Originally published in: Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #6
Publication date: November, 2004
Story: Steve Murphy
Artwork: Jim Lawson
“The Raisin'”
Summary:
In the morgue of the Kurtzburg Memorial Hospital, a
strange creature called the Morto Mollucos (aka the Lazarus Fly) pulls the
corpse of Professor Obligado from its cabinet.
The Mollucos is an alien that can momentarily revive the dead by reactivating
their memories. The Mollucos then feeds
on those memories for nourishment. As it
prefers Utrom memories, it is regarded as one of their most persistent
predators.
Just as the Mollucos revives Obligado, the NYPD Xenosquad (the Police Captain, Sergeant Xitor and Detective Falina) comes barging into the morgue, having anticipated the creature’s plan. Sergeant Xitor opens fire on the Mollucos
while Obligado, in a state between life and death, mistakes the fluorescent
lights as the gateway to the afterlife.
The weapons fail to harm the Mollucos, an alien that Sergeant Xitor seems to
have a personal beef with.
Suddenly, a portal opens up in the room and several
helmeted Utroms on hovercrafts come through.
They are the Utrom Preservi, a rogue faction of Utrom “memory preservers”. Sergeant Xitor tries to shoot them, but they
blast her in the torso with their more advanced weaponry, revealing her to be
an Utrom.
The Preservi subdue the Mollucos and take it as well as
Obligado’s babbling corpse back through the portal, their “mission” proceeding
on schedule. Xitor is furious that she
lost the Mollocus, Obligado AND the Preservi.
The Police Captain, on the other hand, is furious that Xitor never
informed him that renegade groups of Utroms existed. Xitor promises to get him up to speed… over
some beers.
Turtle Tips:
*The Kurtzburg Memorial Hospital first appeared in TMNT (Vol. 4) #2.
*The Police Captain and Detective Falina will return in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #58.
Review:
We’re still in what’s essentially the “prologue” stage of
the Professor Obligado serial, establishing his death before we can get to the
stories about his life. To be honest,
whenever I think about the Obligado serial, I actually remember this prologue section
more than I do the bulk of the chapters (which are a series of bizarre
adventures in outer space and other dimensions).
“The Raisin'” reminds me a bit of that Edgar Allen Poe
story, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”.
Look, if you haven’t read it, just check out the Roger Corman movie “Tales
of Terror” from 1962. It has Vincent
Price AND Basil Rathbone! What more do you need?
Anyway, in
that story a crooked hypnotist promises to alleviate a dying man’s suffering by
putting him in a trance. However, the
trance lasts long after the man dies and he continues to remain partly
conscious as his body rots in bed. The
sight of Obligado being brought back from the dead in a half-state of
consciousness, as though he were in a trance, gave me flashbacks to my old high
school reading. It’s a good story; H.P. Lovecraft even recommended it in his
essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”.
Sergeant Xitor and the Police Captain made
brief, unnamed cameos in the last installment of this serial. With their new, colorful
identities as well as the more defined cast of the Xenosquad in group shots
(rather than the generic policemen from last chapter), Murphy seemed to be
trying to flesh them out as a recurring stable of personalities.
Ha ha. No. They make one more “substantial” appearance
after this, as background fodder at the end of the Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo
Mesa arc.
There's some weird discontinuity regarding Sergeant Xitor and the Police Captain, too. The female Police Sergeant being an Utrom is clearly something Murphy came up with later. In the previous chapter, it's the Police Captain who has to explain the menta-wave helmets to the Police Sergeant (Xitor) and give her a lesson on Utrom history. Obviously, since she was an Utrom all along, why would she need a human like the Police Captain to explain her own culture to her?
While the Xenosquad never really got to do much, I guess their existence qualifies as a case of world-building; showing us that there are a lot of diverse and interesting
characters in this world whom we don’t have time to see much of. Also, hey, the Kurtzburg Memorial
Hospital. I think this is the only time
it gets referenced after it was introduced at the start of TMNT Volume 4, right?
Grade: N/A
