Publication date: November 30, 2016
Writer: Paul Allor
Artist: Damian Couceiro
Colorist: Ronda Pattison
Letterer: Shawn Lee
Editor: Bobby Curnow
Publisher: Ted Adams
"The War to Come, Part 4"
Summary:
MAIN STORY:
Outside TCRI, Bishop gives a rousing speech to his EPF
troops, announcing that this is the first battle in humanity's war against
mutants. The EPF troops then march into
the building, hot on the heels of the Turtles and Zodi. The mutants manage to make it through a
skirmish and into a laboratory where Leonardo yells for Stockman to unlock the
door and let them pass through. From the security command center, Baxter Stockman briefly considers letting the Turtles rot, but
accepts that he must work with them for the moment and unlocks the door.
In the EPF command van, the detained Detective Lewis looks
at the monitors and sees the EPF troops stuck at the lab door. She suggests that Bishop recall his soldiers,
but Bishop reveals that he’s already thinking several moves ahead. While that one unit was keeping the Turtles
on the run, a second unit was planting explosives outside the wall of the TCRI
command center.
Inside the commander center, the wall explodes and dozens
of EPF troops pour in. The Turtles, Zodi
and the armored Stockman take the troops down, but as soon as they do, a second
wave begins its charge. Things look
bleak until a gang of Roadkill Rodney robots appear and begin using their taser
whips to stun the EPF soldiers.
Evidently, this was April’s secret mission: To get out of TCRI and
negotiate backup from Zodi’s employer.
Outside, the Roadkill Rodneys and Null Corporation troopers do a number on the EPF
vehicles and standby troops. Bishop is
left with no alternative but to order a full retreat. Detective Lewis talks her way into a ride,
and her freedom, insisting that she’s onboard with the idea of the human vs.
mutant war, even if she doesn’t think all mutants are the enemy, and that
Bishop will need her to help spin his story to the authorities. As the EPF command van drives away, a limo
pulls up and out steps Madame Null.
Bishop and Null momentarily lock eyes, being aware of who the other is.
Inside the TCRI command center, the Turtles see the EPF
retreating and Zodi calls off the Roadkill Rodneys with a voice command. The Turtles try to make peace with Stockman,
but he tells them to leave his property immediately. Once outside, they honor the bargain April
made with Madame Null by handing over Zodi and whatever tech she was originally
sent to TCRI to steal from Stockman.
Apparently, Stockman knows nothing of the deal they made with Null, the
cover story being that Null only showed up to bail Zodi out, and they’d prefer
to keep it that way. As Zodi leaves, Michelangelo
tries to give her a speech about teamwork and friendship, but she blows him
off, insisting that if things went south, she would have killed him to save her
own hide without a second thought.
Inside the EPF command van, Colonel Knight and Sergeant
Winter express their dissatisfaction with the outcome of the battle. Not only did they lose, but they’ve
officially sacrificed the element of surprise.
Agent Bishop isn’t quite so gloomy, insisting that they now have an idea
of the players in the war, what they’re capable of and the sort of punishment
they can take. With that data to work
with, they’ll be better prepared for the next major battle.
Back at TCRI, Baxter surveys the destruction of his new
building as April “emerges from her hiding place” (the story the Turtles told
Baxter to cover her absence). April
renews her offer to cooperate with Baxter for their own mutual benefit. Contemplating all the new threats, and seeing
just how vulnerable he actually is, Baxter agrees to a partnership.
Down in the lair, the Turtles return home (to their pet
dino, Pepperoni!) and collapse in the living room. Raphael is the only one who isn’t totally
spent and empties his heart to his brothers, promising that he’ll try to do
better as a sibling and a teammate. The
Turtles don’t hear him, as they’ve all fallen asleep, so Raph heads to the dojo
to put in some extra practice.
BACK-UP:
Story: Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz
Script: Tom Waltz
Layouts: Kevin Eastman
Artist: Bill Sienkiewicz
Colorist: Tomi Varga
“Inside Out, Part 4”
Leonardo emerges from the water and finds himself in
Harold’s lab, somehow. Harold reminds
Leo that he no longer wants anything to do with the Turtles and sics Metalhead
on him.
Leo defeats Metalhead, but the robot turtle fuses with
Harold and the disembodied head of the Fugitoid, becoming a gargantuan robot
monster. The robot starts smashing up
the lab, as Leo hopelessly dodges the blows in search of a way out.
Turtle Tips:
*This issue was originally published with 3 variant
covers: Regular Cover by Freddie E. Williams II, Subscription Cover A by
Couceiro, and Incentive Cover by Agustin Graham Nakamura.
Review:
Evidently, this arc was called “The War to Come”, if the
recently solicited trade paperback collection is anything to go by. A little on the nose, but I’m certainly
excited for the human/mutant war that Old Hob has been hinting at for a few
years now. I’m hoping THIS war is a bit
more satisfying than the
last one they tried hinting at, though. Remember way back in
TMNT (IDW) #6, when the
dying Savate ninja ominously warned that a “war” was coming? Then remember when that war happened almost
entirely off-panel during “
City Fall”?
Yeah, let’s not have a repeat of that.
This was an all-action issue followed by a bunch of
epilogues, though it was enjoyable all the way through. As a matter of fact, this whole arc has been
action-packed with each chapter; it’s not frontloaded with story setup and then
backloaded with payoff. In that respect,
I think Allor deserves an award just for his ability to pace and distribute
plot/action fairly from chapter to chapter.
Though it’s consolidated to 4-issues, it doesn’t read like a “written
for the trade” storyline, which unfortunately is how many of the arcs in the
ongoing and some of the previous miniseries tended to read.
With that said, it DOES read even better altogether, and
the TMNT’s epilogue has even more oomph to it when you take in the story
without any breaks. BECAUSE there was a
dollop of severe action in each issue, the Turtles really do feel like they’ve
been on the ropes through the entire arc with scarcely a moment’s rest. When they collapse from exhaustion at the
very end, you appreciate how worn they really are.
Couceiro’s pages continue that trend of spatial coherency
I talked about in an earlier review, and the opening chase is a text book
example of how it’s done. He always
provides a line of sight opportunity for the reader to see where the characters
came from and where they’re headed as the EPF pursues them through the TCRI
building: Through the rooftop door, down
the stairs, into the hallway, down a stairwell, into the lab and then into the
commander center.
What works so well about the layouts is that by giving
you a solid idea of where the TMNT have to go and how they have to get
there, it makes the shortcuts the EPF troops take by blowing up walls NOT feel
like bullshit. Since you’ve just
followed the Turtles, you KNOW what’s on the other side of each wall, so when
the EPF just fucking goes THROUGH them, you share the tension of the
protagonists because you feel like you’ve just been in those rooms and the
enemies are only a breath behind. And as
said before, it’s something that when done well, you don’t necessarily notice
because it’s intuitive to the reading experience, but when done poorly it pulls
you right the fuck out.
The epilogue with Baxter and April was an interesting
one; not the way I was expecting the story to end. I had sort of forgotten that April had tried
to make a deal with Baxter in
the first issue (despite that being the entire
reason she and the Turtles were at TCRI), so I hadn’t anticipated that element
to be reprised as a sort of bookending device.
The way it’s superficially presented, you might think Baxter is agreeing
to work with April because he’s upset that his new building was trashed, but I
think it’s more about what all this represents to him internally. Despite all of his precautions, he still got
caught with his pants down and wound up being extremely vulnerable to enemies
he didn’t even know existed; the Turtles were the only reason he made it out
alive.
Baxter makes quiet references to playing a “game”, an
allusion back to
his micro-series issue that likened his thought process to a
chess player’s, so it’s clear that even in the form of a partnership, he’s
using them to his advantage. He also
says that the Turtles “belong” to him, as they were originally his lab
subjects, which gives further insight into his thought process of using the
Turtles as tools and nothing more.
And with both Harold and the Fugitoid currently out of
the picture, Baxter might end up being their science/tech support character. And won’t that be weird?
Also, hey, Madame Null and the Roadkill Rodneys. Man, I love those little robots. Anyway, I’m digging the ties back to the
Mutanimals miniseries; this issue kicked off the war between humans and mutants,
but the Mutanimals, the characters formed for the sole purpose of fighting in
this war, were conspicuously absent from the events. The strong ties to their miniseries at least makes it feel like they were there in spirit.
I was a little bummed that Madame Null didn’t retain the
scars Hob put on her face. I was
hoping she’d be forced to carry his mark as a visual display of their rivalry
or whatever. It would’ve been nice
symmetry with how Hob is stuck with the scars Splinter gave him. But ah well.
As for the back-up, I’m enjoying the Sienkiewicz art and
I think that’s all you’re really supposed to be getting out of it. It’s been a lot of the same old, same old as
Leo just runs a gauntlet of spookified TMNT rogues and the exercise is getting
a little tiresome. At least with Harold
expressing his hatred of the Turtles we now have a clue where this back-up
takes place in relation to the ongoing (you can pretty much slot it in-between
this arc and TMNT #65). Even though this
arc is finished, the back-up isn’t, so I guess if they do continue with the
back-up feature (and they’d better if they want to justify the $5 price tag)
the shorts won’t start and stop at the same pace as the feature story.
And as for TMNT Universe, now that the initial arc is
concluded, what do I think of the series so far? Well, like I said in my review of the first
issue, this new ongoing is really just an umbrella banner for the scattered
miniseries, joining them as an ongoing anthology rather than a bunch of finite
things. However, I do think the ongoing
approach is going to be beneficial in the long run, as now the writers aren’t
limited to 4-issue arcs so everything can fit neatly in a trade. Maybe we can get a pair of two-parters, or a
three-parter and a one-shot? Maybe the
stories can only take up as many issues as they need in order to tell what they
have to say, rather than stretch things out because they gotta fill a trade
paperback? And if we’re really good,
maybe Santa will give us specials, annuals and minis in addition to the ongoing
and Universe?
Content-wise, I’d like to see Universe cover the
supporting characters from now on. I
know why they led with a Turtle-centric storyline, because it made it an easier
pitch to new readers, but from now on I want to see TMNT Universe explore the
UNIVERSE beyond the Turtles. They have
their own ongoing; let everyone else have this one. And since
the next arc will be about Leatherhead and the Mutanimals, I think I’ll be
getting what I want.
