4 out of 5

While April, Chu, and the old man leave Japan to head back to NY, the Turtles and Splinter decide to take the long way home, headed towards Tibet to chat up Splinter’s former master, Charlie Llama.  …Regarding whom, are you surprised to find out is actually a mutant llama?  How about the four-armed mutant cat named Katmandu they fight along the way, before the generic I-don’t-recognize-you-so-you-must-be-enemies disagreement flip-flops into a team-up against some ninjas – do his anthropomorphic catty ways catch you off guard?

Rather amusingly dispensing with even the most minimal of explanations, TMNTA takes its new-mutant-per-issue beat and just assumes you’re fine with it now, which, frankly, we are – as a kid, I don’t remember batting an eye at these characters’ appearances.  And it’s much the same now, thanks to a pretty speedy ride from Dean Clarrain and some fantastically emotive art from Chris Allan – very settled into his beefy, bouncy character models at this point – that mashes in some non-Christian religion education, some vague political awareness, and a plot that actually rather cohesively sticks to a birth / death / rebirth theme, when Llama is kidnapped and Katman and the TMNT beat up a skeleton to save the day.

TMNT Entity again draws my attention to some indirect ignorance on Clarrain’s behalf – something I admittedly completely glossed over, showing how easy it is for potentially harmful concepts and prejudices to be slipped between the lines – though I do agree with a comment on that entry that the bad guy was perhaps Tibetan, but the dialogue, once pointed out, rankles nonetheless.  I also thought the Llama’s ‘baaaa’ filled words were a step too far in the dumb direction.  Like, you have an adult writing ‘cool’ teen slang, which is cheesy enough, but this was clearly just dad humor.  Some coloring and lettering flubs (tails pointed to the wrong characters) round out the knocks against these two otherwise fun, solid issues.