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TMNTA #26 ** -- "No alien power can stop Turtle power!" indeed. I think I remember what happened as a kid... you know, I'd gotten all the previous issues from the comic store (usually stopping by there once or twice a month with my mom, looking for either the latest issue of TMNTA or RoboCop from Marvel) and was wondering why #26 was sooo late. After what seemed like forever, a new issue of TMNTA came... but it was not #26, but rather it was #27. I think the owner said he'd try to reorder #26 or something, but it never happened. Maybe that contributed to why I kind of moved on from TMNTA after the next few issues but ah well. So I'm reading this issue for the first time now ever and find it pretty forgettable. Back on pencils is Ken Mitchroney, which I've always had a soft spot for. On script duties this time is "Doug Brammer"... I'm not up on my pseudonyms so, like "Dean Clarrain" = Steve Murphy it's very possible this was somebody else, but maybe not. Dan Berger steps in with plot as well as inks, so that's always welcome. The story is about an alien called "The Keeper" (who looks like an amalgam of Doc Ock and the Shredder-Krang hybrid seen in the last three-parter). His whole thing is scooping up endangered types and protecting them from the evils of man. They make a abominable snowman friend named T'Pau (possibly named after the bitchy Vulcan who presided over things in the Vulcan sex episode of Star Trek: TOS) who gets whisked up by this character. In the end they realize they're all on the same side and get a free trip home where April is awaiting with pizza. Schmaltzy and heavy-handed. In the April backup busts in on the men in black holding Chu Hsi... and then Splinter busts in also (in samurai armor). When the odds look like in their favor a big burly white ninja shows up and that's the cliffhanger. Just as much piecemeal as the other April backups but a decent enough story when read at one time.
TMNTA #27 **1/2 -- A town with radioactive waste going into the water and the air that -- coincidentally enough -- has the exact same properties as Krang's mutagen is making the townspeople batty, and turns an owl, a crow, and a cat (Old Hob, Sr.?) into mutants. Sounds like the premise for another environmental message, and it is, but this one seemed to be both creepy and entertaining enough to me as a kid and now. More Mitchroney this time, with a plot by Ryan Brown. The whole issue kind of feels like an episode of Scooby Doo or something, but there's something about April investigating the town and the not-quite-right townspeople that really does make you afraid for her. The mutant cat, crow, and owl capture and try to make April into a mutant to have humans "join us in our toxic communion" but the Turtles show up, beat'em up, and hightail it outta there. That's that. Back to the April backup, April makes mincemeat out of the white ninja. Little bit of a stretch there that she'd be able to do that, but no more retarded than her managing to knock out Karai in the fourth Turtles movie, right? The last man in black tells April that Chu Hsi and Fu Sheng have been taken to Hiroshima... and we see that this April backup wasn't just a throwaway thing, but a direct lead-in to the next main story arc of TMNTA in the next issue(s). In continuity, I suppose this whole April backup would've had to have taken place between the end of this issue and the next one.
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