Originally published in: Turtle Soup (Vol. 2) #3
Publication date: January, 1992
Story and art: Michael Dooney
Colors: Steve Lavigne
Lettering: Mary Kelleher
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Attack!!! Part 3”
Summary:
As the robots appear from Henry’s time gauntlet, the
Turtles prepare for yet another weird throwdown. With some effort, Don and Mike successfully
take out the tank with arms while Leo and Raph obliterate the serpentine robot.
That settled, Raph is ready to pick up where he left off
and throttle Henry. Leo calms him down
and demands an explanation. Henry tells
them about the time gauntlet and shares another piece of bad news: As the
gauntlet is meant as an observation device, time has been “frozen” around them
(hence why no one in Florence has noticed all the fighting). Even worse, it won’t “unfreeze” until they
figure out how to work the gauntlet and send Henry and Betti home.
Don gets to work helping Henry figure out the gauntlet
(to seemingly no progress) while Mikey teaches Betti how to twirl some
nunchakus. After an hour of this, Betti
starts to get bored and bugs Don and Henry.
She decides to show them which button she pushed that caused the whole
fiasco and accidentally unleashes a trio of samurai warriors. Raphael groans in frustration…
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles Attack!!! Part 2. The story
concludes in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Attack!!! Part 4.
Review:
Well hey, at least we got an explanation as to why no one
in town seemed to notice the giant turtle people battling a bunch of dinosaurs
and robots. That was starting to bug
me. Of course, if the gauntlet freezes
everything when sending users through the time stream, why weren’t the Turtles frozen
along with everybody else in Florence?
Because then this would have been a really shitty comic,
I guess.
As is a well known fact, Dooney draws only the shiniest
of robots thanks to his skilled inking, so the two kill-bots that appear in
this segment of the story look suitably chromed. Steve Lavigne’s colors are especially
impressive on the robots, using color gradients and light reflections on their
polished surfaces. Reminds me of the old
Heavy Metal magazine covers only without all the tits.
Anyway, we’re almost through with “Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles Attack!!!”. In retrospect, I
probably should have reviewed all four segments in one sitting, as there isn’t
a whole lot to say about the story in 6-page chunks. One little detail I’ve neglected to mention
is that Betti is proportioned not like a midget, but like a normal woman scaled down in size as compared to the Turtles.
Like a miniature person. It gives
her this subtle alien look that’s fitting, considering her origin.
Grade: T (as in, “The presence of time-displaced samurai
warriors gives me flashbacks to ‘TMNT III’, which I guess is the worst thing I
can say about this whole story”.)
