Publication date: December 14, 2016
Published by: IDW (publisher) and DC Comics
(co-publisher)
Writer: Matthew K. Manning
Artist: Jon Sommariva
Inker: Sean Parsons & Serge LaPointe (pgs. 15-17)
Colorist: Leonardo Ito
Letterer: Shawn Lee
Editor: Bobby Curnow
Publisher: Ted Adams
"The Clown and the Clan"
"The Clown and the Clan"
Summary:
Arkham Asylum, a week ago. While being taken to her cell by Aaron Cash,
Harley Quinn takes out the guards and springs the Joker. They plot their escape just as a pair of
Kraang portals appear, much to their surprise, and they use them to get away.
New York City, now.
The Joker and Harley relay their story to the Shredder as they meet in
an abandoned warehouse. The Shredder
loses his patience with the Joker quickly and orders Bebop and Rocksteady to
execute him. The Joker knocks the
mutants back with an exploding rubber chicken, but before a horde of Foot
Soldiers can swoop in, Joker points to the ceiling and the hundreds of rubber
chickens dangling from it.
Gotham City.
Batman convenes with Robin and Batgirl and lets them in on what he’s
learned about the alien interdimensional portals. Batman has devised a way to track when they
open and the Caped Crusaders head toward the nearest one on his radar. They find the portal in an alley and ponder
what’s on the other side.
Central Park. The
Turtles and April track down the nearest portal and Michelangelo reaches around
inside. He accidentally grabs Batman’s
face, inciting the Dark Knight to react.
The superheroes swoop in from Gotham and attack the Turtles. Donatello is immediately smitten with
Batgirl, but she just pounds his face in and then turns to take April on. Mikey decides to fight “the pirate” (Robin), but
the Boy Wonder knocks him down with an uppercut. Raphael lunges at Batman, but is removed from
the fight with a single strike to the Plastron. Batman
and Leonardo then go toe-to-toe, but as they fight they both realize that
neither of them are going for lethal strikes and begin to realize they’re on
the same side.
Suddenly, Snakeweed storms into the middle of the fight
and Leo tells Batman to stay back, as the mutant is one of their enemies. Batman corrects Leo, pointing to the one who
is controlling Snakeweed: Poison Ivy.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from Batman/TMNT Adventures #1. The story continues in Batman/TMNT Adventures #3.
*This issue was originally published with 6 variant
covers: Regular Cover by Sommariva, Subscription Cover by Rick Burchett,
Subscription Cover by Billy Martin, Incentive Cover by Chad Thomas, Fried Pie
Exclusive Cover by Tony Fleecs, and Dynamic Forces Exclusive Cover by Ken
Haeser.
Summary:
The “Batman and the Turtles mistakenly fight but realize
they're on the same side” cliché was the big overlapping moment between this
miniseries and the last Batman/TMNT miniseries I was dreading. We got that already, so I really didn’t want
to go through it all over again.
Luckily, Manning gets us through it as quickly as
possible, with Leo and Batman determining that they’re on the same side based
on their fighting styles. The fight eats
up most of this installment, but who can really complain? Conquered territory or not, I’m sure everyone
picking up this miniseries wanted to see Batman and the Turtles fight… even if
it was all over again.
So far as the fight goes, Manning isn’t very kind to the
Turtles. Most of them get felled with a
single blow, and some of them don’t even get a single swing in (Donatello’s
fondness for redheads proves his undoing).
So as far as the main attraction goes, I found the big brawl a little
underwhelming. It was pretty lopsided
and the Turtles wind up looking fairly pathetic. I’m not saying they could necessarily BEAT
the Batfamily (or Gotham Knights of whatever the fuck you wanna call them), but
jeez they really take it on the chin in this one.
That said, we’re hopefully past that part of the
narrative, now, which means that we can get to the team-up portion. Snakeweed and Poison Ivy seem like an
intuitive pairing I’m rather ashamed I didn’t see coming. Got my fingers crossed we’ll get a
Scarecrow/Rat King duo somewhere in this thing.
Double the Jeffrey Combs!
To talk about the Bat characters, the narrative boxes
make note that Batgirl is new to the crime-fighting scene (she was a late
addition to The Animated Series and didn’t really come into her own until New
Batman Adventures). So with that in
mind, her seemingly out-of-character moment where she kicks Donatello in the
face as he’s extending his hand in friendship and trying to apologize might
make a little more sense. And anyway, I
guess Manning just wanted to get Donnie out of the way so the two redheads could
duke it out.
The prologue with the Joker and Harley meeting the
Shredder was a fun diversion; we’ll see if we get a team-up out of it by next
issue. Manning has their voices down and
I could hear Hamill and Sorkin in my head with their first speech bubbles. There’s not much more to that sequence,
however.
Sommariva’s pencils pack in a lot of cartoony squash-n-stretch
and I think I like it. The layouts are
great and even if the fight sequence in the park was one-sided as all getout,
he adds a lot of elastic energy to it so it doesn’t quite seem that way on the
surface. And I like the way he draws the
Joker. It looks like a midpoint between
his Animated Series and New Batman Adventures designs (fitting, considering the
chronological placement of this mini).
Anyhow, this miniseries has been cute so far, but it hasn’t
really wowed me yet. We’re finally past
the overlap elements from the first crossover, so maybe it’ll start gaining
steam in the installments to come.
Villain team-ups are the quickest way to my heart, so I think they’re on
the right track.
