Every Day Is Like Wednesday

Well this is one strange comic book.

The slim, 48-page special came with a spine and was drawn in its entirety by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, who has been co-plotting and providing covers for IDW's volume of TMNT comics. It's not often that Eastman provides interior art for these comics, but it's always an extra incentive to read them when he does so.

Sure, his presence always bestows a imprimatur of legitimacy on the proceedings, and the more involved he is the stronger the imprimatur, but I just generally really enjoy his inky, gritty artwork, and it's always a pleasure to see him draw pretty much anything, but his Ninja Turtles always look realer than anyone else's (with the exception of the ones Eastman drew with Peter Laird, of course).

It always amuses me when he does draw IDW's Turtles and associated characters, though, because he basically just draws his original versions, with no real concessions to the redesigns they've all gone through. His Splinter is always a Batman-eyed werewolf, his Casey Jones is always an adult with 1980s hair, and so on.

None of that has anything to do with how strange this particular comic book is, however.

What makes it strange is that it essentially offered a bizarre continuity patch to a then almost 30-year-old comic book story that was no longer part of the IDW iteration of the TMNT's continuity.

In this story, Eastman and co-plotter Tom Waltz–Eastman scripts the book himself himself–introduces Renet and a barbarian parody of the old Marvel Comics version of Conan into this particular TMNT narrative. That Conan parody is apparently meant to be a stand-in for Dave Sim's Cerebus The Aardvark, who of course appeared in 1986's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8 by Eastman, Laird, Sim and Gerhard.
That was the comic that first introduced Renet, Savanti Romero and Lord Simultaneous, and while they've all appeared elsewhere through various TMNT comics and cartoons, Cerebus has not because, well, he's Cerebus, and not really a TMNT character (Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, who similarly shared story-space with the Turtles back in their pre-cartoon fame days, did appear in toy form and in two different iterations of the cartoons, though).

But here's the really strange thing. While there's a new, non-aardvark Conan parody in this comic book, it is not a retelling or new version of TMNT #8. It's an entirely different story, with only a few surface similarities, like the presence of Renet, Simultaneous and the Turtles.

I can't really figure out what's going on here, or, more precisely, what was going on in Eastman's head when he made this book. It's the presence of Baltizar, the Conan/Cerebus stand-in, that really confuses me, as he evokes TMNT #8, and serves as a constant reminder of that comic.

So the story is this. A heavily redesigned version of Renet–that's her on the cover, at the top of the post–appears in the Turtles' current church lair, and she recruits them into a vague mission that involves their fighting for her. She knows them, and on account of being both scatter-brained and a time traveller, isn't sure if they know her or not.

"Either we've already met and you know who I am and what I'm talking about," she hurriedly explains, "Or I've come back before our last adventure and you have no idea what I'm talking about and think I'm some kinda crazy loon!"

I kinda like this set-up, where it doesn't matter overmuch if this is their first meeting or not, because, obviously, it's not, and this has happened before...repeatedly, even. Renet, like readers, knows that, and the best way to approach this story (and this comic in general) is probably not to fuss overmuch with what happened when and which stories "count" and which ones do not.

Then things get weirder still, as she transports them to some big, floating inter-dimensional city...at which point colorist Ronda Pattison stops with the full-color, and the narrative becomes black and white for most of the rest of the comic. It's a reverse Wizard of Oz, but rather than the black and white of the Mirage comics, it's a heavily shaded and toned black and white; black and various shades of gray, really.

The Turtles are promptly thrown in a cage where they meet Baltizar, who is as big a rambling, motor-mouthed fool as Renet, only more so, really. Contrary to the image on the cover, interior Baltizar has a little lame goatee to further distinguish him from Conan and, when color resumes during the framing sequence, he is shown to be blonde (see the image at the bottom of the post).
Baltizar and the Turtles are among the many warriors forced to fight in deadly gladiatorial combat at the behest of "The Dimensional Council" for the entertainment of a stadium full of people. Apparently Renet, the apprentice of exiled council-member Simultaneous is to...ummmm....Well, there's going to be a few days of her squad fighting, and then they will eventually convince all the other combatants to turn on the Council, most of whom don't really like these fights and just go along with it because the most evil of their number is a big, mean jerk, I guess...?

I don't know. It doesn't really make much sense.

But we do get to see lots of Eastman drawings of Conan and the Turtles fighting various alien warriors, including, at the climax, a Triceraton named Zog.
And then, with the games abolished and the idea of replacing them with a more humane "Battle Nexus" floated, Renet zaps the Turtles back home (and into color) and she and her boyfriend Baltizar hang out in dinosaur times for a while.

Maybe the weirdest part of all, however, is that Splinter spends most of his panel time on the toilet, which is really something I didn't need to see. I mean, I've gone about 30 years of my life never once imagining the Turtles or Splinter going to the bathroom, and now here their creator is, drawing Splinter, reading a newspaper on the toilet.
And what's that "Holy s..ah...smokes!" bit all about Eastman? The other word may start with the same letter, but it's a different phoneme!

As a story, this was a pretty mediocre one, although I did enjoy the artwork. I was a little frustrated that it had absolutely nothing to do with the mini-series Turtles In Time however, where Renet appears repeatedly, and is the apparent source of the Turtles' being lost in time and traveling through various eras in each issue. That story had its moments (i.e. the entire first issue, drawn by Sophie Campbell), but it seemed to be missing something, and I assumed that it seemed that way because I read the collection of that miniseries before reading this annual, in which Renet is introduced.

But nope. Neither comic has anything to do with the other, to the detriment of Turtles In Time. As a story. As a collection that includes 20 pages of Sophie Campbell drawing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting dinosaurs, Turtles In Time remains a masterpiece.

Like most of the IDW TMNT comics I've read then, this one left me disappointed. That is one comic book series that I really, really want to like–hell, I want to love it–but it rarely if ever rises above mediocre, and certainly never seems to get the best out of the source material.

This volume collects IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #25-#28, wrapping up the seven-part "City Fall" story arc*, in so much that it collects the last issue labeled as part of "City Fall"...the story arc is here a sort of false construct, as the narrative just sort of bleeds from one issue to another, only the most minor of the sub-conflicts ever seeing real resolution. As serial comics go, IDW's TMNT has been truly serial...probably more serial than most.

The previous volume ended with a dramatic showdown between our heroes and the villains, in which Splinter and the Turtles discovered that The Shredder and his allies were able to "flip" Leonarod through magical brainwashing; making him a loyal warrior serving the interests of the Foot Clan (and trading in his good buy blue mask for a bad guy black one).

In this back-half of "City Fall"—still scripted by Tom Waltz from a plot by Waltz, TMNT co-creator and cover artist Kevin Eastman and TMNT editor Bobby Curnow and drawn by Mateus Santolouco—the now evil Leonardo has joined forces with The Shredder's granddaughter Karai to lead the Foot Clan in their war with rival martial arts criminal organization, The Savate. As fiercely as Leonardo may fight for the Foot, he still has a line he won't cross; he doesn't kill his foes, which causes Karai to doubt his loyalty, but Shredder doesn't want to push his new disciple too far, for fear of breaking the spell.

While the Savate and Foot fight, our heroes engage in their own little sub-plots, as Waltz and company maneuver everyone into another big, volume-closing clash. Raphael gets out of control, and tries threatening and roughing up thugs and dirty cops for information on Leonardo and The Foot. Michelangelo conducts undercover work as a pizza delivery man. Casey Jones is in the hospital, still healing from The Shredder's blow to his interior organs in the previous volume, tended to by April O'Neil (who kisses him, consummating their romantic status) and, occasionally, his friend Angel, a former Purple Dragon gang member.

Meanwhile, Splinter seeks an unlikely ally in Hob, who offers his help in exchange for a favor (He wants Splinter to steal him some mutagen with which he can begin to build a mutant army), Donatello seeks some high-tech gear from his irritable inventor friend to help them fight the Foot and the ghost of the Turtles' mother—a human woman, as in this version of the story, the Turltes are reincarnations of the human children of the human man that Splinter is a reincarnation of—picks at Leonardo's brainwashing, trying to awaken him.

And, in the oddest twist, Casey's abusive, alcoholic father decides to quite drinking cold turkey, rips off his shirt and pretty much immediately turns into Hun in a transformation more rapid than any mutation so far in the series...although there is an asterisk and a footnote saying to "See TMNT Villain Micro-Series #6: Hun" in one panel, so perhaps that explains how Hun grows a few feet and loses about 20 years in a matter of pages.

Hun, by the way, was a character created especially for the second TMNT animated series, the one that ran from 2003-2009. He was the leader of The Purple Dragons, and served as one of the primary villains. He was introduced into Mirage comics continuity in 2008's Tales of The TMNT #56, where he was a criminal who had a particular enmity toward Casey Jones, Casey having scarred and blinded him when Hun attacked him; this is his introduction into the IDW series...although I guess he's kinda sorta been in it all along, just in a different form and under a different name.

It all culminates in an abandoned theater, where The Shredder calls together all of the criminals in New York City (with even Storm and Walter White attending; see below) in order to execute the leader of the Savate in front of them all to prove he's the undisputed kingpin of crime now.
And then Splinter and the Turltes attack, and Waltz, Santolouco and company introduce wave after wave of characters into an escalating battle that fills about 25 pages at the back of the book; that's a pretty respectable amount of action for an American comic book.

The Shredder, Karai, Alopex, Brainwashed Leonardo, The Foot Clan, Hun and a bunch of criminals are all present when Splinter, The Turtles, April, Casey, Angel, Hob, Slash and Casey attack. As the battle starts to favor the Turtles, the creators throw in a suprrise: Bebop and Rocksteady, the mutant warthog and rhinoceros who were bumbling henchmen in the original TMNT cartoon series, now presented as bigger, scarier antagonists, and a genuine threat (The fact that Santolouco draws them gigantic, pretty much proportionate to the Turltes helps; as does the creators giving them a chainsaw and sledgehammer to fight with, although the weapons are dwarfed by their massive hands.

Eastman's variant cover gives a pretty good indication of just how many players there are in this fight scene:
It's essentially the same ending as that of the previous volume—a tie between the two sides, both of which withdraw—only this time the good guys get Leonardo. And Alopex, who defects mid-battle, leaping on The Shredder when he's about to kill Splinter.

As the heroes escape, April mentions that she knows a place where they can hide out while they heal from their wounds. The last panel includes a next-issue box reading, "Next: Northampton," which is, incidentally, the name of the very next collection. Echoing the events of the original volume of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, April, Casey, Splinter and the Turtles retreat to Northampton after a particularly vicious battle with Shredder and The Foot Clan.

As climaxes go, this is certainly a good one, as Waltz and company manage to get almost every character to appear in the series so far in the same room to duke it out with one another.

Putting both Hun from the 2003 cartoon and Rocksteady and Bebop from the 1987 cartoon into a Turtles comic book at pretty much the same time does feel a little forced and uncomfortable; I suppose it will remain to be seen how they work out, but, at least as read in the trade collections, it seems like fan-service (of the nostalgic type, rather than the manga meaning of the term) has overtaken overall quality plotting and storytelling (Alopex's conversion similarly comes out of nowhere...at least, from what is evident in this comic; IDW does tend to leave out parts of the overarching story if its told in one-shots, miniseries or specials of any kind).
At least Santolouco manages to draw the living hell out of Rocksteady and Bebop, making them distinct enough from their bufoonish original incarnations that they seem new here.



*According to the copy on the back cover, this is "The biggest event in TMNT history," which can't possibly be true. Even if they want to define "TMNT history" as whatever happens in the comic books, well, the first volume of the series concluded with a 13-issue story that nearly doubles the length of this one. That story, by the way, was called "City At War" and seems to have inspired the title of this story arc, if nothing else.

One often frustrating aspect of IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics is co-creator Keven Eastman's heavy involvement in the series, which he has earned co-plotting credits for since its launch, and has always provided covers for (and sometimes even breakdowns for the interior art). Sure, he's only one voice in the mix—one of several writers contributing to the plots or stories–but his presence is important, an unspoken but powerfully communicated endorsement of everything going on in IDW's series. And that series has featured a dramatic reinvention of the characters and their story (the most dramatic reinvention in comics, outside of Archie Comics' based-on-the-cartoon comics series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures).

As puzzling as some of the creative choices might seem to readers, and as poor as particular aspects of particular issues might seem here or there, Eastman seems cool with it. And these characters are all his creations—well, co-creations, anyway—so whether he owns and controls them anymore or not (not; they're Viacom's now), if he's okay with whatever IDW's doing in any given comic, well, who are we to get too bent out of shape?

That said, I've been pretty uncomfortable with a lot of aspects of the reboot, perhaps most particularly on its reliance for the original animated adaptation as a source of inspiration...hell, it's prime source of inspiration. Other aspects of the reboot, like Splinter, the Turtles and Shredder all being reincarnated ninjas from feudal Japan, for example, and Casey Jones being a teenager whose abusive father is the Purple Dragon gangleader, well...I'm still struggling to get used to that stuff.

This particular volume collects four issues of IDW's TMNT ongoing series (#21-#24), but the title story doesn't begin until the second of those issues, #22. Before that comes Eastman's heaviest contribution to the series so far, #21. Eastman not only co-plots it with two others (Bobby Curnow, who is also the series' editor, and Tom Waltz, who scripts each issue), he also provides all of the interior artwork.

That is, of course, a treat. I've liked Eastman's art, and been a fan of it, for as long as I've liked comic books, and while he's refined that style over the years, it hasn't evolved into something new and unrecognizable, nor has it dulled at all. The word "gritty" is overused when discussing action comics, which usually use it to describe the tone of the stories, but the word really applies to Eastman's artwork—full with little flecks of ink and bits of crosshatching, theirs a texture to the work. It's easy to imagine running ones hands over the original pages and feeling the patches and bumps of ink, or holding the original page up and finding it heavier than it should be.

In addition to always enjoying Eastman's visual contributions to IDW's TMNT comics, I also find them amusing. Eastman draws the characters in his own style, the way he's always drawn them, regardless of their new designs. His ninja turtles are all identical, they're all pupil-less, and they wear the same kneepads and elbow-pads they've been wearing since the late '80s, while the IDW artists distinguish the characters pretty widely, and have their arms, legs, hands and feet wrapped like those of fighters, rather than wearing any kind of pads.

Eastman's Splinter still looks like a pupil-ess, shaggy little werewolf, while the other artists draw him taller, with shorter hair, and with a shorter snout and a long goatee and fu manchu mustache. Eastman's Casey looks like he's always looked—that is, a grown-up—rather than a teenager, and his Shredder looks like his Shredder, not IDW's.

I suppose it makes sense that Eastman would just draw his characters how he wants, just as it makes sense that Curnow and/or IDW would let him do as he pleased to keep him happy. In the first volume of Turtles, when Eastman and Laird were both drawing and, later, when they would be joined by their studio-mates, their designs and depictions of the characters changed rather dramatically, and, eventually, different artists would be drawing disconnected stories on an almost issue by issue basis.

Here, however, it's somewhat jarring, as unlike the original Mirage TMNT series, IDW's series has told one big, long, serial story; groups of issues sometimes have individual names and form story arcs, but they all bleed into one another, with no conflict ever being resolved so much as being continued.

That all-Eastman issue is a bit of a tour de force for the artist, as a good 17 of its 22 pages consist of nothing more than fighting. And Eastman manages to pack a lot of action into so relatively few pages, a more remarkable feat still when one considers it contains two single-page splashes and a single two-page splash. How does he accomplish it? With panels; lots and lots of little panels.
Several pages have more than 12 panels on them, allowing the characters to really fight, as in trading blows and so forth. Despite the fact that so much of American super-comics and action genre comics tend to revolve around fighting, there's generally precious little actual action in them; here, at least, there is.

The plot of the story is thin, but then, it's really just a showcase for Eastman. The title characters are on a rooftop and about to head home for the night when they are suddenly attacked by a mysterious robed and hooded figure in a clown face mask, a figure with unnaturally bent legs, suggesting he's not human under that mask.

The character repeatedly attacks, defeats the Turtles and then retreats; each time employing a different combat style, which he rather irritatingly lectures them about while doing so.

At the end, he removes his mask to reveal...
...it was Splinter all along. Nevermind how he concealed his tail, changed his voice and learned to trash-talk as he did, how did he manage to smoosh that big-ass snout flat under a face-mask made for humans?

The last few pages finally move the mega-plot forward a bit, as they are set in Japan, where The Shredder, his grandaughter Karai and The Foot unearth a casket, within which lies a perfectly preserved, glowing woman in a kimono, a ceremonial fox mask by her side. Shredder calls her "Kitsune," and she'll prove an important character moving forward.

After that issue, artist Mateus Santolouco shows up and "City Fall" proper begins...or, I should say, continues. The first page of the storyline opens with The Shredder and Kitsune back in New York, discussing a group called "The Savate," who dress like Naurto characters and are lead by a brash young man called Victor. They are apparently a rival martial arts gang in NYC who oppose The Foot Clan, and an asterisk helpfully instructs us to "See TMNT Annual #1." That comic was never collected in trade paperback, which kinda/sorta defeats the purpose of trade collections, really. (Similarly, the recently-released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time collection does not include TMNT Annual 2014, which kicked off the storyline; I reviewed that book briefly here).

So it looks like a gang war is shaping up, and it's to be waged between The Foot and The Savate, with the Turtles and company caught in the middle. But before it comes to that, The Shredder has a reeaallly complicated plan to pull off.

He has Karai and The Foot capture Casey Jones and Raphael but then let Raph escape and summon Splinter and his brothers to help him rescue Casey. April drops the guys off at "the docks," where Shredder meets Karai and Alopex (the fox mutant introduced in IDW's Raphael #1) and then shoves a bladed-gauntlet into Casey's stomach, horribly wounding him. This draws the Turtles out, everyone fights and they try to retreat and get Casey to safety...and, during the melee, Shredder and company capture their true target: Leonardo (Why not just capture him in the first place? I do not know).

They the Foot turn Leonardo over to Kitsune for mystical brainwashing, which leads to a string of guest-artists including Dan Duncan, Ross Campbell, Andy Kuhn, Ben Bates and Eastman himself again, each drawing a two-page spread of a fantasy sequence set inside Leo's brain. Campbell, for example, draws a bunch of Foot Ninja pursuing a mask-less Leo, the ninja spontaneously mutating into hairless, desiccated rat men before a big, scary version of Splinter throws him off a rooftop, only to be rescued by Shredder. Eastman draws Splinter siccing the reanimaed corpses of the other three turtles on Leo, and again Shredder saves him.

Meanwhile, April and Casey's friend Angel, an on-again, off-again member of the Purple Dragons, watch over him at the hospital, and mutant Old Hob and huge mutant turtle Slash offer Splinter and the Turtles their assistance in finding The Foot Clan. They do find The Foot, but they also find the newly brain-washed Leonardo, now decked out in a black bandanna, with black fabric wrapped around his limbs, and sporting a bit of armor and a Shredder-like gauntlet. The guest artist-drawn flashback sequences have flipped Leo's loyalties from Splinter to The Shredder.
Everyone fights, and it ends in a draw. Both sides return to their corners, and The Shredder retains Leonardo, who is now in his thrall.

This volume marks the beginning of Santolouco's stint as regular-ish artist on the series. Unlike the previous artists on IDW's TMNT comic—Dan Duncan drew the first three volumes, Andy Kuhn the foruth and Ben Bates the fifth—Santolouco redesigns the individual Turltes to make them look more distinct from one another, and he leans pretty hard towards the designs of the current, 2012-launched television cartoon (perhaps by directive, rather than choice).
So now Donatello is a head taller than Raphael and Leonardo, and somewhat lankier; he even has a gap in his teeth. Michaelangelo is almost a head shorter than Raph and Leo, and his bandanna is noticeably shorter than those of his brothers, leaving hardly any "tail" flowing behind his head; they all have much rounder heads now, and resemble compromises between the designs of the TV show and Duncan and company's earlier Turtles.

He draws them well, and draws all of the other characters well as too—I'm not fond of some of the designs, like that of Slash or The Savate, but he inherited those—but it's a pretty jarring change from what came before.

**********************

Despite the unfortunate tendency to not collect important parts of the stories just because they get published outside of the main title, the trades really are the best way to read IDW's TMNT comic. After all, if you read the issues serially, you'd only be able to get one cover, and thus miss out on Eastman's often quite awesome covers, or the many awesome variant covers from great, usually unexpected artists.

Like, for example, have you ever wondered what Dean Haspiel's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might look like? Wonder no more!
There's definitely something weird going on with the way he draws their shells at the crotch.

Or hey, remember how great those first issues of the the latest volume of Marvel's Moon Knight series were? Did you find yourself wondering what artist Declan Shalvey's Shredder and The Foot Clan might look like? Behold!
I feel like there may be some sort of Foot Clan/Declan joke to be made, but I can't quite find it.