Originally published in: Turtle Soup (Vol. 2) #1
Publication date: November, 1991
Story and art: Mark Martin
“Toyoduh in The Naked City”
Summary:
Toyoduh is in the lair, taking a shower, when he hears a
knock at the door. He stumbles his way
to answer it, almost completely blind without his glasses. He opens the door to find the Shooter,
disguised as a salesman, who offers him a glasses-cleaning service. Toyoduh says he can’t even find his glasses,
but the Shooter says he’s found them for him and hands him a pair of x-ray
specs. As soon as Toyoduh puts them on,
though, the Shooter runs away.
Toyoduh heads to the surface to find the “salesman”, only
to see a naked old lady. Actually, she’s
fully clothed and HE’S the one that’s naked since he just got out of the
shower. The old lady screams for the
police, but through the x-ray specs, all Toyoduh sees is a naked man running at
him. He resists arrest and gets bonked
on the head with a nightstick and carted off to the precinct.
Toyoduh pleads his case to the judge, who turns out to be
a coatrack. The detectives on duty
decide they’re sick of hearing Toyoduh talk and tell him that Merv Griffen paid
his bail. Toyoduh then heads back to the
lair to finish his shower.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from Green-Grey Sponge-Suit Sushi Turtles: The Parody. The story continues
in “Velveeduh in The One That Got Away”.
*The table of contents in all issues of Turtle Soup list
the Sushi Turtles stories by the names of the character appearing and not the
full title.
Review:
I think this is the better way to enjoy Mark Martin’s
stories: As short segments included as part of a larger anthology collection
that spans different genres. In that
fashion, his random wackiness doesn’t overstay its welcome and drive the
gimmick into the ground. Also, when
accompanied by a plethora of other stories that cover action, horror, drama
and pathos, his goofy comedy angle feels more unique. Martin’s long-form stories, be they as
50-page graphic novels or as 3-issue story arcs that span months, tend to be
too much of an erratic style of storytelling which you grow numb to fairly
quickly.
More than that, these short comics are just better
written. With the longer stories, Martin
very clearly is trying to fill space, so the narrative gets stretched
out with gratuitous nonsense and meaningless asides that serve no other purpose
than to occupy 50 tedious pages. When
pigeonholed into 6 economical pages to tell a story, Martin trims the
fat and focuses on structure and pacing. The story
doesn’t lose any luster because it’s “less” chaotic and random, but rather, the
fact that the chaos and randomness punctuate a coherent narrative actually
gives those elements emphasis.
And if you just think I’m picking on a certain style,
like I have a stick up my ass about zany surrealist comedy, let’s make an
example of another Turtle story that dabbled in a different genre. “Turtle Dreams” by Steve Bissette is a great
short comic that is deeply embedded in the horror genre. But the reason it WORKS is because it’s a
short strip included as part of a larger collection. If it were nothing but 50 pages of
Michelangelo getting his limbs brutally torn off, his rib cage cracked open and
his organs devoured one by one, then it would be a terrible story with no
substance. But compressed down to a
short narrative that trims the wheat from the chaff? It works.
Martin’s contributions are much the same. The Sushi Turtles, when required to star in
50 fucking pages, get old fast and the whole exercise feels tone deaf because
there’s no contrast to give the wacky bullshit emphasis. Cut down to 6 pages and as part of an
anthology, though? They’re actually
pretty enjoyable. I wouldn’t say this
story was an absolute rib-tickler, but at least it read well.
Grade: B- (as in, “Bob Burden is still shit, though. Go cry about it”.)
