their temporary digs.

April explains that the farm has been in her family for years and that her parents moved there from Albany after her dad had his stroke. Although the Turtles will have to lay low and can’t go near the farmhouse, they can stay in the barn until they’ve healed. Raph tries to help Leo out of the van, but Leo freaks out. He’s still having trouble getting over the mindbending the Shredder put him through as Dark Leo.

Raph notices movement in the nearby brush and pounces. It’s Alopex, who insists that she isn’t looking for a fight. Raph is about ready to throttle her when Leo violently stops him, exclaiming that Alopex is telling the truth. Raph thinks that Leo only wants to protect her because of his residual Foot Clan brainwashing and the two begin fighting. Splinter breaks them up and reminds them that Alopex saved him during his fight with the Shredder. Alopex describes how the Shredder killed her family and that’s why she rebelled. Knowing she had to leave the city as well, she hitched a ride on the roof of their van.

Raph says she’s lying again, as she’d fibbed about her history before. Leo backs her up and the fight starts all over again. Splinter breaks them up once more, except this time Leo tells “Yoshi” not to boss him around, as he is not his sensei, and storms off. Alopex claims she was only looking for a ride, not help, and also storms off.

April and Casey drive up to the farmhouse and April introduces her boyfriend to her mom (Elizabeth). Mrs. O'Neil invites them in so they can catch up with Mr. O'Neil (John). April’s dad has been wheelchair-bound since his stroke, but Mrs. O'Neil promises that he’s getting a little better every day. Mr. O'Neil is happy to meet Casey and is especially relieved to see his daughter, as he was afraid something might have happened to her after the explosion at Stockgen. April hadn’t heard and asks to be filled in on the news.

After putting her husband to bed, April’s mom comes downstairs to talk to April about Stockgen (April’s dad had gotten her the internship there). April says that she left Stockgen because she was suspicious that they were involved in illegal activity and offhandedly mentions “ooze”. April’s mom reacts to the choice word and then tells April she has Startling Revelations about her Mysterious Past that will most assuredly Blow Her Mind.

Out in the woods, after dark, Leo sits near the lake and struggles with the images in his head. He tries to seek answers from the spirit of Tang Shen, but is confused. From the brush, Alopex silently watches him.

Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from TMNT (IDW) #28. The story continues in TMNT (IDW) #30.

*Shredder murdered Alopex’s family in TMNT Villains Micro-Series #4: Alopex. Alopex lied to Raph about her origins in TMNT Micro-Series #1: Raphael.

*In the Mirage comics (and 4Kids cartoon), it was Casey’s family who owned the farmhouse in Northampton. April’s family owning it DOES have precedence in at least one previous incarnation, however: The first live-action TMNT movie.

*This issue was originally published with 3 variant covers: Cover A by Campbell, Cover B by Eastman and Pattison, and Cover RI by Michael Dialynas.

Review:

The exile to Northampton is like the “Death of Gwen Stacy” for the TMNT franchise. By that, I mean it’s that one big moment, that story so popular and important to the narrative and growth of the characters that practically every adaptation and reboot of the Ninja Turtles has wanted to do a version of it. While the specifics don’t always line up, the basics remain the same: The Turtles get completely wrecked in a battle with the Foot Clan, one of them is seriously injured and they have to escape by the skin of their teeth to Northampton so they can lick their wounds and regroup for the comeback.

I think this is the fourth time we’ve done this song and dance, but as with Peter Parker’s love interest getting chucked off a bridge, it really IS a grand bit of storytelling that invites lots of pathos and introspection and serves as a gargantuan milestone for the narrative. So even though we’ve been through this all before, it’s one of those moments in TMNT history we’re likely going to see many times more as the franchise reinvents itself. And it isn’t so much that every incarnation wants to put their own spin on the moment, it’s whether or not they get the most out of it and make it count that we should be concerned with.

As I mentioned in the previous couple of reviews, the Turtles were basically becoming lost in the overflow of storylines in their ongoing series; reduced more to being tools to get the plot moving than individual characters who grow and change. This “Northampton” arc looks to finally slow things down so we can get to know them again. I’m really hoping it pays off and we get to spend some quality time with each member of the team. Jeezuss, I hope this doesn’t turn into “The Emo Leo Show” and we wind up with four issues of a pouty Leo struggling with his feelings. But that’s just me being a pessimistic twerp; I’m sorry.

Waltz (and Eastman and Curnow) are already doing things a little differently, not just with the owner of the farm, but the fact that it’s still in use by their family and it can’t serve as a glorified vacation resort for the Turtles (they’ve still got to hide). It also looks like we’ll get to know April’s family a little bit, too, and that’s hardly ever happened before beyond Robyn and a very different version of her father in the Nick cartoon (he's named Kirby, not John, in that universe). The ending narration from Mrs. O’Neil is sooooo stilted and melodramatic, awkwardly stretching out to fill a two-page montage. Can you imagine if your parents started talking to you like that?

Well, we ARE just getting to know Mrs. O’Neil. Maybe April’s mom is just a drama queen?

The big surprise was Alopex tagging along. I guess someone’s about to pull a Ninjara. Though isn’t it funny how in the past, when Alopex was a villain and a member of the Foot, she was drawn to look ferocious and bestial and terrifying, but now that she’s indifferent/friendly with the protagonists, suddenly she looks totally adorable? “Artist’s interpretation”, I know, but it is kind of weird to jump from Santolouco’s snarling “rip your throat out” escapee from The Howling directly into Campbell’s soulful-eyed “awwww wook at her widdle nose” fluffball, right at the point in the narrative when she seemingly switches sides.

I like her parachute pants, though. Girl is set to pop ‘n lock.

Ross Campbell has been one of my faves in regards to IDW’s roster of artistic talent, but so far they’ve only busted him out on “special occasions”. It’ll be great to see him handle a full-fledged arc. My above cajoling about the cuteness of Alopex was really just me taking the piss; ALL of Ross Campbell’s characters look cuter than any other artist portrays them. It’s just his style and I think it actually works in terms of transitioning from adorableness directly into bone-crunching action; really keeps you off guard. This was a breather issue, so there isn’t a lot of action to speak of, though I did like the juvenile wrestling between Raph and Leo as they argue over Alopex’s allegiance. He didn’t overdo it on the layouts and captured the moment quite well.

Overall, despite the sense of déjà vu, I’m not really bugged by seeing the exile to Northampton yet again. I think it’s what comes after this moment that’ll really make the difference. Are we going to get this time to see the characters AS characters again? Is Leo’s angst going to be insufferable or palatable? Has Alopex actually changed? Will April’s mom continue to talk like she’s constantly narrating a movie trailer?

I’m sure we’ll find out and I hope it pays off.

Grade: C+ (as in, “Cripes, I just don’t see how Alopex can be a master of stealth with a tail twice the size of her whole body. Or maybe it isn’t normally that poofy and it’s just really humid in Northampton”.)

TMNT (Fred Wolf) Season 4, Part 3: Review

Miami Mice #4

TMNT TV Series Sourcebook Vol. 1

TMNT (IDW) #28

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #7

Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #1

Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #2

Nickelodeon TMNT (Panini) #8

Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #3

Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #4

TMNT Villains Micro-Series #8: Shredder

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #6

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #15

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #42

TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #1

TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #2

TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #3

TMNT/Flaming Carrot Crossover #4

TMNT: Kevin Eastman Cover Gallery #1

TMNT (IDW) #29