Publication date: March, 2007
Story: Bill Moulage
Pencils: Jim Lawson
Inks: Sean Parsons, Jeremy Colwell, Dan Davis, Hilary
Barta
Letters: Erik Swanson
Cover: Santiago Bou
“Strangers in the Night”
Summary:
Down in the lair, Donatello has used the money he’s saved
as a part time Cowabunga Carl employee to build his latest contraption: The
Trans-Species Locator Matrix. It can
identify the brainwaves of all known species in Manhattan, but when those are
tuned out, it will only identify unknown species… such as his brothers and the
Triceratons (should they ever return).
Splinter is impressed with his son’s invention. Suddenly, a blip appears that isn’t Mikey (out
doing Carl work), Raph (sleeping in the lair) or Leonardo (off on his
pilgrimage). Don and Splinter decide to
go investigate.
Their search brings them to the spire of the Empire State
Building, where they’re attacked by a giant bat (the Vampire Succubor) spewing
a weird alien language. The bat carries
Donatello off, leaving Splinter no recourse but to get help.
Splinter returns to the lair and rousts Mikey (watching a
news report about the Nightwatcher).
Unfortunately, Raph is way up in Harlem and unreachable. Using Donatello’s device, they discern that
the bat has taken Donnie to the docks.
When they arrive, they find Donnie and the bat in the
rafters of an old warehouse. Donnie is
trying to communicate with the bat, which is speaking its alien language. Splinter and Mikey jump the gun and attack,
scaring the bat away. Splinter asks if
he was able to learn anything from the bat and Donnie suggests that the bat was
trying to find its way home. The bat,
meanwhile, passes the Nightwatcher and then circles the skyscraper penthouse of Max Winters, who looks upon it
and smiles.
Upon returning to the lair, Donnie checks his device and
finds 13 unknown species on the radar.
He tries to amplify the machine, but his adjustments cause it to
explode. Mikey wonders if they’ll ever
know why these weird monsters have suddenly begun invading Manhattan.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT Movie Prequel #2 – Michelangelo. The story continues in
TMNT Movie Prequel #4 – April.
*The Turtles last fought the Triceratons in TMNT Movie Prequel #1 – Raphael.
*The giant bat (identified in the movie production
materials as “the Vampire Succubor”) will return in TMNT: Official Movie Adaptation.
*This issue was reprinted in TMNT Comic #6 and TMNT Comic #7 with new colors by Hi Fi Design.
*This issue was reprinted in TMNT Comic #6 and TMNT Comic #7 with new colors by Hi Fi Design.
Review:
This was the first fairly palatable issue of the Movie
Prequel miniseries, which has been pretty bad so far. I’m even more surprised that it was decent,
considering it was written by the same guy who did Raphael: Bad Moon Rising. That’s not to say this adventure
is great or even good or anything. It’s rather hohum and dry; Donnie tracks a
monster, the monster kidnaps Donnie, Splinter and Mikey save him, The End.
But sometimes a dull but coherent story is better than a
string of unreadable nonsense. So it’s
the lesser of six evils.
This issue does a bit more work setting up the, quite
frankly, random bullshit from the feature film.
I mean, the 13 monsters. I don’t
want to get into a review of the movie yet, but man all that shit with the
statue warrior generals and the 13 monsters and the weird dimensional cyclone
and what the fuck. Just way too much for
a story that also wanted to be about getting the gang back together, finding
individual jobs/identities for the Turtles, mending old family rivalries and
setting up a sequel with the Shredder.
That movie had so much content it had to shortchange everybody.
But yeah, we get our first glimpse of the monsters and
Max Winters which actually sets up the BIG story for the movie, while most of these
other issues focus on the smaller character stuff. Not that the smaller character stuff shouldn’t
be explored, but the shit with Max and
the monsters really needed more lead time and this miniseries could’ve done a
better job establishing it (we'll get a little more in later issues, but mostly in the background). Remember how
the movie opened with a prologue about the origin of the Turtles before going
immediately off the rails into this expository drivel about a thousand
year-old Yaotl curse and conquering armies and monsters and shit? That was awful.
Now, while the story in this issue is bland but digestible,
the art is another matter altogether.
There are FOUR inkers on this issue and holy cow, does it ever show. None of them can seem to agree on how to ink
Lawson’s pencils to the point where sometimes you can’t even tell that Lawson
drew the thing. Some of the inkers
attempt shading/toning, while others prefer stark black and white. Some inkers smooth Lawson’s edges and round
his corners, while others try to preserve the angular look of his original work. And some inkers are just absolutely fucking
TERRIBLE:
It is positively absurd how bad this issue looks. If you’re going to pass it off to four
different inkers to save time, then at least establish some sort of
cooperative mandate or a style guide or SOMETHING. Did they do their pages separately at the same time and then just turn them in on the due date, blindly hoping their aesthetic
choices would tessellate?
That’s no way to run a railroad.
Grade: C- (as in “Come on, Mirage. Weren’t these comics intended to make people
WANT to see the movie?”)
