Publication date: November, 1994
Story and pencils: Jim Lawson
Inks: Eric Talbot
Letters: Mary Kelleher
Colors: Eric Vincent
Cover: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman
“Face Off”
Summary:
On the rooftop, Don and Nobody confront Baxter Stockman. Stockman responds by plucking up a chunk of
brick wall and hurling it at Nobody, striking him. Stockman then hears a police chopper
approaching and bids a hasty farewell to the Turtles. To cover his escape, he attempts to fire a
missile, but the damage he took during his fight with Raph causes his missile
launching systems to malfunction. The
missile explodes inside him, obliterating his right arm and much of his upper
torso.
Enraged, Stockman grabs Raph’s unconscious body and
dangles it over the side of the building, threatening to drop him if Don or
Nobody try to stop his escape. With the
police closing in, Nobody tells Don to retreat with Leo, Mike and Casey while
he rescues Raph. As Don picks Leo up,
his brother asks him what he’s doing in New York. Don explains that April called him and told
him everything.
With the roof cleared and the cops closing in, Nobody
pulls a bazooka out of his duffle bag and points it at Stockman. Stockman tells him to drop his weapon or he’ll
drop Raph. Nobody discards his bazooka,
but Stockman hurls Raph over the side of the building, anyway. He then opens fire on Nobody, who dodges the
attack and clears out just as the police chopper arrives. Police officers open fire on Stockman, who
leaps in the air and grabs the legs of the helicopter. His weight pulls the chopper down to the
street onto a crowd of cops where it promptly explodes. Stockman emerges from the flames even more
damaged and limps off.
Don gets Leo, Mike and Casey to the safety of an
abandoned basement and goes to see what the explosion he heard was all
about. He finds the streets swarming
with cops and meets up with Nobody in an abandoned building. Nobody delivers the bad news that Raph is
missing. Don is furious, but Nobody says
there was nothing he could do. And there
may be a chance Raph survived the fall, as his body hasn’t turned up anywhere
despite all the police surveillance in the streets where he should have
landed. Don and Nobody split up; Don
going to look for Raph while Nobody uses his police identity to search official
records for any reports on their friend.
Down in the sewers, the badly damaged Baxter Stockman
lumbers through a tunnel. His internal
systems have restored as much as they can, but he begins to feel feint and
collapses.
In a lab somewhere, Raphael awakens, strapped to table
with strange machines surrounding him.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT (Vol. 2) #7. The story continues in TMNT (Vol. 2) #9.
*Leo had a premonition of Raph being taken to a lab and
strapped to a table in TMNT (Vol. 2) #1.
*This issue contained a back-up story, “Bog, part 3 of 5”
by Ryan Brown, Chris Allan, Matt Roach, Dave Vance and Altered Earth Colors. Yes, part 3. The editors screwed up the order of the back-up installments.
Review:
Say what you want about Jim Lawson (and I know I’ve said
my share of critical things), but that guy can lay out a fight scene like
nobody’s business (or Nobody’s business, in the case of this issue). Even if you don’t care for his finished
pencils, he decompresses and sets up a battle with some excellent precision,
creating a great sense of motion, weight and a smooth, flowing transition from
panel to panel. That helicopter crash was amazing; very cinematic
stuff. While I wouldn’t say this is
quite up to the level of his work on “City at War”, it still looks very good
(well, I probably could have done without Robot Baxter’s Buns of Steel, but
that’s a nitpick).
I made a big hullabaloo last issue about all four Turtles
finally reuniting for the first time this volume, and I’m sure everybody else reading the comic was excited for that, too.
Lawson pulls a fast one with this issue, though, as Raph is immediately
separated from his brothers and the team is incomplete once again. It was a nice bit of misdirection on Lawson’s
part, dangling some expectations in front of you and then jerking them back at
the last second. The penultimate
showdown with Baxter isn’t even a fair fight.
With all four Turtles “reuniting” in this issue, you probably expected
to see them stand together for the first time in Volume 2 and show some classic
teamwork. Instead, they’re all bruised
and beaten and Don’s part in the showdown consists of helping the wounded to
safety. Nobody gets more action in this
issue and even he takes it on the chin for the most part.
Baxter’s been built up all volume and I think he lives up
to his hype. He terrorizes April and
absolutely wrecks the Turtles in their first encounter. A lucky shot from Raph is all that kept him
from winning (and the interference from the cops). And for a “lost” fight, he still manages to
come out on top, causing Raph to disappear (to say nothing of the time-delayed
doom he infected April with just prior).
Even after Baxter is defeated in the final confrontation, his actions in
this arc will have lasting effects on the rest of Volume 2 and into Volume 4.
And to go off on a tangent, that’s one of the best
qualities of the Mirage TMNT comic; that their major battles all had lasting
ramifications that would continue to plague the Turtles even after the fight had
finished. We all know what happened when
they killed the Shredder (twice) and how that came back to bite them. And the same is true for their rematch with
Baxter Stockman; the villain may be physically out of the picture but his
presence lingers for years and years.
Barring the episodic fair from Tales of the TMNT and the “guest” issues
of Volume 1, when it comes to arc-driven storytelling, there is no simple “bad
guy dies/goes to jail and we call it a day” conclusion. Everything the TMNT does has consequences
often far worse than the initial ordeal.
In fact, “consequences”, I would dare say is the primary overarching theme of
Mirage’s TMNT series. Sooner or
later, EVERYTHING comes back to bite them in the ass.
The Baxter Stockman arc of Volume 2 is almost over and
the seeds have been planted for the next and final arc of Volume 2, but that’s
a topic for another review. I will say
that the four primary arcs of Volume 2 each offer a lot of variety in tone and
topic, so I’d like to think the entire volume is worth reading if you’re new to
it. Even if you don’t like it at the
start or in the middle, you’re bound to find something enjoyable in at least 1
of the 4 major arcs.
Grade: B+ (as in, “By the way, Eric Vincent's colors look especially good in this issue.”)
