Publication date: September, 1995
Story and pencils: Jim Lawson
Inks: Eric Talbot
Letters: Mary Kelleher
Colors: Eric Vincent and Altered Earth Arts
Cover: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman
“The Rescue”
Summary:
Outside the DARPA facility, Don and Nobody do some recon
and realize that there’s no way to sneak in without being spotted. Braunze formulates a plan and psychically brainwashes
Casey into thinking that he’s the greatest assault team leader in the
world. Casey interprets this as “Arnold Schwarzenegger”
and fearlessly attacks and crashes a DARPA truck, knocking out the drivers (all
whilst talking with an Austrian accent).
They gun it toward the facility, but the guards are
already aware of their presence and send choppers to shoot them. Nobody crashes the chopper with his bazooka
while Casey drives the van straight through a fence and into a garage. As Mike seals the garage, Nobody shoots all
the guards inside. Casey then hops onto
a motorcycle and drives it through a door and down a guarded hallway. He jumps off the bike, letting it crash into
the guards, then shoots the gas tank with his assault rifle. The bike explodes, killing the guards.
Braunze then leads them to the lab where many aliens are
being stored in kryo-tubes. Braunze
recognizes an old friend (a purple alien with a flat head) and frees him from
the tube. The Turtles recognize a
familiar face, too: a Triceraton. Seeing
them, the Triceraton awakens and smashes through his tube. The purple alien suggests the Triceraton set aside old
grudges and work with the Turtles to escape.
The Triceraton agrees. They then
free a third alien (a Chinarian) and make their way to some of the other labs
on the sub levels.
When they reach engineering, the purple alien suggests
that they don’t touch anything, as all the tech has been salvaged from alien
spacecraft and is dangerous. Secretly, the Triceraton
spots his sub-space homing beacon and checks to see if it’s still
operational. Much to his surprise, it’s
already been activated.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT (Vol. 2) #10. The story continues in TMNT (Vol. 2) #12.
*The Triceraton was last seen in TMNT (Vol. 1) #7, when
the TCRI building was destroyed by the Utrom transmat and he was left behind on
Earth.
*This issue also contained a bonus comic, “Bog, part 4 of
5” by Ryan Brown, Chris Allan, Matt Roach, Dave Vance and Altered Earth Arts.
Review:
Ugh. Here we go. The point where Volume 2 completely lost me.
The assault on DARPA, by all rights, should be a very
exciting story arc. The events had been seeded since
Volume 2 began and it even offers a nostalgic throwback to the original outer space
adventure from Volume 1. There’s also a
healthy number of supporting characters and plenty of action.
Unfortunately, the way Lawson realizes the storyline is
just not to my liking. My first
grievance is with the treatment of Casey.
The idea that he’s so worthless he has to be brainwashed into being
brave and reckless is just a load of crap.
For one thing, being brave and reckless is Casey’s forte’. And secondly, I hate stories that regard him
as a liability, so far beneath the Turtles (or Nobody or Braunze) that his
weight either has to be carried or he has to be “fixed” in order not to be a
fuckup. That’s the way he was handled in
the 4Kids cartoon and I absolutely despised it.
In this story, he’s designated the weak link and Braunze has to turn him
into a completely different person in order to make him useful.
Fuck that.
And boy, the Turtles, Nobody and Casey sure do kill a lot
of people in this one. I have to wonder
just how “evil” these DARPA guards are.
They’re working for the Government, so they’re US soldiers. Are they all aware of the sinister
machinations going on in the base, or are they just carrying out dreary sentry
assignments with no clue of the depraved classified activities occurring
underground? I’m leaning toward the
latter scenario. While our heroes have
every right to want to storm the base and save their brother, they’re doing it
at the expense of the lives of people with no clue what’s going on.
Incidentally, if all this seems just a little familiar to
you, then congratulations: You read TMNT Adventures #60 a year ago. Published in September, 1994, that issue
featured the Turtles storming Area 51 to save Future-Donatello and
(contemporary) Raphael, teaming up with other aliens captured in the facility
to do it. And guess what? That issue wasn’t very good, either.
Lawson’s art looks really rushed again, as characters and
their proportions fluctuate madly from panel to panel. The panel on page 13 of Casey holding the
machine gun is absolutely ridiculous looking.
Sadly, the DARPA arc is only going to get worse, at least
in its flippant treatment of (non Turtle) characters, anyway.
Grade: D (as in, “Dong.
Triceraton dong. Enjoy”.)
