Welcome to yet another new feature: Random Reviews! Basically, I don't stay up to date well enough to always have timely reviews, so instead of trying to keep up with that, I'll be checking in with some of the stuff I'm reading and watching, and see how it's all going down. And we start with the secondary TMNT series from IDW, New Animated Adventures. With news coming out that the series was coming to a close, I figured we'd jump in and check out how it's going. The answer shouldn't surprise you, but it's not great.
I'm an easy mark for Ninja Turtles. I'll give a fair shake to just about anything that looks half decent with their name on it. When the new cartoon started and a comic series based on it, I figured this was a win-win. Sadly, the writing in this book is nowhere near the quality of the show. And because it has to play second fiddle, they can't even feature active storylines. Karai was still human and on Shredder's side as of a few issues ago. It seems they have their hands tied and that's led to a sub par book.
This issue does not do much to shake that reputation. It's a second part of a battle with Spider Bytez and Baxter Stockman, who at least is a fly. There are a few clever one liners, but the overall story is pretty silly and there's too many off panel traps for a 10 pager. It feels like the writers paint themselves in a corner, then point the camera slightly to the left to get out of it.
There's also a backup story that actually works really well. Here we see the four turtles training by playing Tag. Once a turtle is tagged, we get a first person view as they jump along rooftops to try and find their brothers. It's a fast and fun story that works and doesn't feel hamstrung like the main story was.
The art is solid in both stories. I was able to follow the action for the most part, but the backgrounds can be boring. It does the job, but nowhere near as fun to look at or as dynamic as the main series.
I'm not sad to see this book come to an end. I'm way more excited about what they can bring with a new relaunch and given the freedom to setup their own offshoot continuity. The only way a single continuity would have worked is if both writing teams worked together and could bring it all in, but maybe that's just not possible being a part of the Viacom Corporate MachineTM. I hope what comes next is more entertaining, but I have a hard time believing it will be more bland than this.
2 out of 5 Pizza Time