3 out of 5

Moon Eyes, the concluding Clarrain arc from TMNTA isn’t a bad story, it’s just something that would have ideally been added to later on.  Instead, the book was reconfigured after this (see the final two issue ‘Early Years’ entries, also collected here) before being canceled, leaving us with a four part series in which Ninjara grows up a little but Raph mostly acts like a big baby.  I mean, his behavior, unfortunately, is believable: whether teenaged or not, people in relationships act like this – selfishly when they think they’re acting for the other person; jumping to jealousy as soon as any doubts creep in – and it’s interesting that Clarrain attempts some uncommon-for-comics relationship maturity in Ninjara realizing that she needs to go her own way, but this is all sort of clunkily woven through a road trip involving other mutant foxes, and their disturbingly predatory clan leader (although maybe there’s some ‘alpha male’ commentary going on there), and coming off the back of the wholly unrelated Future Turtles arc, this feels like another set of issues kind of spinning its wheels while Clarrain figures out where to take the book, resetting his characters in the meanwhile.

The final two Steve Sullivan-scripted ‘Early Years’ issues are actually half great, and make for an inventive way for the TMNT to have taken up their weapon preferences.  Issue 71 is bizarelly sloppy on all fronts – Sullivan, having proven to make consistent scripts in the Specials, bungles his way through framing and introductions, and Brian Thomas, a highlight of the Specials, draws up some ugly-ass characters and action.  But then issue 72 is suddenly fun and exacting: the dialogue is smart and silly quippy, and Thomas’ art is back on top.  Also reprinted here are the reprints of shorts from the Archie meets TMNT book that were in the original 71 and 72.

What’s not reprinted are the Jim Lawson drawn Inky backups in the Moon Eyes issues, and that, my friends, is balls.  I’m sure this was a page count consideration, since our regular 19.99 price tag manages six issues (as opposed to the four or five we’ve been averaging), but it’s balls nonetheless, as I think it’s the first thing they’ve just completely left out of these issues.  I’m also rankled by how the back cover copy makes no mention of this being the end of the regular series.  Sure, some other trades might be coming, collecting the minis or whatnot, but, I dunno – just mention that this was it, maybe?  It sort of adds to the whole underwhelming feel of Moon Eyes that the trade can’t even admit it was over after this.  Given that that’s just my opinion, of course, there’s then the reprint quality: trying, perhaps, to fix the darkness of some of the scans, this trade goes the opposite direction, lightening the art to the extent that some pages are washed out.  You just can’t win.