3 out of 5

‘Blindsight’ is an amazing 2-parter.  I appreciate Future Shark and Terracide getting a lot of love – I mean, I love them too – but Blindsight was really exciting for some reason, and it remains a solid and thrilling read.  TMNT Entity rightfully points out how little sense its second part makes, but at the same time, the TMNTA world has never been one of particularly shadowy government agencies, or one with squads of authorities roaming the streets; it’s pretty open.  April is a guest on a tabloid-y show on which live video of the Turtles is shown, and there’s not really outrage or shock, and people are cheering the boys on by the end of the issue.  So for Blind Sight to detail two breakouts of captured Turtles from different types of imprisonment – Mike in part one, Splinter, Raphs and Future Don in part two – the ease with which both occur doesn’t bother me, especially with how adult all of the Turtles are starting to seem.  Mike utters what I think is the first ‘casual’ profanity when using ‘hell’ to not refer to the place, and the way the dudes are hanging around without their insignia belts or masks is very Mirage-y.  The stage has been set for this attitude over tens of issues, but Blindsight was where it really felt like we’d turned the corner toward excepting this wasn’t exactly a kid’s book anymore, which makes it especially sad that we’re pretty much just one storyline away from the end…

The trade is bookended by the clumsy addition of a young turtles fill-in in issue 58 and a weird, rather pointless ‘coda’ to the last few issues’ events in issue 61.  In the former case, Brian Thomas’ art is great, and Stanley Wiater delivers a pretty fun story, but it was so clearly intended for a Special and was given zero consideration, from an editing perspective, and weaving it successfully in as a flashback.  In the latter, while I enjoy seeing Jim Lawson get another opportunity to handle the Archie TMNTs, and with quite a bit more detail than his past outings, the randomness of using the pages to recount a Native American creation tale is jarring, and, just like the fill-in, is not really woven into the storyline well.

In terms of the trade itself: same muddy, dark scans (especially bad on some of the covers in this set…), and a price point that’s the same as some of the trades with a higher page count…