Chris Cooper reviews the second issue of IDW’s latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mini-series, Turtles in Time…
“The Turtles’ journey through time continues, and the next stop is Feudal Japan! The Turtles will meet some familiar faces and be forced to make one of the most important decisions of their lives. Will stopping the Shredder mean the end of the Turtles as we know them?”
Last month we followed our heroes as they took a trip to prehistoric times, took on some Utroms and gained pet! It was an extremely funny opening issue to this mini-series.
There is so much going on in this issue that I can’t talk about in the main review due to my avoidance of spoilers. Suffice to say the turtles are given the chance to fundamentally change the status quo, and it’s completely understandable why they might. Writer Erik Burnham has experience writing the TMNT before and it shows, with clear voices for each character. Every page is filled with emotion and information. He does manage to turn things on their head with who turns out to be calm and level-headed which made for a nice change. It’s a heavier story and very different to issue #1’s humour and slapstick, but it works with this combo of writer and artist.
Speaking of artist, Charles Paul Wilson III takes on the duties with Jeremy Mohler on colours. They compliment each other well, with the muted tone matching the time period and situation the characters are in. Whilst I can see it’s a good fit for the piece, I’m not so keen on the design of the characters. Of course it’s all subjective, but to me the turtles look a bit droopy in the face, and I prefer smoother lines. Having checked out Wilson’s Deviant Art page there is plenty of work I do like, so whilst this fits somewhere in the middle for me on the scale of TMNT artists, I’ll let you decide.
I am feeling a touch put out by not being sure where this series fits into the IDW chronology. We know that the TMNT 2014 Annual was delayed, so I’m assuming that will introduce to the time traveller Renet properly. But right now I can’t reconcile this story against what’s going on in the main title. Continuity has been strong though so I expect in time it will all come together. Just a bit more annoyed but it this month.
We’re halfway through now the series now, and we’ve been quite a lot already! We’ve had quite a shift in tone between issues #1 and #2, so will we see something like that again? I don’t know, but I am looking forward to what comes next.
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 July 23, 2014. Updated November 7, 2019.
