Originally published in: TMNT New Animated Adventures #15
Publication date: September 10, 2014
Story: Landry Q. Walker
Art: Dario Brizuela
Colors: Heather Breckel
Letters: Shawn Lee
Edits: Bobby Curnow
“Training Trap”
Summary:
Down in the lair, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo
find a note from Leonardo. Apparently,
he’s set up a training obstacle course for them and whoever gets through it
first will receive a prize.
At the abandoned underground water treatment plant, Leo
has finished setting up his decidedly nonlethal obstacle course when he’s suddenly
attacked by Fishface and a unit of Footbots.
With Leo chained up, the bad guys then get to work replacing all of the
nonlethal traps with lethal ones.
The other Turtles soon arrive and begin their race
through the course. They’re immediately
menaced by swinging blades, spring-loaded spikes and flesh-eating acid. Raph and Mikey think Leo has gone insane, but
Donnie figures someone else must have interfered and replaced all the
traps. However, if all they did was
replace the traps, then the strategy to solve the obstacle course should remain
the same. They ruminate on this, trying
to figure out what lesson Leo was trying to teach them that could get them
through the course. They settle on “teamwork”.
Using teamwork, they make it through the many deathtraps
with ease and slaughter all the Footbots.
As they approach Fishface, the mutant puts a knife to Leo’s throat and
threatens to kill him. Luckily, Leo has
used the time to get loose from his chains and belts Fishface in his fish-face,
knocking him out.
Back at the lair, Leo presents the prize: A trophy for #1
Turtle. He tells them they all earned
it, but Raph insists that it was HIS idea to use teamwork, so he should get the
trophy. Raph immediately regrets being
so greedy, as Mikey begins singing a congratulatory rap song in his honor.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT New Animated Adventures #14. The story continues in
“The Adventures of Ice Cream Kitty”.
Review:
Teamwork! The
answer to all of life’s problems. I’m
gonna feel sorry for the kids who grew up reading stories like this. When they get to high school or college and
have to work on group projects, they’re going to learn that sometimes 90% of
your group are a bunch of lazy assholes and sometimes you’ve just got to do
everything yourself.
Teamwork! Yay!
This was another fun, lighthearted story. A little dumb, but eh, it was a 10-page comedy
relief piece that had to wrap everything up with a moral. It was nice to see Fishface again, though he’s
been reduced to a one-punch annoyance; a far-cry from the leg-fighting worthy
adversary he was in the first season of the cartoon. But all the villains in this series, be it in cartoon or comic formats, are victims of instantly decaying skill beyond their
initial appearances. So the portrayal’s just keeping consistent, I guess.
Hey, do you think Shredder is ever going to show up in
this comic? And do more than just sit on
his throne, I mean. With a little pixie
dust, it could happen.
Grade: C (as in, “Could have been a B, but Brizuela
misspelled ‘water’ on page 3”.)
