Originally published in: TMNT New Animated Adventures #14
Publication date: August 13, 2014
Story: Landry Q. Walker
Art: Chad Thomas
Colors: Heather Breckel
Letters: Shawn Lee
Edits: Bobby Curnow
“The Swarm”
Summary:
In his lab, Donatello is working on a pheromone spray
that'll act like a love potion and make April fall for him. The other Turtles chide him for making
“perfume”, but Don calls April over (under false pretenses) to test it, anyway. April shows up and is seemingly unaffected by
the odor. However, Donnie begins to
attract thousands of insects, apparently hungry for the strong lilac scent he used.
The bugs chase Donnie out of the sewer. Mikey follows him to keep him safe, Leo and
Raph hose down their training dummy with the pheromone spray and strap it to
the roof of the Shellraiser to create a decoy, and April stays behind in the
lair to research a way to neutralize the pheromones.
Out on the streets, the decoy works and draws the bugs
away from Donnie. However, it also
attracts one of Baxter Stockman’s giant parasitic wasps the Turtles thought
they’d exterminated a long time ago. The
parasitic wasp bumps into Raph, causing him to drop the perfume bottle,
smashing it over himself and his brothers.
As the parasitic wasp and thousands of insects chase the
Turtles across the rooftops, April calls in on her T-phone to tell them she’s
found a cure. Apparently, hot sauce is a
solid insect repellant. The Turtles find
their way to the Super Spicy Hot Sauce factory, but before they can bathe in
the habanero juice, they need to catch the parasitic wasp so it can’t
reproduce and turn everyone in the city into zombies. Mikey lassos it with his
chain and the Turtles drag it with them through the skylight and into an open
vat of hot sauce. The sauce drowns the
parasitic wasp and cures their odor.
Back in the lair, the Turtles are suffering the aftereffects of a million bug bites. April
nurses them back to health and complements Donnie on his new scent, as she
loves the smell of hot sauce. Donnie
immediately begins brainstorming a brand NEW pheromone spray that incorporates
hot sauce, much to the rage of his brothers.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT New Animated Adventures #13. The story continues in
“Mikey & the Machine”.
*Baxter Stockman's giant parasitic wasps first appeared in the season
one episode, “Parasitica”.
Review:
This was probably one of the cornier scripts to come out
of New Animated Adventures. It follows a
rather stagnant screwball formula and you could predict the comedy and conflict
beats pages before they happened. Of
course the perfume would attract the wrong thing and of course the Turtles
would accidentally spill it on themselves and of course they’d find a
convenient cure in the final stretch of panels.
But like a lot of clichés, it really depends on how well
you execute them. I mean, it’s not like
New Animated Adventures is the only medium still running the “perfume mishap”
scenario into the ground. Mickey Mouse
cartoons are still drawing from that well, even the ones made this same year. It’s a stock plot that’ll never go
away, right alongside the shrinking episode and the one where the guy’s mom
comes to visit but he told her he was a bigshot in letters to impress her so
now all his friends have to pretend like he’s the boss or something and at the
end his mom finds out everything and tells him she’s proud of him no matter
what. Whew!
As for the execution… eh.
It hits all those beats so routinely and formulaically that the end
result is a very bland story that’s not particularly funny or original. Walker has written a lot of good scripts in
both the US and UK Nick TMNT comics, but this just happens to be one of his off
days. I did like the reappearance of one
of Baxter’s parasitic wasps, though. A
nice callback to a good, but mostly forgotten season one episode.
Chad Thomas is really rising to the top of the New
Animated Adventures talent pool. His
characters have a lot of energy to them and he uses those “anime” effects from
the animated series, but only to a strategic extent. It’s nice when they’re used, but not to the
point of suffocating all the art.
Grade: D+ (as in, “Donatello basically tried to create
the kid’s cartoon equivalent of a roofie for April. Stay classy, Donnie”.)
