Publication date: October 2003
Writing, lettering, inking, toning: Peter Laird
Layouts, penciling: Jim Lawson
Inking: Eric Talbot
Cover painting: Michael Dooney
Production assistance: Dan Berger
Summary:
In the attic of the apartment building, April looks over
some heirlooms that were saved from the antique shop fire. They’re her father’s sketchbooks and they’re
packed with pages of drawings of her as a baby; really detailed drawings.
Down in the lair, Donatello packs his things. He’s going with the Utroms to investigate the
disappearance of their scout ship at the Venezuelan tepui. Michelangelo goes with him, as he has to get
to the moon island to start his new job as a “translocation reorientation
facilitator” for alien tourists (basically, a tour guide). Leonardo has to leave, too, as Karai has
asked him to go over some security issues the Foot has been having. Leo doesn’t much trust her, but wants to
maintain the good terms between them.
That leaves Raph alone in the lair and he decides to go out for no other
reason than not to be alone with his memories of Splinter.
Back in the attic, Casey shows up with some tea for
April. He helps her go through some
boxes and they find an 8mm film reel of home movies labeled “Summer ‘62”. April has vague memories of the movies, taken
during a trip to Kittery, and she recalls something her father was drawing in
his sketchbook. The memories don’t add
up, though, and she asks Casey to fetch the Super Eight projector.
On an Utrom anti-grav tug, Donatello gets the lowdown on
the mission. He watches Captain Glonar’s
final transmission, but he’s left with several questions: Particularly, why
were the Utroms there in the first place?
The Utrom commander explains that during the time when they were
marooned on Earth, the Utroms used the remote Venezuelan tepui as a toxic waste
dump. Their dump vessel was ultimately
lost on a trip there and they were never able to recover it. Following First Contact, the Utrom government
has decided it wants to clean up its mess, albeit secretly, and Glonar was sent
to remove the old waste and hopefully recover the remains of the lost dump vessel crew.
Of course, there’s more to it. The Utrom commander fears that the toxic
waste that was dumped on the tepui was the same sort of waste that mutated the
Ninja Turtles, which might account for the talking raptor creatures. A team of human “dinosaur hunters” also went
missing while exploring the tepui and the Utroms want this taken care of before
anyone else has to die for their mistakes.
Donatello sees that they’re heavily armed for this excursion, but
wonders if it will be enough. Below,
hiding in the jungle, is one of the giant wood creatures.
In New York, Raphael has gotten plastered at a bar called
Galaxies that serves humans and aliens.
Raph tells a table of young ladies about his adventures in the
Triceraton arena, but they aren’t particularly impressed by the middle-aged mutant.
Raph decides he’s had enough and wanders out into an alley, unaware that
he’s being followed by the same vampires who recently attacked women in Central
Park. They jump Raph, explaining their
intent to suck him dry, but Raph just laughs them off. He says he’s fought real vampires in the past
and can tell that these guys are fakers.
However, being inebriated, he isn’t ready for a blow to the head with a
two-by-four. The vampires then loom over
him, hesitant about drinking “alien blood”.
Turtle Tips:
*The Second Time Around shop burned down in TMNT (Vol. 1) #10.
*Raph battled Triceratons in an arena in TMNT (Vol. 1) #6.
*In the letters page, Laird mentioned that a “how the
Turtles got their weapons” story would be told one day in Tales of the TMNT
Volume 2. It never was (though Archie covered it in their universe).
*This issue also included a bonus pin-up of a 3D model
reference piece Laird created to help Lawson visualize a location in TMNT (Vol. 4) #15.
Review:
So this is it. Did
you like seeing all four Turtles together in this issue? Man, I hope so. Because you are never going to see it again in
the pages of TMNT Volume 4 (at least, as of this writing… 12 years later).
The Turtles bid each other farewell and all go their
separate ways in this issue. It didn’t
seem like a big deal at the time, but how could we have known then that a
decade and some change would pass and they’d all still be scattered to the four
winds?
In a way, the moment feels kind of like Laird is calling
a “do-over” for a plot point that got quashed during TMNT Volume 2. That volume opened with the Turtles all
reacting to their big “growing up” storyline (“City at War”) by deciding to go
their separate ways. They house hunt and
each Turtle decides on an appropriate location for themselves. And then Baxter Stockman shows up and attacks, the
Turtles go to DARPA to save Raphael, and the volume ends.
When we catch up with the Turtles all these years later
in Volume 4 (the Image Volume 3 having been stricken from canon), they’re all
still living in the lair like they’d never wanted to move out in the first
place. An issue of Tales of the TMNT Volume 2 would eventually be written to explain why they never followed through
on their desires to separate circa Volume 2, but when THIS issue was written we
were sort of experiencing déjà vu.
So the Turtles go through another “growing up” event (the
death of Splinter) and THIS TIME they actually follow through on their intent
to separate. Of course, it’s not quite
the same deal. They all thought it was
just going to be a temporary thing; exploring a tepui, getting a part-time job,
helping the Foot, getting a beer. Little
did they know this was going to keep them apart for YEARS (real-time, not story-time).
It is sort of funny, though. When the Turtles actually INTENDED to
separate for good and all move into their own little places, that all fell
through almost immediately. But when
they all thought they were just going to go do something for an evening…
BAM! Scattered to the four corners of
the universe for ten years.
Of course, this now means that the narrative of Volume 4
is going to be pulled in five different directions (the Turtles plus April) and
will only proceed to be fractured even further as time goes on. So it’s a small wonder 12 years hasn’t been
enough to see these arcs resolved, at least at the pace they’re reduced to.
To talk about more specifics in this issue, I rather
liked the bit where Raph is trying to pick up chicks at an alien bar. It actually harkens way back to TMNT (Vol. 1) #5 when he did that exact same thing. Of
course, he’s hitting on chicks that look to be quite a bit younger than him (he’s
in his mid-to-late 30s by this point) and they find his anecdotes more giggle-worthy than anything
else. He’s become “that guy” you see at
bars all the time; the dude pushing forty who thinks he can still pick up 19
year-olds. Sorry, man. That Purple Heart from Desert Storm will only get you so far.
April’s plot is thickening, though no faster than any of
the other plots in this book. A good
chunk of her page space is spent on prattle between her and Casey (discussing
the kind of tea they like, Casey going on about an old racecar, etc.) and it doesn’t
really help to liven up the already boring April subplot (but aren’t her
subplots ALWAYS boring?).
Don gets a sizeable portion of the issue dedicated to his
debriefing. While some of it goes over
info we already know, it’s mostly background that’s new to us. The Utroms really did create a LOT of
mutagenic toxic ooze during their stay on Earth, didn’t they? So much that they had to dump it in
Venezuela (like South America
doesn’t have enough problems). I like
that the (unnamed) Utrom commander reiterates that they really honestly WERE going
to clean everything up! Truly they
were! It’s pleasant whenever a writer
puts a chink on the Utroms’ “perfect race” armor.
The Leo and Mike subplots don’t get time to go anywhere
in this issue, so nothing to talk about with them.
And that’s that.
Get ready for a lot of weird sci-fi shit.
