Leo'Jet Ski Fuel'nardoAnd so here's the new status quo. Old Hob, bastard mutant cat-man, mutant revolutionary, and Snake Pliskin cosplayer, tricked Raph into helping him construct and detonate a mutagen bomb, turning an entire section of Manhattan into mutants. Baxter Stockman, now mayor, has quarantined this "Mutant Town". Mutants are now public, social tensions are rising, and the Turtles have separated from the grief over Splinter's death.
This is a neat page because it does what it does well while kinda breaking one of comic's rules about efficient story telling (which comics break all the time). Our new status quo is established by someone talking an awful lot...and at the same time it's on one page, the third of the book, and in context it makes complete sense. Baxter's a politician now, laying out terms like this is literally his job.
'Nother unofficial rule of comics this one pulls off: establish a story within the first three pages. We've had loss, separation, and now Campbell's cemented the setting. The Turtles have been traumatically changed forever and so has the world around them.
NOTHIN' RELATABLE ABOUT THAT, HUH?
Gonna have to check later down the line but this miiiiiight be an early sighting of Wanda, one of Leo's eventual martial arts students.
Also this as good a time as any to bring up Campbell's two main inspirations for her run: the future Archie stories, where the TMNT have a dojo and students in a devastated setting, and the Mutant Apocalypse/After the Bomb RPG books.
So anybody claiming she doesn't know her TMNT is talking out their ass.
Me returning to a TMNT thread after "just resting my eyes for a bit."
The most Sophie Campbell panel ever. (I am going to be saying that a lot.)
Yeah, I got next to nothing. So much of the panel speaks for itself, the textures of Donnie's clothes, the walls around him, you can practically -hear- the wind outside. And his face! Campbell's expressions are so great, humanity, personality on an inhuman face.
Y'know what, stick the Scarlet Spider logo on that shirt and that's my fursona.
What's a melancholy song that'd fit Donnie, wanna set this to something.
Next to being a badass long shot followed by a badass close up, I like this Raph moment because it's another one of Campbell's themes. So much of TMNT -talks- about family, and she isn't afraid to offer the possibility that maybe being family doesn't inherently guarantee anything. When things get bad you -won't- always rise above them. And sometimes that's okay.
Plus Raph brooding off on his own, c'mon. 1990 programmed your brain to love that.
Wanna tell how an artist wrote this comic/how atmosphere works in comics?
Because these sequences work separately but their composition is also based around being one big page, so you go from Donnie's hangdog but cosy farm set to Raph's bitter, freezing cold urban cesspool.
More establishing stuff (in only two panels! Not bad!)
-Raph is patrolling Mutant Town on his own, still grieving Splinter's death and wracked with guilt over his role in the mutagen bomb
-The innocent of Mutant Town are being "protected"/preyed on by the Mutanimals, Hob's gang of self appointed mutant police
-As Don points out, this is similar to the start of the series, but -emotionally- different. This isn't a family desperately trying to reconnect. Things are colder, more uncertain.
-Raph is patrolling Mutant Town on his own, still grieving Splinter's death and wracked with guilt over his role in the mutagen bomb
-The innocent of Mutant Town are being "protected"/preyed on by the Mutanimals, Hob's gang of self appointed mutant police
-As Don points out, this is similar to the start of the series, but -emotionally- different. This isn't a family desperately trying to reconnect. Things are colder, more uncertain.
(Because we -did- a lot of the overwrought/kinda creepy "Family is eternal" stuff already, and Campbell is ready to say sometimes that stuff fails.)
That's the biggest thing for me, y'know? I get why some of this stuff isn't gonna connect with people, but we're not going to get a story where Leo is brainwashed into being evil or Raph runs off because trauma about Bishop experimenting on him. Sometimes people can -just- fail and -just- be angry and -just- make the wrong choice at the worst moment. That feels emotionally real to me, even though yeah, the run is gonna get rocky.
Raph using the handles of his sai to bash the fash is also nice to me because Campbell -would- know that historically sias aren't stabbing weapons.
That's what I like about the Mutanimals here too, because Waltz has a real creator love affair with Hob where his paranoia and rage are supposed to be complex and sexy, and Campbell unambiguously address what his version of the Mutanimals actually are for the first time since that spin off they got.
"The pet character of the first run finally gets what's coming to him" would be a good summary of the strengths of Campbell's TMNT. And while I wanna be intellectually honest if not objective, you do have to wonder how much of what trips her writing up has to do with trying to work within what IDW had already done with the brand. (Which included telling us how great Hob was an awful lot.)
Honestly wish IDW TMNT was more like that Bebop and Rocksteady mini where they're starting to change back to humans and Rocksteady cuts his human ear off on the assumption this will make it stop.
What's nice about Campbell's Raph is that she doesn't depict his angst or being on his own as an inherently unhealthy thing. There's a well defined line between "Raph's being an asshole because of his temper" and "Raph just can't be around people right now".
Case in point, at the same time Donnie's flat out admitting the fam have no energy to go looking for him, and as much as he's butting heads with Al and Jen, Raph's actually doing a lot of good in Mutant Town. Could do -more-, but.
That's another part of Campbell's thesis with TMNT, I think. Family -can- be great and strong, but it's OKAY if you're not ready/don't want to be part of it.
(And speaking from lived experience, people who really, really like the reincarnation origin are -not- equipped to deal with the implication of Raph's anger being an inherited/inherant trait.)
Wet Moon is full of all these lovely small town/forest imagery, and Shadow Eyes was a crammed, post-apocalyptic, depressing cyber setting, and this is a great example of Campbell's skills with environments and atmosphere. You can feel the chill, -hear- how desolate these wrecked NY blocks are. Love the crane, too, this image of something meant to repair that's not going to because it's been used to/is made of the same shadow of the quarantine wall. And there's Raph, soldiering on through it all.
And again, Don's allowing for the possibility that Raph's not going to wanna come back into the fold. This is about things being on the other person's terms.
We like to laugh, here. We like to have fun.
#TMNT
#TMNT
...we like to RAPH here.
There's this thing I have about Jim Lawson's art where he depicts spaces and people moving through them so well that I would unironically read a whole book that was nothing but that, and Campbell has the same skill.
God, I wanna live in places Campbell draws so hard. Also, Leo has a hobby now: plants! This is great visual of where things are at this point, Leo's clearly been hard at work on these babies for months, but combined with the view of the winter landscape it just makes it seem as if he's stuck in stasis, caught between life and death.
Which also plays into the vibe of the run: rebuilding is possible but doesn't guarantee complete recovery. Christ, look at the last four years.
A) KLUNK!
B) Good on Donnie, thinking of ways to help his bro but also wanting to respect his boundaries.
B) Good on Donnie, thinking of ways to help his bro but also wanting to respect his boundaries.
There's something about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles having a cat. It's not like with Batman's dog, you don't get anyone whining about how that's not realistic. (Although I like me some Beyond Ace, good murder boy.)
Our fist look at April (and I love Campbell's design for her because it's so distinct) and the signs of the toll years of TMNT stuff and her current job for Mayor Stockman is taking on her.
God, I love a good Sophie Campbell room. So full of character and little tells. My one note is Ronda Pattison's colours for the interiors so far have been all kinds of samey. Other than Don's caption there's nothing to indicate this isn't a room in the farmhouse.
April sadly doesn't get as much of a focus as she could in this run, (and I've no idea from what I've read of Waltz's stuff why his version was supposed to some kind of stand out to begin with) but Donnie's admission, "or maybe we were her rock", is a great line. The boys' lost their father, but everything about them has been April's life for years and -she's- struggling, too.
Hello, it's me, the guy who always thought it was weird that April's arc in City At War essentially boils down to "She doesn't really have any kind of life direction without the Turtles".
Then there's what Mirage April's secret origin actually is, which is as good as Peter Laird admitting he never knew what to do with the character.
Oh hey, speaking of City At War, check out our first sighting of Jennika since page 2. The classic TMNT way of getting from NYC to Northampton and back again: clinging to the top of a train car to avoid both human xenophobia and exorbitant Amtrack fees! Mikey'll sprinkle jelly beans all over his pizza, but -that- much for a cup of coffee and a sandwich? No way, Jose!
God, that must absolutely suck. Especially in the snow. Imagine the constant noise alone.
Wasn't sure how to feel about Jennika at the time but I like a lot of what Campbell tries to do with her over the course of this run, and I like Don reiterating that idea in his notes on her: maybe people taking a break from the family ISN'T an inherently bad thing.
Also, purely to vent, this is one of several reasons I don't like the reincarnation origin, and in this instance it takes what would be a good character beat for any other Donnie and complicates it because no one thought how literally you were or weren't supposed to take the idea.
Jennika. I was as indifferent when she was announced, did check out the issues where she's mutated and they didn't do anything for me, but I do like her here, bumps in the road and all. She's a bit more of a Sophie Campbell character, is what I think it is. I went from not caring about her existence at all to rooting for her and her girlfriend. Wish Campbell had been allowed more time with the character, but that's how I feel about everything in this run.
One thing? Kinda wish they'd take all of Jen's stuff and given it to April. Because it'd be nice if she had -something.-
Alopex is one of the few (if the not the only) IDW original characters I like, and I -love- that her storyline has taken her from this person trapped in a series of terrible relationships, stuck between two sides with baggage in a war she never asked to be a part of, to running a soup kitchen/homeless shelter for the victims of Mutant Town.
Best part is this comes from -Al's- experience, she knows what it's like to wake up in a strange new world, she's not passing on anything from the fam.
It's neat how different versions of TMNT keep doing that Claremont X-Men thing of adding additional characters, who sometimes don't even have anything to do with the premise, to the group dynamic and everyone just rolling together.
Oh, also more great character stuff for Donnie! I like how much of his instincts in this journal are to help people, and he's naturally going to become the handyman of Mutant Town in a couple of issues.
It's one the things I like about the Mutant Town concept as a whole. The TMNT not just as protectors, but as the guys who'll help you move and sort out your buggy wi-fi and just generally be around and helpful.
Especially because the last 100 issues have been nothing but ninja fights, ninja politics, alien invasions, the dragon reincarnation shit. I like the idea of the characters finally doing something that tangibly matters. Inhabiting the world instead of just saving it.
"Oh stopping the alien invasion doesn't tangibly ma-" Not when they've done it twice, no. "Everything is on fire and we're all about to die" gets old when it's all you offer.
Chromedome and Rewind they ain't, but oh, the crazy rollercoaster these two are going to take us on.
First subplot of this story arc and a nice counter to the opening Raph page: Mutant Town's food supplies are running out and the downside to Raph not talking to Al or any of the family is that it's taken him this long to learn about a problem he might not be able to do anything about.
