Review:
I have nothing inherently against comedy relief issues, but unless they’re side-splittingly hilarious, they’re doomed to be forgotten and/or relegated to the “filler” category (and I’m aware that “filler” is considered a naughty word by the Mirage guys; I apologize).
The plot of “adorable pet turns into hideous monster to terrify one guy when nobody else is looking, then changes back to normal when they do, leaving everyone to think that one guy is a liar” has, for all intents and purposes, become a cartoon cliché along the lines of “the episode where everybody shrinks”. The Real Ghostbusters did it way back when with “Victor the Happy Ghost” and it’s been something of a staple in the animation industry ever since, becoming sort of a standby when the writers are short on ideas. So needless to say, it’s been done before. A lot.
What “Adventures in Bunnysitting” really offers, though, is a call-back to a plot point established in Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #9. An excellent and emotional story, I’m not sure it really needed an entire issue to follow it up, but it was rather depressing to see Mike bummed out over a lost pet. It struck a chord with me, since a dog I’d had for 15 years (and since I was 7 years-old) died a year ago. I know some people out there look at pets as “just animals” and don’t really establish very strong emotional bonds with them, but where I come from, pets are family. So I didn’t find Mike’s sudden bout of depression brought on by remembering a beloved pet he’d lost several years ago as “stretching it”. My dog Zoe’s been dead for over a year and it still bums me out when I think about her too much.
If I had any continuity gripes, it would have to be that, once again, we have another issue shoehorned into the gap from TMNT (Vol. 4) #5. That gap’s only a few months long and we’ve already got well over a dozen issues crammed into that timeframe. Damn, but the Turtles were busy, weren’t they? Leatherhead’s IQ seemed a bit of a surprise, too. When next we see him, he’s a mindless beast battling Gameraph over raw meat in the sewers. Obviously there’s a story missing there which I hope gets written at some point in the future (though considering Leatherhead’s reputation for mood-swings, it probably doesn’t).
Fernando Leon Gonzalez’s artwork is a nice fit with some excellent inking and toning by Ryan Brown and Jamal Walton. Although, while his Turtles look fine when they have their masks on, when they take them off, their eyes are constantly drawn as “full circles” which was a stylistic choice I wasn’t too fond of. But whatever, that’s just a nitpick. He did an outstanding job and the Bunny-monster on Page 21 looked pretty kickass.
Overall, it wasn’t really an outstanding issue; just average. Some nice art and a few continuity throwbacks, but damn if that TMNT (Vol.4) #5 time-gap is getting cramped!
Grade: C (as in, “Can’t get enough Super Golden Crisp! That doesn’t really have anything to do with the issue, I just felt like typing it”.)
