3 out of 5

I can understand someone not liking this who-asked-for-this ‘crossover’.  Those quotes represent that The Conservation Corps weren’t, like, a recognized brand – this was their first appearance – and the generally eye-rolling, ham-fisted environmental messages in the TMNTA books were obviously the entire premise of this book…  As a kid, I know that I wasn’t too keen on educational pap, and while I suffered from TMNT frenzy (then and now), this book only merited the most casual of perusals: besides the subject matter and featured characters not being of much interest, the ongoing series had already well gotten in to its more ‘serious’ tone by this point, and this book was more clearly a callback to the early, goofier days.

But you know what?  It’s not bad.  Because writers Paul Castiglia and Dan Nakrosis take a very straight-forward, nigh dumb approach to the oil-spilling / toxic-waste tsk-tsking, it doesn’t reek of the same pontificating that Steve Murphy would get up to when he would exposit on whatever that issue’s momentary target was; this habit of Murphy’s also led to some glaring dollops of ignorance – calling foul on something egregious while dispensing with other details – whereas The Conservation Corps are fighting an evil duck covered in toxic oil.  That’s kinda it.

That simplicity goes a long way.  Sure, there’s bait for an ongoing series – a Green Lantern-esque origin for our four transformed animals (each with the power of some nature-fueled something or other) asks if we want to know more about their secret FIFTH member (gasp!) – but otherwise, even with the extended page length of a special, we get a quick setup, a quick meetup with the TMNT, and then a ridiculously silly battle.  I mean, the evil duck’s plan is to use rocket launchers of oil to blast the Earth into the sun, because… uh…. evil?, and so it has good goofiness factor as well.

And I can’t get over that they wrangled Stan Sakai and Sergio Aragones into doing pinups.  Super weird.

Is it relevant, in any way, to the TMNTA ongoing?  Hecka no, and Castiglia and Nakrosis rather humorously have trouble justifying anyone’s role in this thing – each turtle, and each CC member, has their weapon / power hackneyed into the resolution – but it has the same kind of standalone charm that the better TMNTA specials did.