Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #4 ★★★✬☆

 

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Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #4
Authors: Peter Laird & Kevin Eastman
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 53
Words: 3K

Synopsis:

The Turtles are hanging out in April's apartment and decide to go for some night exercise on the nearby rooftops. They run into a group of Foot Clan soldiers and battle ensues. One of them gets hurt and all of them see a big building with the letters TCRI on it. After defeating the Foot Clan soldiers, the boys head back to recover from their fight.

The next night they head to the building only to discover it has no doors, no windows, no ledges, no apparent way to enter except the front door on the street and one door on the roof. They make their way into the building and discover Splinter in some sort of container in a coma. They set off some alarms and the aliens come running, afraid the Turtles will damage or destroy their Translocation Matrix Machine. The Turtles accidently activate the machine and the issue ends with them all fading away, fate unknown.

My Thoughts:

I feel like this comic has a rhythm and it has taken me to this volume to feel it and get in the groove. It is very different from One Piece, or Asterix or even Bone. Part of why the earlier reads felt so disjointed or disorienting to me was because I hadn't gotten that rhythm yet. I got it now though and really enjoyed this issue.

We find out the aliens are creating a translocation matrix machine, which is their goal. We all know what “translocation” mean, so it's obvious they're trying to bring something to Earth or to take something away. Of course, the boys screw up their plans royally when they invade and then accidentally activate it!

The little blobby aliens pricked something in my mind and after reading this volume I figured out what it was. They remind me of the toy brains from the Mattel toy line of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors from the 80's. We lived in an apartment complex growing up and one of our neighbors had a lot of toys. One such set was these Wheeled Warriors. The badguys where the Monster Minds or something and they were these green rubbery brains. They were so gross! And as a boy they were totally awesome. Anyway, the aliens remind me of them. Isn't it weird how things like that work?

★★★✬☆