Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #35 – Review

By: Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz (story), Mateus Santolouco & Mike Henderson (art), Ronda Pattison (colors)

The Story: Having pizza in hand is always a good idea, even when dropping in on a mutant psycho.

The Review: For a while now, I’ve been calling for Donnie and Mikey to get their fair share of the attention. It’s a sad fact of life that the most well-adjusted, retiring people are often the ones most overlooked, which is probably how the practical Donnie and good-natured Mikey got shafted in favor of their more temperamental brothers. Maybe it’s a bit of a lost cause; even though last issue ostensibly pu t Donnie in the spotlight, he ended up yielding it to Angel and Harold anyway.

Which is pretty much what happens to Mikey here, only with Hob, Slash, and Lindsey (Hob’s recent kidnapee) taking over the issue. As with Donnie, Mikey’s role is merely to connect with a different part of the storyline, then back off afterward. It’s sort of an awkward situation, really. Neither he nor Raphael, who accompanies him, have much to do in the scene except to stand around, offering their moral takes on the situation, which proves to be mostly irrelevant anyway.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #12 – Review

By: Kevin Eastman & Tom Waltz (story), Dan Duncan (art), Ronda Pattison (colors)

The Story: Who says ninja have to play fair?

The Review: If you read my review last month, you already know I have a limited familiarity with the Turtles.  Somehow, rewatching those gnarly cartoons over and over, it never occurred to me that Master Splinter and the Turtles were family.  I guess I was too distracted by the creepy pink tentacles of Krang undulating from the ab-window of his mecha-body.  But then, I was six years old at the time, and thus quite stupid and rather prone to distraction—still am, frankly.

Eastman-Waltz have kept the family bonds among our mutant heroes front and center throughout this series, and dang if it isn’t my favorite part of the whole run.  Mainstream comics nowadays seem to be all about breaking up relationships, not building them, whether it be husbands and wives, best friends, or whole teams.  Heck, the X-Men have a complete internal meltdown two or three times a year.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #10 – Review

By: Kevin Eastman & Tom Waltz (story), Dan Duncan (art), Ronda Pattison (colors)

The Story: He may be a humanoid rat, but he’s not the biggest rat at this showdown.

The Review: Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always found the Turtles to be pretty lighthearted fare.  When you have a bunch of overgrown reptiles wielding traditional Eastern weaponry while chowing down on pizza…yeah, I’d say you have good reason to believe the story can’t be all that serious.  But in this series, Eastman-Waltz have crafted a tale that, while it retains all the silliness and charm that made it a hit, clearly wants to be taken as pure entertainment.

Part of their efforts includes portraying the Turtles as more dimensional individuals than ever before.  Understand, each of the brothers has always had his respective interests and personality which prevented him from being a total clone of the others.  But only in this series have they been refined such that their voices sound completely credible—human, as it were.  You might even say that their mutant, turtley nature has largely become irrelevant, which is nothing short of a major accomplishment, all things considering.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #9 – Review

By: Kevin Eastman & Tom Waltz (story), Dan Duncan (art), Ronda Pattison (colors)

The Story: Doesn’t matter how big a robot is once you stick a knife through its motherboard.

The Review: I don’t know exactly when it happened—though I’m guessing probably sometime in the seventies—but at some point weirdness became an attractive quality to the mainstream.  Think about it: NBC comedies, reality television, films like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter—it’s almost as if in our ever-increasing struggle for originality, we appreciate anything that produces surprise of any kind, however tepid or extreme.

Nowhere does that point seem more apparent than in this series.  In the opening pages, April O’Neil recaps the Turtles’ story up to the present day, covering their mutant origins, their training in the martial arts by a giant rat, and their rivalry with a mercenary cat with an eye-patch.  And that’s before we get to Michelangelo reminding Donatello, “…you forgot to tell her the part about us being reincarnated and stuff.”  So, yeah, this is some truly strange stuff at work.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8 – Review

By: Kevin Eastman & Tom Waltz (writers), Dan Duncan (artist), Ronda Pattison (colorist)

The Story: It’s generally not a good idea to take your girlfriend down a sewer on the first date.

The Review: The hot news this week is Michael Bay, director of the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film adaptation, plans to revitalize the franchise by removing the “Teenage” and “Mutant” parts entirely and making them aliens instead.  In my determined pursuit of objective review, I’ll wait to see how the movie pans out before getting rendering judgment, but even I can’t help feeling like Bay will have a lot of work before him to make this idea work.

I understand the point of these changes is to remove some of the hokier elements from the Turtles’ conception and make them more believable.  But let’s say we revise Superman’s origins so he’s an Earth-born genetic anomaly rather than the last child of a doomed planet who happens to be sent to our planet.  Sure, it’d be more sensible and less corny, but I doubt many people would see it’s an improved story.

The stakes may be lower here, but the changes are no less significant for the Turtles.  The loss of their “teenage” status would remove a major part of their endearing and enduring appeal.  True, their jocky mentality and mannerisms can get gimmicky and a tad annoying, but that’s what make these freaks lovable rather than terrifying.  I mean, how can you be scared of giant turtle-men armed with traditional Eastern weaponry who call you “Bro” and compliment you on the “Cute girl” you have passed out in your arms?

That unconscious girl, by the way, is April O’Neil, brought by Casey Jones to the sewers to meet his turtle buddies, who also happen to be the ninjas she claims nearly killed her some time back.  The intersection between the human and reptile characters of the series means our core cast is finally complete, though it may be a while—especially on April’s part—before they all fight as common allies.  Looking forward to much entertaining exchanges among them to come.