1 out of 5

Wow.  This is one of the worst things I have read.  Which is… an accomplishment, because I’ve liked Allor’s other Turtles works, and I thought Kuhn’s previous contributions had a nice, stylized energy.  And, y’know, Mutanimals.  But this is like a shoehorned plot made up of shoehorned characters who speak in shoehorned dialogue, drawn by someone who only had time to do outlines and told their colorists – the able Rhoda Pattison and Nick Filardi – to make it look good.

Now there’s a major roadblock here: Hob.  Hob is a stupid character.  The only thing semi-interesting was that he was a throwback (methinks) to Verminator X, except that Tom Waltz and Kev Eastman aren’t the greatest plotters (sorry ya’ll) and so they just made him another mutant from the same lab and he leads a gang and hates rats.  ‘Cause he’s a cat!  Totes.  It was stupid obvious to me from issue one that Hob’s only function was to not be The Shredder, and to swear so people knew the new Turtles books were serious.  But we didn’t care, because we had a new Turtles book, and TMNT has rarely been the deepest story-wise.  And despite my criticism, what the IDW crew has done over 40 issues is expand on the world and characters in a way that Laird and Eastman never really took the time to, even if the dialogue is still sorta hammy.  There are also tons of fun throw-backs to characters – with new origins – done in a way that has earned respect from fans and proven that the creatives know their stuff.  Plus, once the groundwork had been established, we got to storylines that mimicked my favorite run from the original – Turtles in Space – as it’s just sort of out there fun; a nice combo of the influences which resulted in the book in the first place as well as being uniquely TMNT.

That was then.

Lately, there’s been a sudden rush of cameos, and, maybe to align with the cartoon, we’ve now arrived at Mutanimals.  It doesn’t feel like this team was earned – and I realize they appeared sooner in the Archie books, but they had a world of silly cartoons to draw from and so it seemed more natural – and then there’s the handicap of having to center around the uninteresting Hob.  That’s the lead-up.  Now we can toss that out and consider the story on its own merits.

Lindsey, the Mutes human partner, is kidnapped by the Null corporation (gasp!  Archie reference!) in order to be put to work on their mutant experiments.  She brushes off the kidnapping easily, and doesn’t seem to be at all shocked by the appearance of Ms. Null, who has red skin and horns.  Meanwhile, Hob hates humans and wants to kill them, and Slash doesn’t, and they argue about the point very clearly so we know that there are lessons to be learned.  Eventually they go to rescue Lindsey and discover Mutagen Man (gasp!  Toy reference!  …or aligning with the cartoon!  I don’t know!), who Mondo Gecko snort chuckle names Seymour Gutz instead.  Snort and chuckle once more.  And Kuhn forgets to draw any backgrounds, unfunny jokes are told, Hob learns a lesson, and another Archie comics reference (Manta Ray) is made along with yet another cat or lion character who’s maybe a female version of that Puma Mutanimals dude; I don’t know because none of the characters are written with anything approaching interesting personalities.

It is possible that Kuhn was trying to pay tribute to the simplistic style of the original Mutanimals series.

It is possible that Allor was guided to make this kid friendly, or new-reader friendly, and so stripped aaanything of interest out for the sake of accessibility.

But it just ends up looking like it’s drawn by a newbie (which Kuhn is not) and written by someone with no grasp on comics (which Allor is not).  Fine, you work with mutants, but you don’t balk over red skin and horns.  The worst.