Originally published in: Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #20
Publication date: February, 2006
Story: Steve Murphy
Pencils: Ray-Anthony Height
Inks: Derek Pridolfs
Letters: Eric Talbot
“The Trophy”
Summary:
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Splinter
meditates, taking in the serenity of the forest and its wildlife. Later, he comes across a majestic white-tail
buck, only for the deer to be suddenly shot and killed by a hunter (Bobbie). Bobbie radios his buddy (Keith) and brags
about the amazing trophy he’s going to have for his living room.
Splinter knocks Keith out and steals his clothing. He then sneaks up on Bobbie and disarms
him. Bobbie attempts to flee, but
Splinter easily catches up with him and then paralyzes him with some strategic
blows.
Bobbie begs for his life, but Splinter reminds the hunter
that he has killed not for food but for sport.
Splinter asks if he should not reserve the same privilege to kill him
for “fun”. Bobbie says he has a wife and
kid waiting for him at home. Splinter
points to the buck’s corpse and standing by it are a doe and a yearling. Splinter discards the clothes he’s stolen, tells
Bobbie to consider his actions and vanishes.
Keith catches up to Bobbie and, helping his friend up,
asks what hit them. Bobbie says it was a
monster.
In the hills, Splinter continues his meditation, weeping.
Turtle Tips:
*Chronologically, I would place this story after TMNT(Vol. 1) #62, when Splinter, feeling distant and disturbed after his encounter with the Rat King, had elected to stay and live in the woods.
*The location for this story (the White Mountains of New
Hampshire) comes from the opening editorial by Murphy.
*According to Murphy in the opening editorial, this issue
is based loosely on a personal experience (where he saw an albino white-tail
deer stuffed and mounted in a neighbor’s living room as a child). The deer in this story was originally going
to be albino, but according to Murphy, Laird forced
him to change it.
Review:
Murphy pens another of his usual sermons, this time
dramatizing an event from his youth (which he details in the editorial). I wouldn’t mind the lesson so much, though I
kind of felt Splinter was jumping to conclusions about Bobbie killing for
sport. All Bobbie says over his
walky-talky is that the antlers are going to look good as a trophy. That doesn’t mean Bobbie was going to throw
the rest of the buck away. The personal
story Murphy relates in the editorial involved seeing an entire white-tail
stuffed and put on display, but if Bobbie was just taking the antlers as a
trophy that would seem to indicate he was going to use the rest of the buck to
feed his family. If he was planning on
just cutting off the antlers and leaving the rest of the deer to rot, there was
no implication of that in either the art or the script.
The end result is that Splinter looks like a dick. A dick that jumps to conclusions. On a personal level, I don’t agree with
hunting just for trophies, but I take no exception to hunting for food even if
it is recreational (and in many places, it's encouraged to keep deer populations
down so they don’t overrun their habitat and destroy their ecosystem). Splinter could have at least waited to see if
the guy was going to cut the head off and leave the meat behind, otherwise he
just beat the dude up for the sake of teaching him a lesson he already
knew. And Splinter’s a rat who just
learned how to eat other rats for the sake of survival. Come off your high horse, old man!
It’s a typical habit of Murphy’s even when he has the
best of intentions; he wants to deliver a lesson so badly he doesn’t think the
actual delivery of that lesson through.
So instead of a story about a jerkass game hunter slaughtering animals
for fun instead of food, we get a story where Splinter overreacts, judges
someone without all the facts and then beats the living hell out of him to
boost his own ego.
Ray-Anthony Height’s artwork was nice and I
rather like the look of Splinter in a track suit. It’s funny but fitting and kind of dates the
story in a static timeline sort of way (when I think gaudy track suits, I think
the late 80s and early 90s thanks to present-day-Biff’s fashion sense in the “Back
to the Future” movies). Pridolf’s inking
leaves too much empty white space for my liking, though. It creates the illusion of a bright, sunny
afternoon, but we never get the feeling of shade even when the story enters the
thick of the woods.
Overall, “The Trophy” is just one in a hundred examples
of Murphy meaning well but rushing his ideas to paper without properly
developing them to get the point across.
If anything, when read after “City at War”, you could interpret this as
Splinter dealing with his own guilt over having to eat rats to survive the
winter and taking those emotions out on anyone he can, even if they don’t
really deserve it.
Grade: F (as in, “For man is the greatest enemy of the
forest, according to ‘Bambi’.”)