3 out of 5

Not trying that hard, and maybe better than the regular Rise comics as a result?

I’m really not sure how this mini-comics are distributed, but it seems like a similar model to FCBD: shops get a certain set; you go to said shops and make your pick. The difference seems to be the format and length – these are in the small, 6″ x 9″-ish factor and about half the length of a “standard” issue – and the demographic, which would appear to be almost exclusively youthy.

This lends itself more to a sampler tone, I suppose, but Dale Malinowski and artists Andy Suriano (breakdowns), Ira Hem and Brandon Cuellar (finishes) and T Dang and Alex Deligiannis (colors) pack in a full showdown between our Rise turtles (and April) and Meat Sweats, the mutated pig chef, who’s stolen the boys’ pizza…

It’s not the most well choreographed thing, as the action can be intuited from the panels, but isn’t really properly detailed, but, interestingly, by dropping all but the barest of background details, the look of the mini gets a leg up over Chad Thomas’ more fleshed out work in the proper Rise books – the thing is so colorful and the Turtles so emotive that the simplification makes for a better balance toward their foreground antics. The writing is similarly simplified, and some of the puns don’t connect at all, but it doesn’t reek of the try-hard chuckles of the other comic. The inside cover also has brief bios, which is nice.

Nothing mind-blowing, but definitely satisfying as a freebie, and maintains the spirit of the show pretty well.