IDW TMNT New Animated Adventures #13

 By Mark Rodriguez

At this point Paige had her fill of one-shot stories that don't really go anywhere so I took over reviewing these issues. I have to say, it must be difficult to make stories that won't contradict whatever the show is up to. We also see how the Lego version of Mirage TMNT # 1 will wrap up.

April's Way

The story starts with April tossed on her butt by Leonardo during a training session. She complains that Leo used a new move she never seen before so she wasn't able to block it. Leo mentions they learned it the other day while she was at school. She thinks it's unfair the others train without her while she's at school, and she says even Mikey has perfected meditating. Well, actually he was on his tPhone, listening to music. April heads off to a field trip to the zoo and tells them not to learn anything too awesome in her absence.

On the field trip, April learns about elephants, or as much as she can as she scribbles drawings of the turtles and herself in her notepad. The guide explains that Ellie the elephant is safe at the zoo and if she ever gets angry, music calms her down  She watches some monkeys and finds out that she lost her group and the zoo will be closing soon. As she heads out, she finds out that the Kraang are planning to mutate the people and the animals in the zoo and call for the elephant.

April tells the Turtles about the Kraang and their plans, and they tell her to hide and wait for them to arrive. April feels Ellie the elephant doesn't have that much time and heads off to stop them on her own. The Kraang are already dragging the elephant out of her cage and April figures if she can't out-fight them, she can out-think them.

The Turtles head down the sewers and run into a bunch of Kraang. Mikey rushes in and the others follow and they quickly take them down. However, their fight brings the attention of more Kraang and they're captured.

April plans to take the Kraang out one by one with stealth, but then see that the Turtles were captured. She then sees that the elephant is tried to a Mutagen miachine and looks angry based on what she just learned about Ellie, so she tosses her pencil at the release button to let it go. Once free, Ellie goes on a rampage and stomps the Kraang down. Leo says once it's done with the Kraang, the elephant will come after them. April runs in and grabs Mikey's tPhone and plays music to calm the elephant down. It soon goes to sleep.

The turtles are impressed with the ninjitsu April just used, even though she's confused. They say she used stealth, and smarts. Raph invites her to train, but April says as a ninja she should also learn about the world around her, and invited the turtles to continue the field trip with her.

Lesson Learned

Raph pulls a shoulder muscle during some heavy lifting training and Splinter says he should heal up before risking further injury. Soon enough the Turtles have to head on patrol without Raph. He gets upset and decides to walk off on his own. Sulking by himself, he is suddenly attacked by Mousers. As he fights them off, the ceiling collapses onto him, further injuring his shoulder.

Raph re-wraps his wound, but can't use the tPhone to call for help since it was busted. He sees a Mouser head, still chomping away at nothing and sees that they're built to last. He uses the Mouser head a boxing glove and soon punches his way out of the rubble. The Turtles arrive in time to see him escape. Splinter arrives to commend him on his resourcefulness to make up for his injury... but he still disobeyed him so he is now double-grounded. Raph says he's fine and his shoulder doesn't even hurt anymore. Splinter touches Raph's other shoulder, and he passes out from the pain.

LEGO TMNT Part 3

The Turtles prepare to face the Shredder on a rooftop. Shredder does arrive and is confused why his past with Yoshi is coming back to haunt him now. Shredder call for the Foot and soon the Turtles take them down. Shredder says they were just students and he is a master and challenges them to fight him one by one or all at once. Raph goes first and quickly kicked back. Don and Mike go next and are defeated. Leo also tries but is just as easily defeated.

Leo says he's too dangerous to fight one on one, so they try to hit him from a distance. They toss their throwing stars and blades at the Shredder, and Raph tosses his sai. Leo jumps in to kick him back and slices off his helmet. Shredder pulls out a thermite grenade, ready to take everybody out but Don hits him with his staff and he falls off the building as the grenade explodes with him.

The Turtles have succeeded in their mission, and like Leo says, the Shredder has been shredded. The Turtles are worn out and decide to head home. They're ninjas, so they strike hard, and fade away into the night.

My Opinions

Well on the first story, it was a short and simple tale that shows April can handle herself just fine. On its own it was pretty entertaining. It's also good to see April do more stuff on her own that doesn't have Donnie involved. I know lots of people on the show complain that April feels more like Donnie's friend and potential love interest than a friend of all four of them. The only time I can recall off the top of my head where she had screen time with one of the Turtles that wasn't Donnie, was when Leo came to her for advice on his feelings towards Karai. Here we see him train with Leo and also handle a Kraang situation mostly by herself.

That's another thing we don't see on the show. April trains with Splinter, but we never actually see her train with the Turtles themselves. In this comic (and the other one where April accidentaly socked Raph and he made up this elaborate story to cover up the fact that she, of all people, gave him a black eye) we see that she does actually spar with them. If anything, this comic does kinda fill in the blanks from time to time and show things that we can only assume happen on the show off camera.

And yes, I get the moral of the story is April is better at outsmarting things than out-fighting things... though to be fair, on the show she has proven examples of doing both. Oh and I also noticed the zookeeper said Ellie loves Punk Music... And yet April used Rock Music to calm her down. I guess music is music.

The second one was kinda interesting. Raph hurts himself, so he should take it easy. He doesn't and things get worse for him. Yeah, Raph did disobey orders, but a walk wasn't gonna kill him. Those Mousers literally came out of nowhere. No really, did Baxter just let some loose hoping to get lucky? It was very weird, but I guess the story just needed a quick villain tossed in there. It was a weird story... and easily could have been a sub-plot to the April one, or any other one. Also the art to this second one seems to be a lot more lively and brightly colored. It's the main artist tries to capture the 3D models of the show in animated form, complete with some of the stiffness.... while this guy goes all out and make them into fully animated characters.

As for the Mirage comic, it's cute. One other thing I noticed besides the censored mentions of death and leaving out things like Leo impaling Shredder and making him commit seppuku.... is that they also had to toss in Mikey acting silly here. It's hard to say Mikey is all that serious in Mirage anymore, since more recent Tales of the TMNT Volume 2 issues added him acting goofy and using slang that he didn't before... but in the first issue of the original comics, all of the Turtles were basically serious and violent. The only slight hint of characterization went to Raph for liking to go outside on his own, and Leo since he was calling the shots during the battle. Don and especially Mike didn't get their character traits til later issues. So yeah, it was kinda weird, and funny to see Mirage Lego Mikey still crack a smile and goof off. Not much to say except... it's the first issue of the Mirage comics but Lego style.

As for the comic itself, it was a decent read, though it was probably more fun reading the Lego re-telling of the Mirage comics. I did enjoy April doing other things than just being Donnie's crush. Plus drawings opposed to CGI makes it easier to show her school and her doing actual school-related things without the expense of designing a classroom full of new throwaway characters.