Publication date: December, 1994
Story and pencils: Jim Lawson
Inks: Eric Talbot
Letters: Mary Kelleher
Colors: Eric Vincent and Altered Earth Arts
Cover: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman
“Victory?”
Summary:
Down in the sewers, Baxter wakes up. His repair systems had overridden all his
other functions and forcibly powered him down.
Much to Baxter’s surprise, he’s found that his right arm has begun to “grow”
back. He wonders if perhaps he made his
regeneration systems ‘too’ intelligent and now they’ve gained a sort of survival
instinct capable of overpowering his own commands.
In the apartment, Casey gets off the phone with
Nobody. According to Nobody, there are
no reports about Raphael in any of the police databases; in fact, there are no
reports about ANY of them despite all the eye witnesses to the fight
scene. Donatello suspects a cover-up and
suggests they find Baxter’s robot, as its origin may be the key to finding who
took Raph and where they took him to.
After they leave, the Feds staking out their apartment
run a thermo scan, finding only a cat still inside. They’re ordered to ransack the apartment and
take the cat (Kluuuunk!), as it may be extraterrestrial. The Feds begin tearing the place apart, but
their noise alerts Mr. Braunze down in the basement. He runs up to the apartment and tells them to
drop Casey’s things and beat it. The
Feds pull out their guns, but Mr. Braunze exhibits amazing physical prowess and
takes them all down. He then grabs the
Fed named William and orders him to talk.
William refuses, but Braunze says he has no choice as strange hypnotic
rays come out of his eyes.
Back in the sewers, the Turtles and Casey follow the
trail left behind by Baxter. They
hear a tapping on a sewer pipe up ahead and follow the noise. They walk right into Baxter’s trap, as he was
making the noise and leaving the trail to lure them. From a vantage point, he opens fire with his
machinegun, forcing the Turtles and Casey to take cover, then runs down another
tunnel.
They follow him into a section of the sewer covered in ankle-deep water. They
realize it’s a trap too late as Baxter appears on a ledge above them, holding a
live power cable. Baxter drops the
sparking cable, but Leonardo reacts instantly by throwing his katana at it. His sword pins the cable to the wall and the
electricity arcs up to the ledge, striking Baxter. The power is too much and Baxter explodes
into a million pieces.
Once the smoke clears, the Turtles and Casey inspect the
remains of the robot. They find Baxter’s
old glasses and wonder what they were doing inside the robot. Donatello discovers no central memory bank
and comes to the conclusion that Baxter WAS the robot. However, with his brain missing or possibly
destroyed, they’ve no one to question and are back to square one regarding Raph’s
whereabouts.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT (Vol. 2) #8. The story continues in TMNT (Vol. 2) #10.
*The events of the miniseries Donatello: The Brain Thief
take place between this and next issue, explaining what happened to Baxter’s
brain and what the deal with his regeneration systems is.
*Although the cover and indicia date this issue as
August, 1995, the official Mirage TMNT website gives the proper date as
December, 1994.
*Due to a printing error, the “Bog” back-up was once again delayed and does
not appear in this issue.
Review:
The Baxter Stockman arc concludes, ending on a pretty
exciting note, too. While the “rematch”
doesn’t amount to much of a fight, I think we got the big action sequences out
of our systems in the last issue. This
showdown illustrates a bit more cunning on Baxter’s part, as he lures the
Turtles into a trap he took time to set-up beforehand.
It’s a crude one, sure, but it shows his resourcefulness. His first encounter with the Turtles was very
brazen; drawing them out into the open with a show of force and trying to crush
them all with nothing more than brute strength and weaponry. I rather liked seeing Stockman take a
different approach for this issue’s big finish rather than just giving us
another drag-out brawl.
And man, the page where Leo throws his katana at the live
wire and pins it in midair was just a great bit of work from Lawson. I went on about his layout prowess in my last
review, so I won’t repeat myself, but when that guy is firing on all cylinders,
his stuff is incredible. (For an example
of him *not* firing on all cylinders, well, proceed into my reviews for “The
Brain Thief”.)
Speaking of “The Brain Thief”, well, it DOES follow-up on
the big plot point that Baxter brings up at the start of this issue: his
regeneration systems attaining low level sentience. Like a lot of plot threads introduced in this
volume, the early cancellation left it unfulfilled. Much of the Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) era
and its character-themed miniseries were spent tying up the myriad loose ends
leftover from Volume 2’s unceremonious death, so whether you like “The Brain
Thief” or not, it at least provides closure for something this issue spends 5
pages waxing on but never addresses again.
Mr. Braunze, in case you don’t recall, was briefly
introduced a couple issues ago in a bit of foreshadowing. He’s a big part of the DARPA arc that will
finish off Volume 2, but since we haven’t quite gotten there yet, I’ll save my
thoughts for now. All I’ll say is that
he’s one earring away from winning the Mr. Clean lookalike contest.
What else is there to say about this one other than
KLUNK! They finally remembered
Klunk! Sure, we don’t SEE him, but he’s
mentioned. I was starting to worry about
that little kitty.
Grade: B- (as in, “But seriously, The Brain Thief is like
1 issue of content, 3 issues of Donatello running down sewer tunnels. Lawson’s great at cinematic decompression
with his layouts, but sometimes he goes a little too far”.)
