5 out of 5

Okay, settle down: I can distinctly recall the feel of the papery pages, edges crumbling, as I flipped and re-flipped through the original issues being reprinted by IDW in their TMNT Adventures series.  I remember seeing the issue to #4 – the first with cover art matching the look of the interior art – and getting excited that they were “my” Turtles.  (Later, I would realize that issue’s #1 – 3 covers featured some original TMNT guys, which is way cooler, but we’re dealing with nostalgia here.)  I can, of course, hear the voices of all the actors from the episodes of the cartoon from which these two stories were adapted, but the way I could pace the action and jokes at my own speed when reading the comics was supremely satisfying.

And setting aside those rose-tinted glasses, this stuff still holds up pretty well.  The plot and humor in those early Fred Wolf episodes were actually respectable; Dave Garcia’s and Beth / Ken Mitchroney’s adaptations maintain that, adding in each artists’ own strengths of timing and framing.

‘Return of the Shredder’ is all goofball James Bond traps and hilariously unbelievable gambits to “trap” the Turtles, thus may an Earth-sequestered Shredhead prove to Krang that he’s worthy of having troops sent his way, but it’s also a brilliant bit of kid-friendly yuks and action that introduces everyone it should – April, Vernon, Baxter, etc. – and splices in doses of non-violent action.  Garcia’s art is pretty brilliant, recalling Michael Dooney but, perhaps, with a better sense of foreshortening, and a great sense of flow from panel to panel.

In ‘The Incredible Shrinking Turtles,’ a crashed alien looses a shrinking gadget with which Shredder again tries to prove his worth.  It’s a lot of story to rather amusingly skip over (there are other ‘shards’ of the gadget that don’t get much of a mention at this point; the Turtles’ relative size to things when they are shrunken changes to match the situation), and while the Mitchroney’s action choreography isn’t as smooth as Garcia’s, their very Archie-esque goofball humor timing is on point, making it a fun read.

I’m tempted to shake my finger at IDW’s $20 pricetag for four issues – especially given that the reprinted covers show off the original $1 pricetag – but, glory days of slightly larger attention spans, these are each 28-page stories versus modern day 22-page ones, giving us about five modern issues worth of content.  That, plus the ace reprinting quality, which appreciably retains the off-white of the pages, makes it absolutely worth it, not to mention that not all of us held on to those originals in long boxes…  (Also: a kids book that kicks off with two, two-part stories, when the current era IDW Animated books were so worried to maintain interest that they’d stuff in two tales per book…)