4 out of 5

Yeah, fair enough, nostalgia’s running strong on this one.  As a huge TMNT fan, and having read my fair share of Archie as a kid, I reveled in this special.  I recognized it wasn’t really that special – the actual mash-up is hilariously low key – but it felt like a bizzarro blend of worlds that I wasn’t used to seeing in my youthly comic reading, and the special also has the more “adult” art of Don Simpson, Jim Lawson (in something a little closer to his Mirage style), and Dave Garcia-as-inked-by-Steve Bissette, so the book stood out.  I also do think the stories err more toward fun or interesting than not, so even without my googly lovey eyes on, it’s a good read.

We kick off with our ‘cover story,’ Green Legs and Gams, which somehow splits Turtles / Archie pencils between Ken Mitchroney and Stan Goldberg, meaning I have no idea who did that backgrounds.  Ryan Brown and ‘Dean Clarrain’ (only in quotes here because Stephen Murphy – a.k.a. Clarrain – is also credited on a story) spin up a 24-pager in which Cudley drops the TMNT in Riverdale; Mike gets a quick lesson in multiverses; the boys witness Veronica Lodge being kidnapped; and everyone has a pizza party.  Some other minor stuff might happen.  It’s all incredibly harmless, but goofily so, and Mitchroney’s art is energetic as always.  Hotdog has some funny zingers.

Clarrain returns for haunted ship tale Red Sails in the Sunset.  Artist Don Simpson is definitely an acquired taste, but… I dig him.  His scale-y Turtles and, like, 40s reporter-type April are just wonderfully offbeat looking, and give the story a pantomime kind of quality that works well with its tone.

Next up is a colorized reprint of a Mirage giveaway – Storm Drain Savers.  Since this was just an environmental doomsday pamphlet about recycling (written by Murphy, natch), I’m not digging in to the content so much, but the Jim Lawson pencils and – somehow – Laird, Dooney, Lavigne, Talbot and Dan Berger all on inks – rockets this up as being a noteworthy inclusion.

The special closes with Origin of the Species, which sorta functions as a standard ‘Shredder makes another mutant’ tale, but, while the ‘moral’ is pretty standard, it also ends rather surprisingly darkly, which matches the edge Bissette gives to Garcia’s pencils.