4 out of 5

I must be a soft touch for these old Turtles books, ’cause I get it: the environmental messaging is preachy; the plot is clearly unconcerned with tying into any Turtle lore at all.  But I dunno, this two-part (kinda) story has some wonderfully lively art from Brian Thomas and Bill Wray, and the way it has its bad guy polluter just flip switches and become an environmentalist, and how Thomas and Wray use draaastically different character models is charming in its ridiculousness.  The logic of the thing besides this is equally questionable (I’m pretty sure no one – Turtles included – is doing a particularly good job of helping anyone in the first story), but that just adds to the goofiness.  I had a good time for 64 pages.

In the first half of our book, the TMNT attack some chainsaw-wielding, knit-cap wearing robots because dang, they’re chopping down rainforests, while Splinter and April stand aside and sort of tsk-tsk their boys attack-first eagerness.  Sure enough, the robots actually belong to a big ol’ corporate guy, who claims he’s clearing the land for some proper, government-approved toxic waste disposal.  Also, here’s his daughter, Emmy, for whatever reason.  Later, Bigfoot shows up with radiation-curing flowers, and the Turtles realize corporate guy maybe was up to no good after all.  And with a last name like Slujj, whoulda’ thought…

Some wonderfully over-exposited storytelling later, and Slujj has realized the error of his ways, allowing for the second half of the book, in which everyone goes on a cruise together!  And then get attacked by a giant sea monster!  The lesson here is about whaling, as the eeeevil ship captain who ends up picking up our overboarded TMNT (and Slujj, and Emmy) has triggered the wrath of the aforementioned monster due to his whaling-for-profit ways.

He doesn’t flip sides as easily as Slujj.

The art and colors are lovely and energetic, and the stories move along at a good clip, flip-flopping between pseudo-serious and Fred Wolf-y wink-at-the-cameraness at an enjoyable rhythm.