5 out of 5
This is, approximately, the “April is sick” arc, during which the nanobots discovered by the Utroms to be in April’s blood take her out of commission. Now typical comics would probably send the team fighting some ultimately silly battle to find the cure; in early 00s TMNT, however, Pete has Donnie discuss philosophy and science (and other things) with an old associate, while the rest of the team – plus Casey, and Shadow, and April’s sister – kinda bums around, or maybe the Turtles train, or maybe they just have some expostitional chats about these nanobots, or about how great Mac computers are. Man, I love volume 4.
Other things are happening, of course, and even if you weren’t paying attention to the already major happenings – nanobots in April’s blood! Utroms have landed in New York! – these issues start to roll out further huge threads, which I won’t spoil here, except that: other TMNT series have picked up on some of these threads (bringing aliens to NY, how Splinter’s role with the boys evolves), perhaps inspired by these issues or perhaps because some stuff is a logical conclusion of the Turtles’ characters and world, but I’d maintain that this is the best example of those threads: they are earned in a book that’s run intermittently, and somewhat under the oversight of at least one of its main creators, by 20+ years at the time of volume 4, making the slow crawl to these plotpoints have a lot of weight. It felt… major at the time, and it has that same heft now; Pete’s approach was to make this a more grounded book in my eyes, and that, also, couldn’t have been done without its bombastic past to hang it on.
Dooney’s rerendering of some of Lawson’s panels as covers are perfect: sometimes the shot isn’t the most striking image, but it becomes so after you read the contents. And Lawson is still at the top of his game here, with lovely, dense-as-hell tones for the first several issues (it lightens up slightly by issue 10) and fun dotted-art effects when we see a glimpse of another world – one of the many subplots / random lore drops of these issues. Plus the always entertaining letters, plus an occasional backup strip (Gizmo!), plus some pages of sketches, or shots of so-and-sos studio… this book just rings true as a production of love from people who know and respect this world.
(Something about Pete kowtowing to Mac computer greatness makes me glad we haven’t had to see him working on this series in the era of AI. That bears no weight on the review, and I couldn’t exactly say why I’m drawing a line between those two technologies, but just trust me bro.)
