Publication date: April, 2007
Screenplay: Kevin Munroe
Script: Steve Murphy
Art: Diego Jourdan, Cristian Gonzalez, Juan Saavedra
Letters: Eric Talbot
Cover: Kevin Munroe, Anthony Washington
Summary:
Three thousand years ago.
A great conqueror named Yaotl and his Four Generals, seeking immortality, open up a
gateway in Costa Rica utilizing the Stars of Kikin. Their plan backfires, unleashing
Thirteen Monsters upon the Earth, transforming the Four Generals to stone and
cursing Yaotl with immortality.
The present. Costa
Rica. After taking care of the cruel
Colonel Santino, Leonardo’s global pilgrimage is interrupted by April, who came to Costa Rica to find a statue for a millionaire and stumbled upon the “Ghost
of the Jungle”. Leo asks how his
brothers are doing without him and April replies with bad news: Donatello is working
tech support, Michelangelo is doing kids’ birthdays as “Cowabunga Carl” and
Raphael is mostly absent (masquerading as the vigilante Nightwatcher, unknown
to them). April asks Leo to come home,
but Leo doesn’t feel he’s ready.
In the lair, Don, Mike and Raph are watching a news
report on the Nightwatcher. Mike gets
wistful for the old days when THEY fought crime, Don thinks the Nightwatcher is
a dangerous rogue and Raph is glad that SOMEONE is cleaning up the city. They start to fight and Splinter breaks them
up, worrying about what has become of their family.
At Winterscorp, April and Casey deliver the statue of
General Aguila to Max Winters, the millionaire who sent April to Costa Rica for
it (along the way, Casey accidentally trips an alarm, causing a security
lockdown). Winters thanks April for
reuniting him with all four lost members of his “family” and lets the pair
leave. As soon as they leave, Karai and several
Foot Soldiers step out of the shadows.
Winters has a job for them, having contracted their services: They’re to
meet some “friends” of his and bring them to him.
Later that night, Casey goes on a vigilante stroll and
spots the Nightwatcher. He calls Raph
out, having deduced his identity. They
have a talk and Raph says that he got sick of fighting Triceratons and Utroms while
the innocent people of New York are preyed upon by criminals. He took on the Nightwatcher identity to keep
his family from knowing, since they were forbidden from interfering with the
world of men while Leo was gone.
Meanwhile, as Leo hang-glides back into town, Max Winters
revives the Four Generals thanks to the Stars of Kikin beginning to align.
Leo is greeted by Splinter, who is happy to have his son
back, but warns him that until he and his brothers can act as one, they cannot
fight. The Turtles go to the rooftops to
train when they spot Karai and the Foot battling Bigfoot in a construction
zone. They try to help, only for Karai
to attack Leo and then retreat (Leo had hoped that with the Shredder dead,
their antagonism might have ceased). Bigfoot
throttles the Turtles until General Mono arrives and
trashes the beast. The Turtles are
forced to retreat when they hear police sirens.
At Winterscorp, Karai is upset about the interference of
the Four Generals and the TMNT. Max
Winters tells her that they are to work together and like it, as there is
little time before the portal opens.
The next morning, Splinter hears about what happened on
the news and once again orders his sons to stay out of action. Over the next few days, the Four Generals and
the Foot Clan capture several of the remaining monsters unopposed.
As night falls, Raph and Casey stumble upon the bad guys
capturing the Vampire Succubor. They’re
pursued by General Gato, who tags Raph with a weird tranquilizer dart before
being forced to flee when the police arrive.
At April’s apartment, Raph recovers and they all have a good look at the Aztec dart. Casey tells April
that the one who shot Raph was one of the statues she collected. April recounts the Legend of the Yaotl and
figures Max Winters is the immortal conqueror.
Raph wants to take the fight to Winters, but Leo reminds him of
Splinter’s decree and Raph storms off in a huff.
At Winterscorp, General Serpiente brings the eleventh
monster. However, General Aguila fears
that Winters plans to undo their stone immortality and orders the other
generals not to find the thirteenth monster.
At a diner, Raphael (as Nightwatcher) does battle with
the miniscule Jersey Devil and drives it off.
He’s called out by Leo, who orders the “Nightwatcher” to quit being a
vigilante “or else”. The two fight and
Leo learns that the Nightwacther is Raph (shock!). Raph says he’s sick of Leo bossing him around
and beats him up. After Raph storms off,
though, the Generals tranq and capture Leo.
Raph returns too late to save him.
Raph brings the bad news back to the lair. Splinter says that they must reveal
themselves at last and take the fight to the enemy. The Turtles, Splinter, April and Casey storm
Winterscorp and fight their way through Karai and the Foot. Inside, Max Winters is shocked to find that
the portal is malfunctioning. The Generals
betray him, revealing that the thirteenth monster (Leo) is a fake.
The good guys make it inside and Casey trips the lockdown
alarm, trapping the Foot outside. Raph
frees Leo and gives him his swords, making amends. Winters reveals that he’s trying to send the
monsters back to their dimension and teams up with the Turtles. He orders Karai and the Foot to find the last
monster, with April and Casey tagging along.
The Turtles fight the Generals while Splinter and Winters
keep more monsters from escaping through the malfunctioning portal (which will
only let things out, not in, until the thirteenth monster is found). The Foot, April and Casey return with the
last monster (the Sea Monster) and force it through the portal. The Four
Generals are sucked inside, the breach seals and Winters is freed of his immortality. Winters thanks the Turtles and April before
decaying into dust. Karai warns the TMNT that a “familiar face from the past” will be returning and the Foot leave.
Down in the lair, Splinter places Winters’ Yaotl helmet
in the trophy room along with Mikey’s Cowabunga Carl mask. The Turtles then race into the city together
as a team.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT Movie Prequel #5 – Leonardo.
Review:
So yeah, man, there’s just way too much shit going on for
one story, here. Leo’s doubting himself,
the family’s broken up, monsters are on the loose, the Foot Clan are there for
some reason, stone generals and immortal businessmen, a dimensional portal,
Raph’s a vigilante, what the FUCK.
It was hard enough to keep track of all this stuff in a
movie, but in a watered-down comic book adaptation the pace is practically
incomprehensible.
At the risk of critiquing the movie (I want to save that
for a review of the film), the story feels like Munroe took six different
scripts and tried to combine them all into one.
There is just WAY too much going on and as a result, nearly every plot
line gets shortchanged.
Murphy does his best to try and condense things, though
as I said, condensing is NOT what this story needed; it needed to be EXPANDED
to make room for all the plot lines. The
prequel comics try to make sense of everything and do an okay job of at least
reducing the What-the-Fuck Factor, but they don’t really do enough.
If anything, instead of getting five prequels and an
adaptation, it would have been better had the movie-itself been decompressed
across six issues in order to give every plot thread its due. The prequel comics end up either adding
nothing or uneconomically retreading ground (April’s conversation with Leo is
seen across THREE issues in this series).
The whole thing was very poorly plotted and executed; it just feels
rushed and ill-conceived.
Now, let me say upfront that I think Diego Jourdan is a
great artist. His work on Tales of the
TMNT is good stuff! But this… is not his
best work.
I’m not sure what his lead time for this adaptation was,
but it seems clear it wasn’t enough to reasonably complete a 62-page
graphic novel. He has to resort to a lot
of shortcuts, mostly in the realm of copy-paste, and it shows quite a bit. The characters shine when Jourdan breaks
model from the Imagi style guide and gives them a bit more cartoonish energy,
but those panels are few and far between.
This comic looks ROUGH.
There are lettering fuck ups, too, with sentences being repeated, missing words and
conspicuously empty text boxes that should probably have sentences in them.
Ultimately, this whole series based on the 2007 film is a
bad example of Mirage trying to synergize with one of their mainstream TMNT
offshoots. They fail on a remarkable
level, producing comics based on a children’s movie but primarily unsuitable
for kids (lots of gore, swearing and a weird moment an issue ago with a child
sex ring). The quality control is lousy
and the end results look quick and dirty.
These are bad comics.
Grade: D- (as in, “Diego Jourdan, another good artist
that Mirage unfortunately saddled with a lot of their lesser scripts”.)
