Publication date: May 30 - June 26, 2013
Script: John-Paul Bove and Ed Caruana
Art: Jack Lawrence
Colours: Jason Cardy
Letters: Alex Foot
“What Goes Up…”
Summary:
Up on the rooftops, Leo is taking his brothers for the
usual practice run. They’re all sick of
running along the same rooftops every night and Mikey suggests they spice it
up: First one to the highest rooftop wins.
The Turtles accept the challenge and proceed to one-up each other with
higher and higher climbs. At the top of one roof, however, they find everything covered in dense flora.
The Turtles contemplate who would landscape the roof of a
building into a thick jungle and their question is soon answered:
Snakeweed! The mutant plant proceeds to
trounce them for invading his territory.
The Turtles attempt to slice his vines, but aren’t making any
progress. Leo suggests they contain him
and Raph drops a giant container of concrete on top of the villain. Unfortunately, it’s “Enhanced Fertilizer
Concrete” (hence how Snakeweed was able to cultivate a garden on a rooftop) and
it only makes Snakeweed more powerful.
The Turtles wonder if things could get any worse, which
of course they do. A thunderstorm
suddenly rolls in and the fresh rain combined with the fertilizer causes
Snakeweed to grow to giant proportions.
Mikey dubs him Super-Snakeweed before getting smashed with a humongous claw.
Donnie suggests that they can use Super-Snakeweed’s
height against him, but they have to get him to the tallest location they can
find. The Turtles reignite the roof race
and lure Super-Snakeweed from his garden.
Using a vine, they scale a nearby skyscraper, with the evil mutant
hot on their heels. Once they reach the
roof, Donnie tells his brothers to discard all their weapons. Reluctantly, they cooperate.
Super-Snakeweed arrives on the roof and taunts the
Turtles for surrendering by seizing their discarded weapons… their metal
weapons. Thanks to his height and the
addition of metal conductors, Super-Snakeweed immediately attracts a bolt of
lightning, which reduces him to ash. A
job well done, Mikey suggests a “reverse roof race” down to the street for some
pizza. As the Turtles leave, they fail
to notice a sprout popping out of the pile of ash.
Turtle Tips:
*This story is continued from TMNT Magazine (Panini) #1. The story continues in TMNT Magazine (Panini) #3.
*Coincidentally, just two months after this issue was published, IDW’s TMNT New Animated Adventures #2
would similarly end with Snakeweed being defeated by a bolt of lightning.
Review:
Man, Snakeweed isn’t really much of a villain, is he? I went on about my unimpressed opinion of him
in my TMNT New Animated Adventures #2 review, so I won’t repeat myself. But yeah, he’s kind of lame.
Heck, in this story I’d argue that he isn’t even a
villain at all. He has no evil scheme of
any kind. And outside of maybe some
zoning laws or lacking a landscaping permit, he’s not even committing any
crimes. Basically, the Turtles stumble
into his home and start beating him up.
This issue came out only a couple months before IDW tried their hand at
a Snakeweed story and the two don’t compare favorably. Snakeweed actually has a diabolical plan that
the Turtles have to thwart over in the IDW story. In this Panini comic, he’s just sort of an
angry neighbor the Turtles torment. The fact that both comics end with Snakeweed getting
defeated the same way is a strange coincidence, though.
Still, while the Panini Snakeweed comic lacks the “epic
save the world” stuff of the IDW Snakeweed comic, I will admit that the
brisker, more comedic take sets it apart from its American contemporary. Bove and Caruana work in some fun sight gags
(such as the thought-bubble fantasies that bookend the story) and, as before,
they have a good handle on the voices of the characters. And it's not their fault Snakeweed is such a boring villain that spouts generic dialogue along the lines of, "Raarrgghhh! I'll destroy you, Turtles!".
Jack Lawrence covers art duties this time around. Looking over the issues that have been
released so far, unlike IDW, Panini doesn’t stick to a single artist for the
title and seems content to cycle through a rotating staff of talent. The artists they employ are actually fairly consistent with each other, at least from what I’ve been able to tell,
and I can’t say any stand out as substantially better than the others. Solid layouts, expressions and so on. I think the consistent coloring from Cordy
probably helps hold it all together.
This double-length adventure didn’t impress me as much as the
two shorts from the previous issue. I
think they probably should have used the extended length to develop a stronger
story. Still, it is interesting to
compare the IDW and Panini Snakeweed stories, which came out only a couple
months apart and both follow the same germ of a plot: “Snakeweed grows a jungle
in New York, the Turtles stop him with a bolt of lightning”. Both are superficially the same, but execute
the ideas in completely different ways.
For my money’s worth, I prefer IDW’s effort, but Panini’s isn’t without
its charm, either.
Grade: C (as in, “Can’t anyone think of a DIFFERENT way
to kill Snakeweed for a change?”)
