1 out of 5

I’m not claiming Eastman’s ever been a great writer; as this dude points out in his review of this annual, generally his scripts are just an idea that stumbles forward until it hits a page count, and often that stumble will involve a lot of fists flying.  But I’d say almost any style, even one as super limited as Eastman’s, can be presented positively if applied correctly, and the Laird combo in original TMNT seemed to effectively bottle Kev’s Heavy Metal vibe into something more comprehensible than the sloppy teenager wet dreams he normally splashes onto the page, and yes, that was an extended metaphor that made me uncomfortable to type.  …Because I hold the market on creating art out of splashes wet dreams, people.  BEHOLDEN TO NONE.  I gave the last annual a pretty poor review because I found the art repetitive and the story boring as fuck.  It was Eastman seeming rather ignorant of the tone of the IDW universe (even though he’s essentially a co-creator) and just writing the Turtles pretty much like he always did (i.e. without much personality besides a Casey jokey personality and a Raph snarky personality).

The 2014 annual actually got off to a pretty fun start, with Don and Mikey discussing a prank they’ve set up for Raph in the lair (Splinter listening to this… from the bathroom, which is like the first bathroom gag the Turtles have ever had in comic form, methinks) when both Leo and Raph come home at the same instant Renet appears and whisks the off to the Battle Nexus.  These few pages are what Kev did well even without Peter, which is just sorta’ silly and slap-dash from panel to panel, with the constant change-ups give it a clumsy charm, and Ronda Pattison’s colors giving Kevin’s heavy pencils a lot more energy than his static panels often have.  But once we’re at the Nexus, with a Conan tribute (Baltizar) guiding the boys through an …extended… fight and then revolt (against some kinda dictatory type running the Battle), not only do we lose the energy boost because we’re back in black and white, but it’s back to the trudge of the previous annual – boring, repetitive – with the added non-bonus of even stupider dialogue (because of how painfully unfunny it is) and somehow less than one-dimensional characters.  This reads, purely, as ‘hey, Kev did the 2012 annual (which was sort of a big deal, as it was his first solo Turtles work in years, I believe), so he should do the 2014 annual (which is now not as big of a deal and as such comes across as more filler and less inspiration) (and seeing as how 2012 wasn’t too inspired, well… there you go.).

Maybe IDW / Eastman will hear feedback on this or maybe they’re both smart enough to realize the Eastman solo annual doesn’t need to be a yearly event, but maybe this sold to a billion TMNT fans like me and we’ll get another one anyway.  Because lord knows I’ll fucking buy it god damn anyway.

j/k ya’ll I love myself.  mmwah.