4 out of 5

If the previous Future Shark arc was a big leap forward in plotting complexity for TMNTA, the Black Hole Trilogy – although it’s a bit of a mess – was a rewarding retconning of events stretching back to the single digit issues.  While I was missing a couple of books when reading this as a kid, seeing the Turnstone, Eye of Sarnath, and Sons of Silence reappear felt like a big, it’s-all-connected deal, and had me rereading back issues even more frequently than I already was.  Chris Allan – now consistently getting co-plotter credit – was just absolutely killing it issue by issue, with a truly definitive character model for all of our principles, and a great mastery of page layouts with much more detailed battles and action than we’d seen in this series up to this point.

The scans in the IDW collection are a bit notably faded at points, which is a shame, and I’m half-in, half-out on my feeling of collecting the 7-part Mutanimals backmatter (Aftermath) split across this and volume 11; they (the ominous, trade-designing ‘they’) already made the decision to put the chapters together at the end of the trade, so shifting them all to the next book might’ve been better.

Otherwise, though, we really lucked out with how this set comes together: the Ken Mitchroney drawn Mutations, while incredibly rushed, is a good, carefree origin recap, before we leap in to relationship dramaturgy with Foxhunt (a sort of pointless issue, but one I enjoyed nonetheless, as I felt the casual jealousy between Raph and Ninjara was well handled) and then kick into space war overdrive for four issues.  The space plot itself is sort of a mess in how vaguely defined its intentions were / are, but, as mentioned, the roping in of past story elements makes it a pretty entertaining read.