Publication date: November, 2004
Plot: Steve Murphy
Script: Dean Clarrain (Steve Murphy)
Art: Chris Allan
Letters: Eric Talbot
Frontispiece: Dan Berger
“Scars”
Summary:
Frontispiece: Sitting in a graveyard after dark, Cha Ocho
peels an apple and thinks about how he’s tasted the fruit from the Tree of
Forbidden Knowledge… and found the flavor to be bitter. He decides to tell a story to all the fools
out there who haven’t had a taste, yet…
1984.
Chinatown. Heading home from
karate practice, a 9 year-old Cha Ocho is excited to show his mom the moves he
just learned. He leads her
into an alley so he can have room to show off, which of course gets them
cornered by a street gang. Before the
four muggers can kill them, Leonardo drops down from the rooftops and takes
them out in 5 seconds. Cha tells Leo he
wants to be just like him when he grows up.
Before vanishing, Leo tells Cha “No you don’t”.
1998. St. Thomas
Church. Cha, now a police officer, weds
the love of his life, Kate. Sometime
after that, they’re down in the Times Square subway station, waiting for their
train. A perp comes running by the
platform being tailed by two transit officers.
Cha decides to let the officers handle it. Suddenly, the perp pulls out a gun, fires at
the officers, misses, hits Kate and the impact sends her reeling off the
platform, onto the tracks, where she’s promptly run over by a train. The perp escapes.
1999. The 17th
Precinct. Cha is furious at the Police
Chief for putting Kate’s murder in the cold case files. The Chief tries to level with him, that there
simply isn’t any forensic evidence or available suspects and that the force has to move on to other cases. Cha
demands to be put on the case to keep it going, but the Chief reminds him about
conflict-of-interest rules; that he’s too close to the case to be involved in
it. Cha throws down his badge and quits
the force in anger.
2000. The Foot
Clan training center in Brooklyn. Cha
passes his final exam and is initiated into the Clan by Karai.
2001. The 17th
Precinct. Using his newly acquired Foot
Soldier training, Cha sneaks into the file room and leaves with the info on his
wife’s case. He’s stopped on the roof by
Leonardo, who had a feeling the Foot Clan hadn’t gone legit like they
claimed. Cha recognizes Leo and tells
the Turtle how he inspired him. He then
explains the whole story about why he’s stealing the file and Leo agrees to
assist him.
Down in the lair, Cha and Leo look over the clues and
come to the conclusion that Lawrence McKinney is the likeliest suspect, as he “fell
off the face of the Earth” shortly after the time of the murder and was never
able to be found for questioning. Cha
wants to hunt McKinney down like an animal and Splinter reminds him that he
should consider whether he is out for vengeance or justice. With Don working on a project, Mikey reading
comics and Raph with a broken arm, Leo is left to accompany Cha on his task
alone.
They do some sleuthing and clues lead them to the
Dockside Bar, where McKinney is reported to hang out. Cha puts his katana to a patron’s neck and
demands answers. The patron says that
McKinney has been homeless ever since an incident a few years ago and hasn’t
been the same. Cha storms out, figuring
the “incident” was his wife’s murder.
Leo reminds Cha to cool it, as he nearly killed the patron back there in
his anger.
The pair search every homeless shelter in the city and
they eventually come to the last on the list: St. Thomas Church. Climbing the stairs, they find McKinney
sleeping in a box and Cha immediately places his blade on the homeless man’s
neck. Cha reminds him of the murder and
McKinney confesses. Before Cha can kill
him, Leo holds him back, allowing McKinney to run and hide in the church. Leo tells Cha that killing the man would be
dishonorable; against the Bushido code he swore to when he joined the
Foot. Cha smashes Leo in the mouth with
the hilt of his sword and runs into the church.
Cha confronts McKinney on the altar. McKinney pulls out a pocket knife and swears
it was an accident; that he’s been living with the guilt of what he did all
these years. Cha promptly chops off
McKinney’s hand and holds his sword up to his neck. McKinney stutters a plea for forgiveness
which Cha denies, decapitating McKinney.
Witnessing this, Leo tells Cha that he went too far; that
he committed a dishonorable act. Leo tells
him that there is no honor in killing for vengeance. Cha reminds Leo that he and his clan killed
the Shredder, TWICE, as an act of vengeance on their own master’s behalf. Leo counters by saying that their acts of
vengeance only created a cycle of violence that got many innocent people
killed. Leo then lays down his swords and picks up
McKinney’s pocket knife. He tells Cha
that he’s going to “teach him a lesson”.
The two fight and Leo counters all of Cha’s sword attacks with the dinky
knife. He then breaks Cha’s blade with
the knife and slices a huge gash across Cha’s face. Leo tells him that he’ll have to wear that “mark
of shame” for the rest of his life and vanishes.
Sometime later, Cha reflects. He considers how he used to hate Leo for what
he did, but now he only pities him. He
pities the Turtle for living a repressed, suffocated life. Trapped in the sewers, Leo can never
experience the beauty of the surface world.
And trapped within his own outmoded dogma and self-righteousness, he isn’t
able to see the world in anything beyond simple black and white. Cha feels that Leo’s life is even lonelier
than his.
Sitting down at Kate’s grave, Cha begins peeling an apple
and starts to tell her a story about heroes and villains and those who fall
somewhere in between…
Turtle Tips:
*This story takes place during the Mirage “Volume 3” era, very close to the beginning of TMNT Volume 4, given the date of 2001.
*Cha Ocho will forge a friendship with Raphael in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #28 and continue his rivalry with Leonardo in TMNT (Vol. 4) #6.
*The Turtles killed the Shredder in TMNT (Vol. 1) #1,
again in TMNT (Vol. 1) #21, and their acts of vengeance eventually spiraled out
of control into the “City at War”, beginning in TMNT (Vol. 1) #50.
*I don’t think we ever learn the circumstances behind
Raphael’s broken arm.
*This issue also included a back-up story, “The Raisin'”
by Muphy, Lawson and Talbot, and a bonus pin-up by Chris Herndon Dan Berger.
Review:
With the power of retrospect at our fingertips, just
about everything involving Cha Ocho seems really, really embarrassing.
When Peter Laird introduced him in the pages of TMNT
Volume 4, he seemed to think that he really had something with this
character. Cha Ocho was treated like he
was sure to be the. Next. Big.
Thing. He was going to be the
breakout character of TMNT Volume 4 and Tales Volume 2 and become as famous an
addition to the recurring stable of TMNT personalities as Baxter Stockman,
Leatherhead and the Rat King.
Yeah, well, that didn’t happen.
Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) would introduce a lot of new
characters, built up like they were a shoe-in for the. Next.
Big. Thing. Characters like the Foot Mystic trio, the
Mistress, Hamato Yoshi’s niece and so on.
But the reality is that introducing a character is the easy part. Cultivating them into interesting personalities
that readers would want to latch onto and care about for years to come? That takes time and dedication. Mirage’s staff had the time, but not so much
the dedication. At least, not to the new
characters they were introducing in rapid succession with lots of trumpeting
fanfare. Cha Ocho is just another one of
those discarded “next big thing” characters; excitedly introduced and then
quickly forgotten.
So with that in mind, this issue here is an extended
origin story for a character who will proceed to do absolutely, positively
NOTHING in the future except glower in the background and sneer awkwardly at
Leonardo. I suppose what you’re better
off doing is categorizing this story in the same vein as Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #46 and Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #65. These are all stories that chronicle the
lives of various members of the Foot Clan and how their antagonistic
interactions with the Turtles have affected them. These sorts of stories try to add a sense of
humanity to the faceless villains by fleshing out their home lives and
backgrounds. So I would recommend
reading “Scars” in that context and not as the overblown origin story to “The
Sensational Character-Find of 2004”.
“Scars” is a better story than I remembered it being in
the past, at least when it comes to the climax, as Cha and Leo trade lessons
and morality nuggets back and forth.
From Leo’s point of view, he’s been there and done that and can say from
experience that vengeance never solves anything, but that violence begets more
violence. Unfortunately, he’s a total
dick about it, wrapping it up in monologues about honor and the Bushido (by the
way, “Bushido” is not ancient scripture, but imperialist propaganda
commissioned in the early 20th century by the Japanese military to
better indoctrinate nationalism and the glory of dying for one’s country into
the population) and then scarring Cha with a “mark of shame” so he could think
about what he’s done.
While Leo may have
meant well, he’s still projecting his own personal experiences onto another
individual and rarely are two people’s situations entirely comparable. And Leo can talk all day and night about “what
he’s learned” over the previous two decades, but that doesn’t take away the
fact that he’s killed countless scores of people, himself. It’s hard to take exposition about the evils
of killing seriously from a murderer.
And ANYWAY, Leo’s own example about the cycle of violence caused by
vengeance killings doesn’t even hold up if you’ve actually read “City at War”. Do you know how Leo solved his cycle of
violence problems and earned that sweet Foot Clan peace treaty? By killing and killing and killing until
eventually he killed everyone that could cause shit for him.
He is NO moral high ground to be looking up to and has no
business applying “marks of shame” to anybody.
Then there’s Cha, who kills a man as he surrenders and
begs for forgiveness and swears that the murder he committed has haunted him
ever since. Yeah, that’s not so
cool. BUT, if McKinney had REALLY felt
just awful about killing Kate, why didn’t he turn himself in during the 3 years
since? Dude had his chance to make
things right and pay his dues. This was
just the consequences catching up to him.
I think the idea was that this was supposed to be a
crossroads for Cha; he could have walked the path of a “hero” if he spared
McKinney’s life or he could have transformed into a “villain” by seeking bloody
vengeance. Or, at least, that’s the
black and white view Leo seems to use.
In his inner monologue at the end, Cha expresses that things just aren’t
so conveniently black and white and though he killed the man who murdered his
wife, that doesn’t necessarily make him a villain, either.
Now, what BOTHERS me is that all this is like a bad “What
If” issue of Spider-Man. Murphy (under
his “Clarrain” pseudonym) doesn’t even try to hide the source of inspiration,
with Cha deciding not to stop McKinney when he had the chance because of a “not
my job” excuse and that selfish choice backfiring tragically. But when Peter Parker tracked down the
burglar who shot Uncle Ben, he chose to spare his life and become a hero. When Cha Ocho tracked down the perp who shot
Kate, he chose to decapitate him and become, I dunno, a Foot Soldier with
personality or something.
It’s all a bit labored and confused and I’ve had plenty
of discussions with other fans who came away with totally different
interpretations of this story. I think
just by virtue that fans can talk about the issue and make cases for their
various readings, that “Scars” is successful in its endeavor. There’re shades of grey in both sides of the
conflict and neither Cha nor Leo are wholly vilified or righteous in their
actions. Of course, what this really
means is that we’ve got two jerks yelling at each other and you may not care if
either of them are right or wrong because they’re both such douches.
As for everything else, we have Chris Allan artwork and
that’s always a plus. He seemed to get
saddled with a lot of the lousier scripts during his contributions to Tales
Volume 2 and that was sort of a shame.
And speaking of “lousy scripts”, Murphy was really struggling with the
dialogue, here. Cha is obnoxious in his
slang and trash talk, saying things like, “I got more juice than Minute Maid
and Tropicana combined!” and “I’m chilling.
I’m a regular Mr. Frosty”. Yeesh.
“Scars” is… eeehhhh.
I remembered it being a lot worse than it actually was and the morality
struggle between two deeply flawed yet arrogantly self-righteous individuals is
interesting to read, even if you may not come out thinking either of them was “right”. Great art from Chris Allan, so it’s got that
going for it regardless of any other setbacks you may or may not detect.
Grade: C (as in, “Cha Ocho is just such a silly
name. Not Sgt. Bananas or Mondo Gecko
levels of silly, but still pretty silly”.)
