Originally published in: TMNT New Animated Adventures #9
Publication date: March 26, 2014
Story: Kenny Byerly
Art: Chad Thomas
Colors: Heather Breckel
Letters: Shawn Lee
Edits: Bobby Curnow
“Metalhead Games”
Summary:
Down in the lair, Donatello is bragging to Raphael about
the new (potentially unstable) lithium-ion battery upgrade he’s installing in
Metalhead. Raph proceeds to make fun of
Don’s nerdiness, causing Don to challenge Raph to a sparring match. They take it to the dojo, where Raph easily
trashes the dork.
Later, as Raph brags about his victory to Leonardo and
Michelangelo in the living room, Don comes screaming out of his lab. He says that the Kraang have found a way to
take control of Metalhead remotely and that the heavily armed robot is going
bonkers. Metalhead comes bursting out of
the lab, beats everyone up and then flies out of a manhole cover via his rocket
boosters.
The Turtles chase Metalhead to the New York Public
Library where the battle escalates to the rooftop. As Metalhead rains down laserfire, Raph begs
for Don to use his book-smarts to find a clever way to stop the robot. Don reveals that the entire fiasco was a
prank orchestrated by himself and his brothers to teach Raph a lesson. But AHA!
Raph knew it all along and secretly stole Metalhead’s remote from. Raph intends to make Don beg for the remote
back, when suddenly one of Metalhead’s rocket-punches destroys the remote. Now REALLY out of control, Metalhead takes his aerial rampage
to Times Square.
The Turtles hop into their go-cart buggy and give
chase. Leo and Mikey detach their half
of the buggy and hit Metalhead with a grappling line. Metalhead promptly lifts them up into the
sky. Raph and Don use their own
grappling line to hoist themselves to the roof of One Times Square. Raph admonishes Don for starting this whole
mess just because he has to feel like he’s smarter than everybody. Don explains that he’s never tried to make
Raph feel dumb and apparently their whole melodrama was a big misunderstanding.
Coming up with a plan, Don and Raph work together to
rewire the New Year’s Eve Ball. They
radio Leo and tell him to lure Metalhead over to One Times Square. Leo and Mike disengage their buggy from the grappling line and land on an
adjacent rooftop. Metalhead turns around
and flies after them, but gets the grappling line caught on the ball’s
post. Don flips the switch, electrifying
the ball and channeling all the power into Metalhead. His new lithium-ion battery overloads and fries
his circuits, but it also overloads Manhattan’s power grid… plunging the city
into darkness. As police helicopters
show up, the Turtles flee.
Down in the lair, the Turtles watch Carlos Chiang O’Brien
*click* Gambe’s report on the blackout.
The reporter suspects it was another attack from “the aliens” and the
Turtles are happy with that cover. Don
and Raph inform Splinter about the lesson they learned in brotherly
cooperation, but Splinter punishes them with 200 push-ups, anyway. Mikey proceeds to repurpose Metalhead into a
water balloon-throwing machine.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT New Animated Adventures #8. The story continues in
the next segment, “Raph’s Shiner”.
*Obviously, this story has to take place prior to the
season 2 episode “Metalhead Rewired”.
*The Kraang originally seized control of Metalhead in the
season 1 episode “Metalhead”.
*The Kraang attacked New York City in the season 1
two-parter “Showdown”.
Review:
So it looks like IDW is dabbling in publishing multiple
shorter length stories in each issue of New Animated Adventures. If that’s where they’re going with the series,
I’m all in favor. With any luck, maybe
we’ll get some of those great Nickelodeon TMNT comics from Panini published in
the US. It’s a longshot, but I’ve got my
fingers crossed.
At 16 pages, “Metalhead Games” isn’t really that short of
a story, being only 4 pages lighter than a typical New Animated Adventures
tale. That said, I’m rather glad they
cut it off a little early, as it wasn’t one of Byerly’s more creative plots and
four more pages of Metalhead blandly firing lasers at cars would have grown
tiresome.
Yeah, it’s not much of a story. We’ve already seen Metalhead go crazy before in
the cartoon and that’s really all we get in this comic. It’s fun in a “flying by the seat of your
pants” sort of way, but all it amounts to is a lot of dull action shtick. The meat of the story is Don and Raph’s
antagonistic relationship which in a way (probably coincidentally) calls back
to Don and Casey’s showdown in the Mirage comic TMNT (Vol. 1) #49. In that story, Casey angrily accuses Don of
trying to talk down to everyone with his egghead routine and proceeds to tease
and cajole the Turtle until he confronts Casey and they fight. Of course, in that story Don prevails in
battle and humbles Casey, whereas in this story Raphael handily puts the nerd
in his place.
While this is obviously a much more innocent altercation
(the Mirage fight involved the lingering guilt over child murder and the debilitating
effects of alcoholism), it’s still interesting to see the same central idea
played out in two different ways. Here,
Don and Raph come to a more saccharine understanding; a far more pleasant outcome
than what Casey wound up having to go through after his falling out with the
Turtles.
I talked about Chad Thomas’s art last time he filled in on the title, but to repeat myself: I like it.
He breaks model and his character posture looks less stiff than Brizuela’s
. I think his action layouts in this story were fine,
but the script was too redundant to do him any
favors. You can only draw Metalhead
flying around Times Square with a go-cart dangling behind him for so many pages before the
visuals get repetitive. Thomas's emotive take on the characters worked great in this issue, especially for Leo. There’s just something amusing about seeing
the leader character make bad decisions and look utterly horrified at their
catastrophic outcome.
And lastly, in case you’ve never visited New York City,
the New York Public Library actually IS adjacent to Times Square. Like, practically just around the
corner. Yeah, last time I visited Manhattan that
caught me pretty off-guard (also, Times Square is disappointingly small when
you see it in person). So hey, nice bit
of geographic accuracy on Byerly’s part.
Grade: C (as in, “Can’t say I was ever much of a Tranzor
Z fan, so the homage in Metalhead’s rocket-flying design doesn’t do anything
for me. Count DeCapito was a pretty cool
villain if I remember correctly, though”.)
