Chris Cooper reviews Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #54…
“Michelangelo vs. Hun! Startling revelations will have lasting effects on the Mutanimals and Mikey’s path. What side will Hob take in coming conflict?”
Now that’s more like it. This month’s TMNT elicited a whole bunch of emotions.
There was some ‘ouch’. Then some ‘ooooo’. Then some ‘I see your point’. Then some tears. Finally there was some ‘I have no idea who that is; to google!’.
As you can tell it was all going on. And that’s good! The action serves the story, whilst each character’s decisions are well-developed, clear, and most importantly make sense. There’s nothing more annoying than when a story doesn’t follow through on its internal logic; no such problem here though.
I do have one issue though, and it’s a biggy. Mikey has been the focus of the past few issues, but I still don’t feel as though we’ve had a definitive orange bandana story. What has really happened to him? He ran off, joined a group, and now we move on. It makes sense why he did, but in the end has it changed things much? The events have occurred to his brothers were massive, and had a real effect on how they moved forward. I can’t see this story, despite it having some emotional impact, doing the same for Mikey.
It’s far from a bad story though, and the art is stronger than it was last month. I wonder if that is due to being mainly mutants this month. Even Hun is exaggerated, so the odd expressions of last month aren’t there. I know Santolouco is on the horizon though, and I won’t deny my excitement.
Overall this has been a decent arc. Maybe it hasn’t had the ramifications I wanted, but do we want Mikey to change? That is personal preference. Post #50 we needed to move things on a bit, and this story has started the movement away from ninjas (for now) and onto things I have very little idea about. That’s something to look forward to.
Chris Cooper is a Flickering Myth Staff Writer, and owner of the blog Super Duper Stuff. Follow him on Twitter @SDCCooper or visit the blog’s Facebook page.
Originally published January 29, 2016. Updated November 7, 2019.
