3 out of 5

The IDW Turtles made me quit collecting current TMNT.  Too much fan-service, and horrificly soapy writing that removed all sense of, to me, Turtleness.  That IDWs ‘animated’ kids-geared TMNT series refused to butt out of the one-shot (or short story) format rankled against expectations set by the older kids series from Archie, and when Rise of the TMNT became this unwatchable sludge of hip, cool modernness, I was… done.  Not done with the Turtles, but done with whatever was going on in the modern era, or at least until their next iteration changed things up again.

Taking the pause in scooping up the nine million Turtles-related books IDW seemed to be printing or reprinting to go back and read that Archie series, my initial thought to stick to the ongoing eventually floated outward to some of the Specials and minis that came out at that time.  And I was reminded: the Turtles have a long history of letting other people into the sandbox to kinda sorta do whatever they want.

Now, my feelings toward what I’ve mentioned above still remain; and I still think that the vast majority of Mirage / Archie-era TMNT is much more identifiable to the brand than, say, Rise.  But as my readings have ventured out to things like The May East Saga, my tolerance might be increasing: I’d like to reread the IDW books without any expectations, and rewatch Rise with the same.  Because sometimes some batshit things can happen – like giving April magic powers, and turning her into a giant mecha robot – and it can actually be danged entertaining, and if I hadn’t bought these books way back when, strictly out of fandom, I couldn’t experience my appreciation of it now.

So congratulations, oddball miniseries from Stanley Wiater and Bob Fingerman: you’ve maybe unbroken my TMNT love, with one of the more often maligned series from the Archie era.

An immediate thing that will likely determine whether or not they can get into this series is Fingerman’s art: Bob draws with kind of a Big Daddy Roth sense of extremism, blended with his own notably chunky line style and expressiveness.  The TMNT take on a roided-up look, but they’re goofy as well; April becomes a 40s dame moll type, and Splinter looks like a straight-up rat.  I… loved it.  It’s absolutely Fingerman’s thing, but he commits to it, and with Barry Grossman’s colors and Fingerman’s comic sans-y lettering, the whole thing is just very out there and overblown, and yet grounded by Bob’s consistency within his own style.  Stephen DeStefano’s inks on issue 2 are interesting – a little more squirrely, somehow more fitting for a kid’s book, but Bob looks best inking himself.

The story is all over the place, generally in the most stupidly delightful fashion.  It makes very little sense, but seeing as how issue #1 has a cover tribute to classic fantasy book artist Kelly Freas, I think Bob and Stanley Wiater were just teaming up to come up with outlandish sequences – giving us the aforementioned kaiju moment; April in a slick white ninja outfit battling a skull-bikinied sorceress – and linking it loosely together with a “story” about a magic-imbued ancestor of April’s trying to take over the world.  Some of the dialogue and lettering is admittedly sloppy – reading sequences get cluttered; punchlines don’t land – but on the whole, the first two issues are just weird and fun.

Issue three… falls apart, unfortunately.  We continue on with the kookiness, as the TMNT shrink down for some Inner Space action inside of Splinter, but then Wiater runs out of ideas, resulting in the baddie almost literally shrugging at the end of a battle and wandering off with vague “I’ll get you next time…” sentiments that make very little sense in context.  Fingerman’s art is still mostly solid, but the intra-body stuff is maybe too vague for his sensibilities, as the art becomes both bland and confusing at the same time, and a “race” to get out before everyone goes back to regular size is hampered by both these scripting and artly shortcomings.

Oh well.