3 out of 5

I reread – to near shreds – a lot of my Archie Turtles comic books.  I have fond memories of reading over Wingnut’s and Screwloose’s first appearances; marveling at Jim Lawson’s oddball art on the Chameleon issue; digging the transition from early TV adaptations to original material.

…And I also remember looking at some of the issues contained in this trade – which drop the boys in Africa (after a somewhat disappointing conclusion to their Maligna battle) and pound on the environmental themes with a ten-ton hammer – with a resigned huff of realizing that I’d have to reread them to get to the good stuff.

It’s cool having Jagwar and Dreadmon introduced in a one-two, and then to revisit with Man-Ray again, but none of these characters would matter all of that much until Mutanimals, and since Clarrain and Brown have shown us they can and will do multi-issue stories, the loose “man is bad nature is good” theme doesn’t offer much meat to these tales.  Great Ken Mitchroney art, though.

The reprinting from IDW is mostly clear, but there are some weird digitization artifacts on the lettering and some of the lines.