Publication date: April 2 – 29, 2015
Script: Erik Burnham
Art: Bob Molesworth
Colours: Jason Cardy
Colour assist: J. Stayte, E. Pirrie. K. Carter, K.
Nicholson
Letters: Alex Foot
“Mikey Max”
Summary:
Down in Don’s lair, he has discovered a new form of
extradimensional energy called “donatricity”.
Mikey, playing around in the lab, accidentally touches the conductor and
his entire body is charged with the energy.
Suddenly, he becomes a super genius capable of stumping even Donatello.
To demonstrate his new intellect, Mikey invites his
brothers to a sparring session where he announces he’ll defeat them all by
throwing a baseball. They charge and he
hurls the ball, calculating the trajectory so that it ricochets off each of
them, taking them down. Splinter is
impressed with his son’s new skills, but fears he might be changing
fundamentally as a person. Mikey doesn’t
have time for lectures, as he needs Don to help him build his latest invention.
Later, Mikey leads his brothers on a raiding mission
against the Kraang, using his new spectrographic analyzer helmet to track their
whereabouts to an unassuming ice cream parlor.
By now, all the other Turtles are stifled by Mikey’s new take-charge attitude, but they follow regardless.
Storming the base, they find that the Kraang actually
discovered “donatricity” first in a one-in-a-million fluke involving their
dimensional portal. Mikey fears what
might happen if the Kraang all become super geniuses like himself and comes up with
a plan to destroy their data on “donatricity”.
Unfortunately, the Kraang blast their computer terminal, leaving Mikey
no other way to eliminate their access to “donatricity” than to destroy the
conductor. He uses his nunchakus to
interrupt the energy flow and takes a huge blast of “donatricity”, knocking him
unconscious.
When Mikey awakens back in the lair, he finds that his super
intellect is gone. Donnie is pleased to be
“the smart one” again, though Mikey isn’t quite so happy. Splinter reminds him that intellect isn’t
everything, and that Mikey’s unique perspective was far more valuable to the
team and who he is inside. Mikey
interprets this as “you don’t have to clean your room”.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT Magazine (Panini) #25. The story continues in TMNT Magazine (Panini) #27.
Review:
This was sort of a stock standard episodic story; we’ve all probably seen it before in other cartoons. The template works fine with the TMNT
characters applied to it and all, but I doubt there’s anyone who hadn’t paced
the story out in their head from page 1.
Mikey actually doesn’t get TOO uppity when he becomes a
genius and retains most of his exuberance and kindness. He just sort of steps on everybody’s toes, absentmindedly
robbing his brothers of their unique traits (being the smartest, being the best
fighter, being the leader). In that
regard, Burnham reworks the tired formula a bit to make it less obnoxious;
usually in these sorts of situations, characters become complete jerks when
gifted with unanticipated intelligence (storytellers often equating brains with
assholes, for some reason).
Not much else to say about the story (though I liked Mikey's thought-bubble equation!). But boy, there were a lot of colorists on
this one (looked fine, though).
