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 #24 – Review

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

The Story: A war that will brother turtle against brother turtle…atrocious, indeed.

The Review: One thing I always find interesting in fiction is the presumption that somehow turning evil makes a person more powerful.  I can see how the reverse correlation can be true—how the more power a person gets, the more tempted he’ll be to abuse it.  Yet it always struck me as unusual that going to the dark side would result in an automatic power boost.  I mean, why is Evil Ryu stronger than normal Ryu?  Why are the Sith more powerful than the Jedi?

Perhaps it’s not so much that people get more powerful when they give in to their baser urges, but rather that they get more uninhibited.  Looking at Leo post-Kitsune indoctrination, he doesn’t seem nearly as calculating or restrained in his fighting form than before, allowing him to take on all three of his brothers at once.  It’s almost surprising that he doesn’t just slay them all right away; he certainly has the opportunity for it, and even with Shredder saying he wants Splinter for himself, there’s no reason why the other Turtles should be spared, even briefly.