Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #52

Publication date: November, 2008

Plot: Steve Murphy, Ryan Brown and Peter Laird

Script: Steve Murphy

Thumbnails: Ryan Brown

Art: Dario Brizuela

Letters: Eric Talbot

Frontispiece: Michael Dooney

Front cover: Dario Brizuela and Steve Lavigne

Back cover: Fernando Leon Gonzalez

“The Crystal at the Heart of the World”

Summary:

Frontispiece: Dressed as a sheriff and hanging out at a ranch, Mikey mentions how most badmen quiet down once the law shows up.  Most, but not all…

On the plains of Moo Mesa, a rider races to a meeting place in a narrow canyon.  The rider is Bixolio, an Utrom.  He meets with the thief Bat Blastagun who has fulfilled his end of their transaction: stealing a device called a Cosmic Stigmatifier.  Bixolio jams a glove in the strange device, shutting it down.

At Utrom HQ on Earth, Donatello and Glurin are working on some experiments when Glurin’s Cosmic Stigmatifier Monitor starts going off.  Apparently, Cosmic Stigmatifiers are like perpetual motion machines and are supposed to be incapable of being shut down.  Raph and Casey show up with some burgers and Glurin suggests the four of them use his Dimensional Gridshift Unit (or “Gridshifter”) to travel across time and space and check in on the faulty Stigmatifier.

Back in Moo Mesa, the C.O.W.-Boys (Marshal Moo Montana, the Dakota Dude, the Cowlorado Kid) are in a shootout with Blastagun and Bixolio.  Bixolio flees, leaving Blastagun behind to be captured.  Suddenly, Glurin, Don, Raph and Casey appear in a bright flash of light.  After a brief introduction, Glurin repairs the Stigmatifier by removing the jammed glove and wonders what the point of vandalizing it was.

They’re startled by several ordinary cows draped in tattered clothing that come stampeding through the canyon.  They’re followed by mystic Jose Rey, who explains that these cows were once citizens of Moo Mesa, but some insidious force de-evolved them.  Jose Rey says he’s spent some time communing with the spirits on this predicament and came into contact with a powerful transdimensional creature: Cudley the Cowlick.  Raph and Don feel a strange sense of déjà vu upon seeing him, but Cudley says there isn’t any time to discuss it.  Jose then uses his mystical third eye to track where the strange energies are coming from.

The trail leads them to the Sacred Cave, where they find Bixolio and several members of the Utromi Preservi cutting shards off the Sacred Crystal and experimenting with its energies on the helpless citizens of Moo Mesa.  The good guys charge and a firefight breaks out.  In the chaos, Blastagun sees his chance to escape and breaks his bonds.  He then summons all the bats in the cave to cover his escape as he flies away.  The sonar from the bats shorts out the hovercrafts of the Utromi Preservi and they all plummet to the ground.  The C.O.W.-Boys round up the Preservi, though Bixolio has escaped.

A hooded stranger then interrupts them, saying she can explain everything.  She’s a strange alien named Ola of the Una.  The Una are the oldest surviving race of the multiverse and long ago took it upon themselves to watch over all other sentient races.  The Una planted Muta-Crystals within numerous worlds, including below Moo Mesa (the Sacred Crystal being a fragment of the Muta-Crystal).  The Muta-Crystals create Lightports, which are like wormholes allowing transportation from one world to another.  The Utromi Preservi ambushed her as she was travelling through the Lightport, mortally wounding her, then began searing off shards of the Muta-Crystal in Moo Mesa for their own ends.

Una asks Cudley to take her back to her homeworld where she can die in peace and Cudley abides.  Moo Montana then gives custody of the prisoners over to Glurin so he can take them back to Utrom HQ on Earth for punishment.  With that over with, the Turtles and Casey bid farewell and Glurin activates the Gridshifter to send them home.  While between dimensions, however, Bixolio surprises them from the other direction.  He frees the Preservi prisoners and disappears with them.

Upon arriving back at the lab, Glurin is horrified to find that his Cosmic Stigmatifier Monitor has been stolen.  Raphael then surmises that Bixolio’s entire “scheme” to clog one Stigmatifier was a ruse to get Glurin away from the Monitor.  Donatello asks what’s so valuable about the Monitor.  Glurin explains that it does more than just keep track of all the Cosmic Stigmatifiers, but that it can be used to locate every Muta-Cyrstal in the multiverse.

Turtle Tips:

*The Turtles last encountered the C.O.W.-Boys in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #32.  This story continues directly into Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #58.

*This story takes place sometime between TMNT (Vol. 4) #11 and TMNT (Vol. 4) #12.

*Casey first used Glurin’s Dimensional Gridshift Unit in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #17.

*Cudley the Cowlick hales from the Archie TMNT Adventures universe.  The Turtles of that universe first met him in TMNT Adventures #7.

*The Utromi Preservi last appeared in the story “The Risen”.

*Raph and Donatello are astonished to find evil Utroms exist, but they previously fought a different splinter faction of nefarious Utroms, the Illuminated Utrom Alliance, in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #23.

*As a matter of fact, the evil Utroms being identified as the Utromi Preservi may be a mistake.  The Utromi Preservi were revealed to be a rogue faction of Utroms dedicated to preserving the legacy of their people by extracting the memories of the dead.  The Illuminated Utrom Alliance, on the other hand, were a nihilistic sect of terrorists who believed that the only way to bring peace to the universe was to destroy all intelligent life in it.  The goal of this issue's evil Utroms, revealed in the next chapter, aligns closer to the motives of the Illuminated Utrom Alliance rather than the Utromi Preservi, indicating author Steve Murphy may have gotten the two factions confused.

*This issue also included a back-up story, “The Mission” by Dan Berger, and a bonus pin-up, “A Cowboy, a Cowlick and a Cowabunga!” by Adam Riches.

Review:

If the past chapters in the Moo Mesa arc had too little story, this installment suffers from having way too much.  An excess of characters are thrown at us in rapid succession and not all of them contribute anything particularly meaningful.

Cudley the Cowlick from Archie’s TMNT Adventures making an appearance was a big deal, but it boils down to nothing more than a gratuitous, nostalgia-fueled cameo.  He does absolutely nothing.  Jose Rey pops up and says, “By the way, have you met my pal Cudley the Cowlick?”  Cudley then proceeds to hang out in the background until he’s needed to taxi Ola away at the very end.  He’ll do a little more in the concluding chapter, but still nothing meaningful enough to warrant his inclusion.  I guess the temptation to include Cudley the Cowlick in a story featuring the Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa was too powerful to deny, but it’s still a pointless bit of fan pandering.

Then there’s Ola, who exists to do nothing other than deliver a boatload of exposition right before the issue wraps up.  There’s no foreshadowing to her existence; she doesn’t make any veiled appearances at the start of the issue or anything like that.  No narrative buildup whatsoever.  She’s just a weird alien who shows up at the very last possible minute to explain the plot to everyone because none of it made any sense.

Even the C.O.W.-Boys barely play a role in what’s supposed to be a crossover with them.  They just sort of mope around at the edge of the group, spouting generic dialogue and joining in the big fight; again, not really contributing much to the runaway story.

Murphy does, at least, try to tie a number of other concepts from earlier stories together into this one issue.  The Sacred Crystal Shard was the deus ex machina of the previous Moo Mesa chapters and the alien origin provided here nicely compliments the “folk tale” origin Jose Rey gave for it back in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #21.  The Utromi Preservi from the Professor Obligado back-up strips get a meatier role as villains in this story and we’ll see some more characters from those strips in the last chapter of the arc, so I guess those Obligado strips were good for something.  The mention of the Gridshifter also pigeonholes this story into a specific point during Volume 4.  Kind of weird when you look at this Moo Mesa arc as a whole and realize how each encounter was separated by quite a few years (in the first one, Splinter was still in “daddy” mode, grounding the Turtles).

Talbot seemed to have lettered this thing in a hurry, though.  Raph gets Don’s lines and Don gets Raph’s lines on more than one occasion and there are some spelling and grammatical errors in the dialogue (“What do can you tell us about these poor citizens?”).  These errors aren’t normally a big deal, but they don’t do much to take the edge off the rushed, overstuffed plot and all the thin characterization.

As you can see, I haven’t been a big supporter of these Moo Mesa crossovers.  They’re just not well-plotted or well-scripted and this two-part finale is a hell of a mess.  Dario Brizuela’s art is quite honestly the only thing worthwhile about this whole fiasco.

Grade: D (as in, “Did Casey really just make a ‘Cow Pattie’ joke?  Ugh, I thought this thing couldn’t get any worse…”)

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #32

Publication date: February, 2007

Plot: Peter Laird and Ryan Brown

Words: Steve Murphy

Layouts: Ryan Brown

Pencils: Dario Brizuela

Inks: Joe Rubinstein

Letters: Eric Talbot

Frontispiece: Jim Webb

Cover pencils: Dario Brizuela

Cover inks: Ryan Brown

Cover colors: Eric Talbot

Outhouse: Diego Jourdan

“The Eye of Aga-Moo-Tou”

Summary:

Frontispiece: Drawing his katana, Leonardo prepares to defend Klunk from a mysterious foe.  Leo says that he’s willing to take on any challenger and rarely minds a good fight, but when the same bad guy keeps coming back over and over and over again, he starts to get annoyed…

Somewhere in Moo Mesa, the mystic turtle Tsou-T’an-Jin meditates, hoping to glimpse the Eye of Aga-Moo-Tou and perceive even a fraction of its omniscient wisdom.  He astral projects to the ethereal dimension Bov-Gamesh and makes his way toward the Eye.  However, he’s cut off by none other than Savanti Romero.  Romero blasts Tsou and forces his spirit back into his body.  Sensing great danger, Tsou realizes he must call for help.

Elsewhere in Moo Mesa, at the Tumbleweed Saloon, the C.O.W.-Boys (Marshal Moo Montana, the Dakota Dude and the Cowlorado Kid) are enjoying some drinks when everyone is startled by a strange light in the distance.  The eerie glow is coming from the Sacred Cave, so the C.O.W.-Boys decide to investigate.

Inside the cave, the glow is coming from a weird door made of light.  The C.O.W.-Boys step through the door and find themselves in Bov-Gamesh.  They ascend a staircase floating in space and eventually spot Savanti Romero, chanting spells at the Eye.  Romero doesn’t want to be disturbed and transforms their guns into snakes.  The snakes quickly coil around and subdue the C.O.W.-Boys.

In Manhattan, the Turtles are on a rooftop battling a strange bunch of ninja they’ve never seen before.  They each strike a ninja, but their foes vanish into thin air.  The Turtles are then approached by the astral form of Tsou, who says he had nothing to do with the weird ninja and asks for their help.  The Turtles aren’t in a hurry to assist the stranger until he mentions that their old friends, the C.O.W.-Boys, are in trouble.  The Turtles rise to the occasion and enter through a doorway made of light, conjured up by Tsou.

The Turtles wind up in Bov-Gamesh and make their way up the staircase.  They’re stopped partway by the C.O.W.-Boys, who are now under the control of Savanti Romero.  Romero turns the C.O.W.-Boys on the Turtles as he continues his spell.  Hoping to gain the omniscient power of the Eye, he focuses its energy through the Crystal Shard in the Sacred Cave and back into himself.  By doing so, he alerts Moo Mesa mystic Jose Rey.

Tsou attempts to undo Romero’s spell on the C.O.W.-Boys, but Romero interferes, transferring the spell to the Turtles.  Now the C.O.W.-Boys are free, but find themselves under attack from the mind-controlled Turtles.  As the battle rages on, Splinter and Jose Rey show up and attempt to sort out the brawl.  Romero brushes them aside and completes his spell, refocusing all the energy of the Eye of Aga-Moo-Tou into himself.  There’s a bright flash and then the three mystics (Tsou, Splinter and Rey) decide they’re satisfied with the outcome.

Tsou frees the Turtles from their mind control.  The C.O.W.-Boys feel like they missed something and ask where Romero went.  Tsou explains that when Romero merged with the Eye, his feeble brain was incapable of handling complete multiversal omniscience.  The experience broke Romero’s mind, rendering him an inert husk.  He was then absorbed into the Eye of Aga-Moo-Tou, where he will remain forever.

Epilogue: At the Tumbleweed Saloon, the Turtles and the C.O.W.-Boys enjoy some drinks and shenanigans before parting ways.  The three mystics, meanwhile, discuss the concept of beginnings and endings over a pot of tea.  Unnoticed by anyone, a stranger exits the saloon, chuckling to himself that all things must inevitably end.  As the anthropomorphic cow mounts his horse, his coat opens up revealing… an Utrom?

Turtle Tips:

*The Turtles last met the C.O.W.-Boys in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #21.  They’ll meet them again in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #52.

*In that first C.O.W.-Boys encounter, the Turtles were rather young and still able to be grounded by Splinter.  Due to the presence of Savanti Romero and this being their final encounter with him, this story has to take place some years later.  Personally, I stick it in the Mirage “Volume 3” era.

*The Turtles last encountered Savanti Romero in TMNT (Vol. 1) #47.  To date, this is Romero’s final appearance.

*Tsou-T'an-Jin will be mentioned in Raphael: Bad Moon Rising #1.
 

*The opening editorial cartoon was drawn by Diego Jourdan with words by Steve Murphy (it’s just him sitting in an outhouse shouting Dr. Strange pastiches to himself).

*The credits for this issue mistakenly omit Jim Webb’s credit for the frontispiece.  His credit and an apology were published in the opening editorial of Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #33.

*There are 2 versions of this issue: The regular retail edition and a variant exclusive for the Wayne Center for the Arts in Ohio.  The Wayne Center variant was limited to 500 copies and featured a new cover by Andres Ponce, Ryan Brown and Steve Lavigne.  The issue also included a different opening editorial on the interior cover, explaining the purpose of the Wayne Center.  Other than that, the two versions of the issue are identical.
 

Review:

This second Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa crossover was quite a bit more tolerable than the first.  It doesn’t suffer from being quite as rushed, even if it’s only a few pages longer.  I think what helps is that Murphy uses familiarity to his advantage to skip past the establishing stages.  Lousy as it was, the first chapter in the Moo Mesa arc at least got the two franchise characters familiar with each other.  Likewise, the inclusion of classic TMNT villain Savanti Romero eliminates any need to setup a new bad guy and explain their background or motivations.

All that being said, it still isn’t a particularly good story.  While Terrorbull in the first part was out to steal gold and jewels, Romero is out to steal Ultimate Power and they both commit the larceny in similar smash-and-grab fashion.  Yeah, the conflict in this chapter isn’t as smalltime as the conflict in the first, but the execution isn’t a whole heck of a lot better.

Fulfilling a crossover cliché the first chapter avoided, the TMNT and the C.O.W.-Boys engage in a gratuitous fight.  It’s a cliché, yeah, but one I can get over; if you’re going to have characters meet each other, folks are going to want to see them fight.  The disappointment instead comes from the fact that in both variations of the battle, the non-mind-controlled side pulls their punches.  You know, the whole “we don’t want to hurt our friends” deal.  So it’s a whole lot of characters just standing around getting punched as they make horrible, horrible cow puns and whine that they can’t fight back.

As for Romero, he’s as comically dense as ever, which leaves me conflicted about the resolution.  I like Romero as a bumbling oaf with incredible power as it makes him one of the more amusing recurring antagonists in the series.  So the fact that he defeats himself at the end by underestimating the power of the Eye is entirely fitting.  The problem with that though is… the villain defeats himself.  The Turtles and the C.O.W.-Boys could have both just stayed at home and slept in and the story would have ended the exact same way.  They contributed nothing to the resolution.  It makes the whole story feel rather pointless, doesn’t it?

Grade: D+ (as in, “Don’t expect me to name all those Moo Mesa characters on page 6, because beyond Saddle Sore and Boothill Buzzard, I don’t know any of them”.)

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #21

Publication date: March, 2006

Plot: Ryan Brown, Steve Murphy and Peter Laird

Script: Steve Murphy

Breakdowns: Jim Lawson

Pencils and tones: Dario Brizuela

Inks: Andres Ponce

Frontispiece: Eric Theriault

Lettering: Eric Talbot

Letters page art: Aaron Tompkins

Special thanks for “art assistance”: Leandro Corral, Nelson Luty, Abril Barrado

“A (Bull) Wrinkle in Time”

Summary:

Frontispiece: On a freeway, Michelangelo is facing down a tornado, complete with a cow sucked straight from a dairy farm.  The sight reminds Mikey about how much he hates “Got Milk?” ads, because they’re unfair to low income families who cannot afford milk.  He also hates how unhealthy beef is due to qualities such as mad cow disease and bovine growth hormones.  All this cattle talk also reminds him of a story…

In Moo Mesa, Generic Native American Stereotype Jose Rey is busy telling the story of creation to a school of kids (they’re all anthropomorphic cows, by the way).  Rey explains that in the beginning, there was only the Great Turtle and his animal friends, swimming in an endless ocean.  Then a comet came out of the sky carrying a beautiful girl and landed in the ocean.  The Great Turtle asked that soil be brought up from the ocean floor and placed on his back so that the girl could have a land to live on.  The soil grew and became the Earth, now held up forever by the Great Turtle.

The story is interrupted by the youngster Cody Calf, who has terrible news: Sheriff Terrorbull invaded the Sacred Cave and stole the Crystal Shard (a piece of the comet that created the Earth).  The C.O.W.-Boys (Marshal Moo Montana, the Dakota Dude and the Cowlorado Kid) tried to stop him, but he escaped through a magical door.  The C.O.W.-Boys gave chase and vanished.  Jose Rey uses his mystical third eye to begin searching the Astral Plane for wherever the C.O.W.-Boys might have gone.

Turns out they’re in Manhattan.  The bovines are bewildered by this strange city (and displeased with the light pollution and lack of flora), but decide to continue their pursuit of Terrorbull before he can cause too much trouble.  They follow the sound of an alarm to a jewelry store which has just been robbed and figure they’re on Terrorbull’s trail.  The police mistake the C.O.W.-Boys for the thieves, however, and give chase.  The cattle are chased into a blind alley, but Michelangelo surprises them from a manhole.  He invites the C.O.W.-Boys to join him in the sewer before the police catch up.

Following Mikey to the lair, both groups fill the other in on their origins and situation.  As Raph fights a sudden craving for burgers, Donnie figures he might be able to get a bead on Terrorbull with his police scanner.  The police band mentions a gang of cow-men robbing the Gold Reserve and the TMNT and C.O.W.-Boys head out.

Arriving at the Gold Reserve, they spot a dozen Terrorbull clones shooting it out with the police.  Montana figures the fiend used the Crystal Shard to create magic duplicates of himself.  The Turtles, Dakota and Cowlorado keep the Terrorbull clones (and police) busy while Montana sneaks into the Gold Reserve to take out the genuine article.

Inside, Montana finds Terrorbull raiding the gold vaults and using the magic doorways to stash his horde in his hideaway back in Moo Mesa.  The two do battle, while outside, the Turtles and the C.O.W.-Boys commandeer some police horses to round up the Terrorbull clones and lasso them.  With that out of the way, Mikey hurries to help Montana knockout Terrorbull.  With the Crystal Shard now out of villainous hands, all the clones vanish.

The Turtles and the C.O.W.-Boys carry the hog-tied Terrorbull back to the lair where they find Splinter and Jose Rey communicating via the Astral Plane.  Jose Rey helps Montana use the Crystal Shard to open a doorway back to Moo Mesa and the C.O.W.-Boys bid farewell.

Epilogue:  The C.O.W.-Boys return the Crystal Shard to the Sacred Cave and with a job well done, decide to head down to the Tumbleweed Saloon for some sarsaparillas and turtle soup (though they’re not proud of the latter).  At the schoolhouse, Jose Rey tells the kids all about how the four Great Turtles saved the Crystal Shard.  One of the kids says that he thought there was only one Great Turtle.  Rey says that, at least for the day, there are now four.

Turtle Tips:

*The Turtles will encounter the C.O.W.-Boys again in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #32.

*As for where this one goes in the timeline, Splinter threatens to ground Raphael after he makes a comment about hamburgers, meaning the Turtles still have to be relatively young.  Since they're living in the sewer lair, that would have to put this sometime after TMNT (Vol. 1) #21.

*In case you don’t remember, the Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa were characters created by Mirage staffer Ryan Brown and his father Bob Brown.  They had a short-lived cartoon, comic series and toyline which, according to the opening editorial, were much more popular in Latin American countries than in the US.

*This issue featured a contest from Steve Murphy challenging readers to name the source of every literary quote he included throughout the letters page.  Winner would receive the Eric Talbot letters page artwork from Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #20.  The more difficult challenge would be to read through all of Murphy’s letter responses without gagging, rolling your eyes or falling asleep.  I failed on all three counts.

Review:

Wow, that sure was some fanfiction-quality stuff, wasn’t it?  A deus ex machina to bring the two groups together, a no-questions-asked alliance and a thoroughly lackluster resolution (Montana punches Terrorbull and that’s the end of that).  Honestly, this is a really lousy story and the only attraction is seeing the TMNT and the C.O.W.-Boys crossing over (and Brizuela’s art).  But are there really that many Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa fans out there to even warrant much excitement over this crossover?

I recall the C.O.W.-Boys from back in the day, but it was just one cartoon in a repulsive glut of anthropomorphic animal action shows churned out to cash-in on the popularity of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa left about as big an impact on me as the Biker Mice from Mars.  It came in to piggyback on a fad while the iron was hot then vanished just as quickly.  26 episodes total.  That’s it.  I mean, seriously, guys; Street Sharks and Extreme Dinosaurs lasted longer than that (and their crossover was better, God help us all).

But I guess what separates Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa from all the other TMNT wannabes was that this was a TMNT wannabe created by a Mirage staffer.  So that awards it a little extra mileage, I guess.

What bums me out is that Ryan Brown has no credit in this issue beyond plotting the story (with two other people).  It might have been interesting to see the creator return to his creations after a decade, but he didn’t write the script or draw the issue or anything.  Instead, go-to-guy Steve Murphy handles the writing side of things and I already covered how uninspired the whole story was.  Seriously, Michelangelo just pops his head out of a random manhole in New York, sees the C.O.W.-Boys running from the cops and instantly thinks “they must be good guys; I should invite them to our secret lair immediately!”

At least Murphy keeps his jacking off to Native American culture to a minimum and shows the restraint to sprinkle in only a couple of environmental messages.  Well, except for the frontispiece and Michelangelo's unsolicited rant about the dairy and beef industries.  That was nothing but Murphy using the Turtle as his own personal mouthpiece.

I dunno, I guess I’m being a jerk in this review.  I’m sorry.  Wild West C.O.W.-Boys has its fans (apparently they’re all in Latin America; you know, like that friend of yours who insists he has a girlfriend, but she lives in Canada) and I imagine they got a kick out of seeing their thoroughly dead obsession resurrected for an inexplicable comic book crossover.  And when there hadn’t been any C.O.W.-Boys material in 12 years when this issue came out, I doubt they were feeling especially picky.  But the story is awful and the characters have absolutely no personality whatsoever (Montana is the leader, Dakota and Cowlorado are The Other Guys).  All this thing has going for it is some wonderful art by Dario Brizuela and a slew of cow puns.  On second thought, scratch that second compliment; those puns were excruciating.

If this had been a one-off, it would have been harmless enough.  But we got three more issues of this shit, for some reason.

Grade: D (as in, “Dakota Dude was the only one whose voice I remembered, but that's because he sounded like redneck Nega Duck”.)

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #58

Publication date: May 20, 2009

Plot: Steve Murphy and Ryan Brown
Script: Steve Murphy
Art: Dario Brizuela
Lettering: Eric Talbot
Frontispiece: Michael Dooney
Front cover: Dario Brizuela and Steve Lavigne
Back cover: Fernando Leon Gonzalez

“All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays”

Summary:

Frontispiece: Leonardo recalls some of the batshit crazy creatures he has met in his many adventures, both good and evil, as he, his brothers and a very young Shadow get better acquainted with Cudley the Cowlick.

Down on Earth, the Turtles, Casey and the Utrom Glurin are tracing the whereabouts of the Utromi Preservi, who had stolen the Cosmic Stigmatifier Monitor from Glurin's lab, and find they’ve gone to Alpha Centauri. Since the Preservi had also stolen the powerful Crystal Shard from Moo Mesa in their last encounter, the group decides to split up. Leo, Don and Glurin take a spaceship and go to Alpha Centauri while Mike, Raph and Casey cross dimensions with Don’s Gridshift remote to warn the C.O.W.-Boys over in Moo Mesa.

Leo and the others arrive safely in Alpha Centauri, only to discover the fleet of Preservi cruisers using the Cosmic Stigmatifier Monitor to open a weird rift in reality. One of the Preservi flies into "the singularity" and launches a missile containing the Crystal Shard. A few seconds later, he returns from the singularity…dead. He was successful in his endeavor, though, and out of the singularity comes a gigantic sarcophagus: The sarcophagus of the Space Vampire. They intend to use its power for themselves. Or something.



At the Tumbleweed Saloon in Moo Mesa, Mike, Raph and Casey are engaging in a good ole fashioned brawl with such nasties as Saddle Sore and Boot Hill Buzzard, among others, as Lily Bovine watches on with little amusement. However, the C.O.W.-Boys (Marshal Moo Montana, the Dakota Dude and the Cowlorado Kid) quickly arrive and break up the act.

Back in space, the Preservi have noticed Leo and the rest and open fire, destroying their ship. The trio bail out in their spacesuits just as the sarcophagus of the Space Vampire opens up, unleashing Galactose (who looks like a not-so-subtle cross between Galactus, Annihilus and a bat), who now wields the power of the Crystal Shard.

Back in Moo Mesa, the Turtles are in the middle of explaining what’s happening to the C.O.W.-Boys when the Sacred Cave (where the Muta-Crystal is buried) begins to glow like crazy. They arrive at the cave to investigate.

Back in space, Galactose has added the Shard to his “Chaos Scepter” and is draining the life from all the Preservi. He then turns his attention to the Turtles and fires, but luckily for them, Cudley the Cowlick arrives at the last second and whisks them away from the danger. Inside Cudley’s mouth, the Turtles are reunited with Ola of the Una, who is still clinging to life. Ola explains that she has survived because she still has a purpose and it involves the Shards of the Muta-Crystal and their profound link to one-another.

As she explains this, Galactose begins to drain the life from a nearby planet: Earth. When Galactose feeds, he becomes capable of tearing open the space-time continuum, granting him access to parallel versions of the world he’s devouring. With the power of the Shard, Galactose also has a clear path back to Moo Mesa for further nourishment. Cudley takes the gang to Moo Mesa where they reunite with the other Turtles, Casey and the C.O.W.-Boys. Unfortunately, the Muta-Crystal is glowing because it is drawing Galactose near. The guys escape the cave just as it collapses, only to find Moo Mesa crumbling to pieces thanks to Galactose.



As reality shatters to pieces, the Turtles see versions of themselves from all across the multiverse: very awkwardly drawn versions of themselves (from TMNT (Vol. 1) #1), themselves in wacky wrestling costumes battling Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady (from TMNT Adventures #7), the Mighty Mutanimals (from, uh, The Mighty Mutanimals), and a sharp-looking version of themselves with pupils visible through their bandanas (presumably from the 2007 Imagi TMNT film). Thinking fast, Don takes the Gridshift remote, adjusts it and zaps himself, his brothers, Casey and Glurin away...leaving the C.O.W.-Boys to die. Nice.

We’re taken back in time, to when Don, Raph, Ola and the C.O.W.-Boys failed to stop the Preservi from stealing the Shard from the Muta-Crystal. Suddenly, Leo, Mike, Glurin and the NYPD Xenosquad (the Police Captain, Sergeant Xitor and Detective Falina) arrive from the future and take down the Preservi with their laser guns, then trap them in a force field. The day saved, Leo explains to past-Don that his future invention, the Gridshift remote, allowed them to travel through time and save the day. The Xenosquad then return to their time and dimension with the Preservi as Cudley takes Ola back to her homeworld to die. As the Turtles bid their goodbyes to the C.O.W.-Boys, a rightfully confused Raph asks Casey what future they will be returning to and whether their future selves will be there. Casey says he doesn’t know, but all he cares about is thanking Don for making sure they have a future to return to.



Meanwhile, out in space, the sarcophagus of the Space Vampire remains undisturbed, having never been opened.


Turtle Tips:

*This story is continued from Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #52.

*NYPD Xenosquad members the Police Captain and Detective Falina last appeared in the story "The Raisin'".  Sergeant Xitor last appeared in the story "The Risen".

*The Turtle Multiverse will be revisited in the TV movie, "Turtles Forever".

*This issue also featured a bonus TMNT/C.O.W.-Boys pin-up by Fernando Leon Gonzalez (in addition to his back cover).


Review:

As you may or may not know, I’m usually very fond of the actual multi-issue story arcs that exist in Tales, as there are far too few of them. This one, however, never really hit it off with me. I didn’t like the C.O.W.-Boys cartoon when I was a kid and wasn’t one of the eight people who read the original comic book series, so I just don’t have any inherent love for the characters or their universe. This issue in particular hardly includes them at all, with them making mostly token appearances and not contributing to the plot in any significant way whatsoever. I mean, the Cowlorado Kid gets only two lines of dialogue in the whole thing! They’re just so superfluous to the story, at least as far as this concluding chapter is concerned.

What this story does do, however, is establish that the TMNT exist in a multiverse (mentioned offhandedly in the past every now and again), somewhat tying all their alternate versions from other media together.  This, at least in theory, opens up the door for future crossovers. I mean, I doubt we’ll ever see a TMNT: The Next Mutation crossover in any of these comics, but I guess it’s soothing to know the possibility exists (or maybe it isn’t so soothing). Oddly, the collage of alternate reality versions of the TMNT includes a glimpse of TMNT (Vol. 1) #1 which, last time I checked, took place in the same continuity as the one these Turtles come from (the Mirage continuity). I guess…just…try not to think about it.

The time jump confused me terribly at first. All four Turtles skip through time on page 31, yet only Mike and Leo come back (and with a bunch of weird characters, too). I had to read it over and over to really get it, but I guess only those two came back so that two Dons and two Raphs wouldn’t be together at the same time. Shit, I don’t know. Time travel gives me a migraine.

Then there’s Galactose and the onslaught of horrible, horrible barnyard puns. All these C.O.W.-Boys crossovers have been polluted with them and you can really tell Murphy’s running out of steam by this point. That three-legged dog joke was a crime against nature. Then there’s Galactose, that oddball parody of Marvel Comics’ Galactus who just came out of freakin’ nowhere. Why randomly parody a cosmic Marvel Comics villain in a crossover about talking animals in the Wild West? Hell if I know. I got the feeling the overtly goofy tone of the story was meant to evoke nostalgia for the often lighthearted TMNT Adventures series, but that may be a bit of a stretch.

On the bright side, we’ve got Dario Brizuela’s excellent artwork to feast upon. I’ve always loved his rendition of the Turtles, with their oh-so expressive eye slits. His version of Cudley is horribly adorable, I’m sad to confess. Or at least as adorable as a severed cow head can be, anyway. His digital shading is excellent and there are some very impressive moments, particularly the big brawl at the saloon. One oddity, though, is Page 15, which is just the bottom half of the last panel of Page 14, blown up to fit an entire page. I imagine this was done in order to allow for the two-page spreads on pages 16-17 and 28-29. Still, they could have done something a little more remarkable than… that.

Overall, this arc has been all over the place. I actually enjoyed it more when it was just a cheesy gratuitous crossover and not a cosmic epic. This last installment faltered pretty badly, shuffling the C.O.W.-Boys off to the background and throwing in some partly incomprehensible time travel mumbo jumbo, all for the sake of a cheap “Hey, remember those other TMNT cartoons and comics?” gimmick. Brizuela’s art is a treat, but it can only do so much.

Grade: D+ (as in, “Dario’s Cudley is adorable. Dooney’s Cudley is creeeeeeepy!”)