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IDW TMNT # 38

By Mark Rodriguez

A lot has happened since the Turtles have returned to New York. Don and April discovered that Harold created Metalhead and a supersuit that enabled Angel to become the crimefighter Nobody. Hun made his choice to kill Casey if he continues to oppose the Foot. Hob is working on more mutants and Slash is now of normal intelligence. Splinter and Leo ran into the Rat King. Shredder and Krang are at war with each other. So what happens now?


The issue starts with the Turtles and Splinter returning to their home after a training run, and Don is gladly to see that his sensei's leg has recovered nicely. They are surprised to find Slash waiting for them. Don asks how he able to get past all of their alarms and he explains that he easily disarmed them. Mikey asks him why he's at their home and Slash says Hob wants to see Splinter and 'it's time to make good on his promise'. Don asks him about it, but Splinter says he will explain later. Leo says they will all go see Hob after they have a family meeting. Mikey sees Slash out and the other start to discuss things.


Angel is out fighting street punks as Harold is talking to her through a built in communication system. The more she fights, the more Harold can study the data obtained by the Nobody suit's performance. As Nobody prepares to leave one of the punks gets a gun and is about to shoot her from behind. Harold tells her to watch out and a white blur attacks the guy and knocks him out before he could shoot Angel. She wonders who warned her and Harold demands she returns to the lab before the suit gets damaged. As she leaves she is being watched by Alopex.

Mikey returns to see Don arguing with everyone as Splinter had promised to not only steal Mutagen for Hob but also side with his army in exchange for helping them rescue Leo when he was brainwashed by the Foot. Splinter says they still have to deal with Shredder and Don argues about the Technodrome being more important and a much larger threat. Raph says he hates Hob too but could use the extra firepower.

Splinter tries to talk to Donnie, but he is tired of listening. He tells the gang that their fight with Shredder is just a silly turf war in comparison to Krang wanting to terraform the whole world. He then storms out. Mikey says he agrees with Don and they should worry about saving the world, not just themselves. Splinter says Shredder is still a threat and he is out to kill them, if they are going to save the world they have to survive first. Leo says he'll talk to Don as the others see what Hob wants.

April returns home and sees her family. She then socks Casey in the arm. She tells him he needs to change his life or he might not survive the next fight and there won't be anything they can do to save him. Casey says he's not good at school stuff like April says but she says to consider it as another kind of fight that they can help him with.


Hob tells the group that Lindsay was able to combine the Mutagen with Splinter's blood and were able to create these new mutant soldiers. Leo then jumps into the scene and Herman reveals to be packing heavy artillery in his dumpster and Mondo gets behind him, showing that his skateboard is also a gun. Leo is confused but Hob calls them off. Hob explains he's the one that helped add the extra firepower since he's a weapons expert. Raph says they're a big improvement over the pigeon from before and asks about him. Lindsay says she sent him to find more specimens.

Meanwhile Pigeon Pete is telling some people about the mutant army he's with and wants them to join. They ask what kind of mutants and they seems interested when Pete tells them about mutant turtles and a rat. Pete asks if they want to join and the people he's talking to seem very interested. The last panel reveals Pete was talking to Bebop and Rocksteady....


My Opinions

Wow, what a great issue. Although this comic has more talking than action, more and more plot points are being brought up. Don is getting really fired up on stopping Krang and he even talked back to Splinter. I have to say, between Leo and Don, this comic is probably the version of the Turtles where they talked back to Splinter the most. It was also cool of Mikey to speak up and say he agrees with Don even when the majority didn't. As for Alopex, why did she help Angel.... and how would she even know that Angel is Nobody anyway?

Slash is shown to be more than just normal intelligence in regards to disarming Don's security systems and also being able to understand Lindsay's technobabble. But of course the real show-stealers are the new mutants, Herman and especially Mondo Gecko. Herman is all new and he seems to be a military type crab. We'll see how his character develops.

But the big surprise is Mondo Gecko, one of my favorite classic characters. I also like that Mikey was instantly impressed by his board. I'm curious how they'll interact in this version. I also liked that Raph flat out called him a stoner lizard. Yeah, we know Mikey always talked like he was stoned in the 80's cartoon, but no one ever called him out on it. He just.... talked that way, is all.

From the get-go Mondo was supposed to be Mikey's best bud, a fellow surfer/skater and someone he could totally relate to. Sadly, most versions have failed on this. The original cartoon version did have him become Mikey's friend, but he was only in two episodes and they didn't give him the surfer stoner slang that he was supposed to have.


The Archie comics was closer to the original idea, and he even lived with the Turtles for a bit and he was good friends with Mikey. Unfortunately we didn't see much of that either since he soon went to join an all-mutant superhero group called the Mighty Mutinamals.... and they were eventually gunned down. Yeah that was a shocker to me too. I mean, I wouldn't be so surprised if Archie had their original characters killed off, but killing off classics like Mondo Gecko and Leatherhead??? No mercy there man, no mercy.


Mondo Gecko also made it in the Nick cartoon. He's voiced by Robbie Rist, the guy that voiced Michealangelo in all three classic live action movies! Now Mikey can be best friends with himself. Sadly he wasn't that much of a fighter in this one which made me wonder why he was brought in if he was just gonna be a goofball.


So what awaits the IDW version of Mondo Gecko, now armed with a skateboard gun and one of Hob's soldiers? We'll have to see. And hey, Bebop and Rocksteady are back and are gonna be the focus of next issue! Can't wait to see what happens!

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