Originally published in: TMNT 30th Anniversary Special
Publication date: May 21, 2014
Story by: Tom Waltz and Bobby Curnow
Script by: Tom Waltz
Art by: Dan Duncan
Colors by: Ronda Pattison
“A Lot to Learn”
Summary:
It’s been less than a month since Raphael was reunited
with his brothers and Splinter, and he’s not adjusting very well. In training practice, his martial arts skills
are woefully inadequate as compared to his siblings’ and he continually gets
his butt kicked. Frustrated and angry,
Raphael storms out. Splinter and Leo try
to tell him that he’s making great progress, but Raph won’t hear it and leaves.
On the streets, Raph hooks up with Casey and the two go
for a night on the town, beating up thugs.
Raph recalls how he thought being reunited with his family was the
greatest day of his life, but begins to think that maybe he was more at home on
the streets, going it alone.
After they finish for the night, Casey invites Raph over
to his place to watch TV. He assures
Raph that his dad is probably passed out and won’t even know he’s there. Seeing Casey so nonchalantly willing to
return home to a broken family, but dedicated to his family nonetheless, Raph
realizes he was wrong to walk out. Raph
declines the invitation and decides to head back to the sewer lair to make
things right.
As he returns home, he’s met by Splinter. Raph apologizes for leaving, but Splinter
explains that he understands his situation.
Splinter assures Raph that while he still has much to learn from his
brothers, his brothers also have much to learn from him. Raph agrees to stay and continue his
training.
Turtle Tips:
*This story takes place shortly after TMNT (IDW) #4.
Review:
The initial arc of the IDW series, “Change is Constant”,
was slow and dull and plodding and I didn’t really like it. Once it was over with, I was more than ready
for the narrative to move on and start to get somewhere; to the good
stuff. It did that, but by skipping
ahead past all of Raph’s acclimation to his new family life. When we see him again, he’s just finishing up
his training and is suddenly on the level of his brothers (and is chummy with
them like old times).
For the flow of the ongoing series, it was the right move
to skip over Raph relearning martial arts and getting to know his family
again. “Change is Constant” took FOREVER
to get things started and another issue of Raph learning the ropes would have
been a torturous ordeal at the time (this was when there were no other supplementary TMNT books; just the one issue a month).
That said, it’s still a narrative gap and one that needed
to be told at some point down the line, when the IDW TMNT series had kicked
into gear and we could afford to have a lighter sort of story.
Waltz and Curnow get to the point and “A Lot to Learn”
winds up being a vital epilogue to “Change is Constant”. That arc was all about Raph, getting him back
to the family so the storyline could actually begin, and he needed more closure
than just a group hug. We see here that
he really isn’t taking getting beat on by his brothers for a month very well,
having been top dog on the streets, and he REALLY isn’t warming up to them, as
his memories haven’t been restored and these are brothers he hardly knows.
Using Casey as the means for Raph to come to his senses
was an interesting choice, though it’s just a little problematic. Raph sees Casey’s devotion to his deadbeat
dad as a source of inspiration; to never give up on your family even when times
are tough. But Casey, uh, his devotion
to his deadbeat dad wasn’t exactly ever a GOOD thing and his life didn’t start
to improve until he found the courage to walk out on him (and join his “real”
family; the Turtles). If Raph could look
into the future and see the events of TMNT Microseries #6: Casey Jones, and how self-destructive Casey was by staying with a family member that kicked his ass every day, he
might have walked away with a VERY different message about family.
But, from the perspective of this story, those events are
well into the future. If we look at
things from only four months into when IDW started publishing their Ninja Turtle
books, the lesson Raph extracts from Casey’s home life doesn’t seem so
counterintuitive.
“A Lot to Learn” is an important story and really improves
the transition between “Change is Constant” and “Enemies Old, Enemies New”. It’s a short epilogue, so it doesn’t slow the
pace of the arc down to any noticeable degree.
A shame it probably came too late in the game to be included in the TMNT
IDW Collection Volume 1 hardcover (which reprints the first 12 issues of the
ongoing, plus the first 5 Microseries issues in chronological order). UPDATE: Hey, it's in there! So that's good.
Grade: B- (as in, “But I guess the important distinction
is that Mr. Jones beats up Casey because he’s a drunken loser and the Turtles beat up
Raph because they love him”.)
