TMNT #21 (IDW Vol. 2) preview/discussion

[ToTheNines]

Out Wednesday.

https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/news/...nja-turtles-21

[TheLabRat]

Spoiler:

Why did they suddenly become wary and hostile to Shredder? I know what he did to them in the past. But later, in the Shredder in Hell story, Splinter attempted to redeem him and Shen agrees to his action. The Turtles also chose to cooperate with him in The Armageddon Game arc, and even became his apprentices to learn magic.

[Heyowakka]

Originally Posted by TheLabRat

Spoiler:

Why did they suddenly become wary and hostile to Shredder? I know what he did to them in the past. But later, in the Shredder in Hell story, Splinter attempted to redeem him and Shen agrees to his action. The Turtles also chose to cooperate with him in The Armageddon Game arc, and even became his apprentices to learn magic.

Spoiler:

Silly LabRat, the writers don’t read past issues, that’s just silly.

[Dancefloran]

Originally Posted by TheLabRat

Spoiler:

Why did they suddenly become wary and hostile to Shredder? I know what he did to them in the past. But later, in the Shredder in Hell story, Splinter attempted to redeem him and Shen agrees to his action. The Turtles also chose to cooperate with him in The Armageddon Game arc, and even became his apprentices to learn magic.

Spoiler:

My thoughts exactly, the dialogues with Shredder felt off. It's not the first time it happened.
They could have at least mentioned how they witnessed Shredder being on a killing spree in New York in the news (cf Shredder mini series first arc), some innocents cops died in the process. They could have inserted a dialogue or flashback saying how the Hamatos were disappointed by Shredder's character regression.

Originally Posted by Heyowakka

Spoiler:

Silly LabRat, the writers don’t read past issues, that’s just silly.

Spoiler:

They remembered Baxter's father from the Baxter micro (which was a cool idea), they have no excuses

Now for my review

Spoiler:

I want Shinagami's backstory, I want to know how she learned magic and how she met Karai, to be more invested in this character.
If she is sticking to the story as an ally to the Turtles in the future, we should get more from her.

Tang Shen only won her fights by being underestimated, I expect more challenges in the next four issues.

Yes, a Dragon-influenced Karai and Stockman are looking more villainous. It's crazy to resurrect his father to kill him again. By the way I like the Dexter Morgan reference, but I discovered a sad trivia : someone on this forum named the character Robert and Bobby Curnow made it official. Robert is even mentioned in Patrick Ehlers' sourcebook. Unless bro had two fathers he couldn't beat at chess lmao.

By the way, Splinter had a good punchline, I wonder if that was innocent or if it means Stockman will be killed by the Flyborgs. A deserved fate, I don't care about the presidential campaign plot anymore.

[ToTheNines]

Sheesh what a mess.

Starting a story en media res can be effective, but something about the story opening with that undead ninja trying to kill Shini just felt off. The pacing overall was more of the same from last month and still feels unnatural. Too much going on.

Fero Pe and Delgado are a hell of a team. The art looked incredible. Unfortunately the back half of the Yang run is circling the drain. Still better than Jason Aaron!

Originally Posted by TheLabRat

Spoiler:

Why did they suddenly become wary and hostile to Shredder? I know what he did to them in the past. But later, in the Shredder in Hell story, Splinter attempted to redeem him and Shen agrees to his action. The Turtles also chose to cooperate with him in The Armageddon Game arc, and even became his apprentices to learn magic.

Everyone’s mileage may vary as far as the scripting of this new volume goes, but it’s pretty infuriating that they’re doing stuff like this and they didn’t just reboot.

In this very issue they’re doing callbacks to stuff from 14-15 years ago, but simultaneously contradicting stuff from the past 3-4 years. It’s weird.

This is comics, retcons can happen! But they should be for a reason. They should be interesting. They seem to just be doing whatever just because. Wrap this **** up.

[neatoman]

Kinda weird how they had Baxter bring back his dad just to kill him.

[CyberCubed]

I hadn't read the issue Baxter's father was in, in literally decades, so I don't remember what his relationship to his father was. So I'm surprised he just shot him, but then again I don't even remember. Dexter Morgan? I guess someone is a Dexter fan.

I do think the fight with the undead Foot was over a bit too quickly, but there was good action and well scripted panels for the fight we did get. The kurisama is a little too much like a overpowered weapon from an RPG that one-hit kills everything, so hopefully they get it taken away from Tang Shen or something.

Also interested to see what Shinigami actually does, did she just dip after the fight? The whole thing was off-panel and Bebop/Rocksteady were with Karai when they visited Baxter at the end. So who knows what happened to Papa Beng either, lol.

Also kinda ironic this whole arc is just building up to an undead zombie arc from the looks of things.

[lonewarrior20]

is it wrong that i heard this playing when i saw their mom in action?

[TheLabRat]

IDW TMNT seems to have a bit penchant for patricide plots.
- Saki killed his father.
- Bishop killed his father.
- Karai "indirectly" caused her father's death and taking over his leadership.
- Stockman killed his father and he will do it again and again.

Also, when exactly did Tang Shen learning martial arts?

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Kinda weird how they had Baxter bring back his dad just to kill him.

Yeah, I didn’t like that at all.

Baxter is typically a very pathetic character, but the IDW version was always very driven, assertive and sane. This behavior just doesn’t ring true. I mean, all this effort and crazy science just to enact some daddy issue revenge? As a 40-50 year old man, mind you.

And why did he even want to kill him? He wasn’t abusive, just very hard on him and only because he was trying to make him smart. And Baxter already got his revenge when he forced him out of Stockgen and took it over himself.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Also kinda ironic this whole arc is just building up to an undead zombie arc from the looks of things.

Ironic how?

[CyberCubed]

It's ironic because we're heading toward Halloween and it's just become a zombie/undead arc. The irony is it's may just be another self-contained arc that resets status quo after it's settled.

As for characters seemingly acting out of character from one issue to the next, I feel like this has happened for awhile now long before this. I noticed it a long while ago even during Waltz era that villains would sometimes act friendly with the Turtles from a previous arc, then it would "reset" and they would go back to hating each other.

It definitely happened with Koya/Bludgeon multiple times. Didn't Bludgeon also say he gave up fighting to become a pacifist in Sophie's run, then all of a sudden he's back to working with Karai and Koya again fighting the Turtles because he, "missed it" or something? Like they were on the verge of befriending the Turtles and now they're back to being enemies again. Like you can excuse Bebop/Rocksteady here because they're written to be idiots who just do whatever they want, but Koya and Bludgeon shouldn't be written this way.

[Fenryr]

Stockman bringing his dad back to life just to kill him is dumb but those were easily some of the best pages across both books this week. Silly supervillain nonsense that he should be over by now and really shouldn't have time for as mayor of New York, a position he has done absolutely nothing with and will hopefully be ousted from with everything that's happened during his tenure.

[Dancefloran]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

It definitely happened with Koya/Bludgeon multiple times. Didn't Bludgeon also say he gave up fighting to become a pacifist in Sophie's run, then all of a sudden he's back to working with Karai and Koya again fighting the Turtles because he, "missed it" or something? Like they were on the verge of befriending the Turtles and now they're back to being enemies again. Like you can excuse Bebop/Rocksteady here because they're written to be idiots who just do whatever they want, but Koya and Bludgeon shouldn't be written this way.

What you said is true for Koya but false for Bludgeon
Sophie's plan for Koya were different from the other writers/editors, at one moment she became friendly with the turtles and even joined Bludgeon and Venus in the Aura clan. And then she came back to the Foot off screen. Her talisman thing is also sometimes forgotten in the drawings.

Bludgeon never joined the Foot Clan after he left, he fought the Foot Patrol and tried to warn Karai about one of his visions. He then participated in a Mutant Town party. We never saw him after that.

But yeah, the writings of characters like the Turtles, Splinter, Casey, Karai, Koya and Shredder becomes inconsistent with the whims of each new team. I guess this is the game

[Boco]

Stockman is a petty sociopath who hated his dad, wished to be the one that personally killed him, and is only happy when he's rubbing his superiority into the faces of others. Of course he'd take the time out to bring his dad back just to gloat and kill him. The creepy part is how he was going to keep doing it over and over.

[TheLabRat]

I wonder what would happen if Casey met Hun again? Compared to others, he had a reasonable motive for killing his father.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by TheLabRat

I wonder what would happen if Casey met Hun again? Compared to others, he had a reasonable motive for killing his father.

Didn't Hun sacrifice himself for Casey?

[Heyowakka]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Didn't Hun sacrifice himself for Casey?

I wonder if the writer read that issue.

[TheLabRat]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Didn't Hun sacrifice himself for Casey?

A leopard can't change its spots, which why he stuck in bar in the underworld.

[Daytona]

Just let Eastman write the book however he wants. Scripts and layouts. I’m not even trying to be a purist but aside from providing an authentic voice for the characters he legitimately still stages a comic better than most of his contemporaries. The guy can draw action.

On top of that, he’s not too wordy. He doesn’t tend to drag books down in exposition giant dialogue bubbles. He knows when to pull back.

He tends to have some bizarre concepts and ideas at time but I’m fine with it. Sort of the essence of TMNT anyway and I’ll take bizarre story, plotted well over a safe narrative told like it’s Sunday morning at church.