2 out of 5

I don’t mind goofy TMNT, but I get pretty restless with dumb.  And when dumb is paired with bland, inconsistent art…?

While John Gentile’s and artist Michael Gaydos’ ‘Darkest Hour’ backup in the previous special was already pretty dumb, Gaydos’ chunky Turtles, inked weightily by Dan Berger, looked pretty cool, and the story’s detractions could be excused as having to revolve around setting up a write-in contest to solve a riddle.  The conclusion of the story is better, not needing to dance around that setup any longer, that Gaydos drops the ball on engaging backgrounds – only his figures really have life – which is a shame, as the kinda Lovecraftian tones of the underground world in which the TMNT battle a random witch could’ve offered up some cool visuals.

In the issue’s main story this is compounded with flat-ass, single color backgrounds amidst a potentially rich Scottish castle setting – another vaca for the Turtles, visiting April’s uncle and his banshee-haunted homestead – but Berger also backs way off on his inks, oddly, exposing some really pudgy, unformed, way inconsistent character models from Gaydos, and some especially woeful – completely static – ‘action’ moments, with zero sense of choreography or geography.  John Gentile has some interesting bits to add to April’s background, and it’s inspired to bring Shredder and Krang back from the early, early issues of the comic from some Fred Wolf-esque ‘let’s find this random plot device with which to take over the world’ antics, but his ideas are let down by the artwork, and outside of the mythology stuff, getting characters from point A to point B, or delaying baddies from reaching point B, results in some laughably lazy transitions (example: Krang is defeated by… getting dizzy, or by climbing stairs).

Always dug the gritty cover on this one, though.