4 out of 5

I’m rating this more in comparison to the first volume, which was totes average across the board, occasionally dipping into eye-rolling.  Kenny Byerly, our standby writer, has two issues in this collection – 5 and 8.  Kenny does the general sweep of the animated series effectively enough, with grand characterizations and doing a pretty basic one-villain-per-issue setup, but it veers both ways – with a meh villain like FishFace, you get a meh issue (5) that then seems to influence all of the writing – Leo is cheesy, Don’s tech talk is dumb, Raph’s snideness isn’t amusing, and Mikey is just dumb.  …Which is a constant mistake in the comics, and something they balance better on the show: Mikey is a distracted teen, but he’s not an all-out doofus.  On ish 5, Adam Archer gives a nice angular look to the turtles and the characters, but as the action breaks loose on a cruise ship, he completely loses any sensible grasp of space and the centerpiece of the book ends up looking like it takes place in a fantasy land.  (As opposed to the real, real world of comics.)  Issue 6 is the best of the bunch, and the first in the series to try a mash-up instead of having all 4 guys take on one foe.  Don’s on a date, Leo’s flirting with Karai, and Raph and Mikey are at a movie.  Chad Thomas’ art follows Brizuela’s models and design a bit more closely, but is much cleaner, and he doesn’t lose the backgrounds when things spice up.  Combined with Smith’s balanced pacing and effective voice for all the characters, this is a writer / artist of whom I hope we end up seeing more.  Issues 7 and 8 are both drawn by Brizuela, who’s just going all out with that loose, sketchy style.  It works pretty well in issue 8, because the plot goes bananas with Rat King summoning tons of rats to make a giant… rat king…  A giant rat king made out of rats… to trash the city.  Because Brizy just went slapdash with the piles of rats, it seemed he put a bit more focus into the figures, so it balanced out well.  Issue 7, though, where a Kraang device takes over the shellraiser, is plagued by the problems we’ve seen before, where the panels are just these broad gestures of motion and lack weight.  Cullen Bunn’s script is pretty amusing, though, maintaining forward momentum, even though his Kraang-speak is horrendous and apparently Mikey is, yet again, an idiot.

So besides the batting-average issue 5, several stand-out issues, which gives it a notch above the first collection.