4 out of 5

While it would’ve been cool to revisit Stanley Wiater’s TMNTA Specials continuity one more time as well, I’m glad Steve Sullivan at least got a chance to follow up on the Grem from #2.

In ‘The Fifth Turtle,’ Sullivan and Brian Thomas give the titular concept a go, resulting in what’s probably the best possible version of it, and one that would’ve been nice to expand out to a few issues.  Since the identity of the shadowed turtle on the cover is a mystery, I won’t spoil it here, but Thomas avoids doing any of the usual ‘this Turtle is a female!’ shorthand that makes these things sorta gross, and the whole outing has a very fun energy to it, with a lot of weird Easter Eggs / asides in the art (a Happy Hannukah banner for Splinter’s birthday?).

The bad guys’ Shredder-esque plot to use Mutagen for ‘something’ is kinda murky, and the story loses track of all of its many players in its big ol’ scuffle (and has Splinter donning what looks like a Klan uniform, which we’ll just consider a callback to Milton Knight’s use of the same…), and, as mentioned, this definitely could have expanded to two or more issues, but the whole thing is generally well written and arted and fun.

The last few pages are given over to some Mark Bode nonsense, which uses the pun Rapht in a laugh out loud fashion (even two variants of it!) and is ridiculous but also stupidly amusing.