Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Black White & Green # 2

 By Mark Rodriguez

In this anthology series, the Turtles have different adventures taking place within different iterations of the franchise. The gimmick here is that the stories are drawn in black and white, and also green. Let's check out what awaits us in this issue. 

"Buddycount" opens with Casey Jones knocking a punk out the window of a pet shop. There has been a string of robberies lately where people have been taking all the snakes out of pet shops. Casey asks the guy why the 'Viper Boys' have been stealing snakes. The guy only knows that Bobby Viper told them to round up all the snakes.

Casey drops the guy on the ground and gets a call on his flip-phone. He tells the caller that he's wrapping something up and asks if he wants to come along. Casey asks the guy to tell him where he can find Bobby Viper before he stops taking it easy on him.

Later on, Casey stakes out the Viper's Nest, the hideout of the Viper Boys. He sees the men bringing in boxes of snakes as well as a huge vat of mutagen in center of the room. Casey bursts through the window and starts fighting the men, but soon gets overpowered. Bobby Viper comes in to confront Casey. He tells Casey that he plans to make the Viper Boys the biggest gang in town. Just then Michaelangelo leaps in and slams his skateboard into Bobby's face. 

Sometime earlier, Mikey is in the mood to go out for pizza and asks if Donatello wants to come along. Donatello is busy fixing the TV in time for another episode of Space Heroes. He mentions that the cable box was broken due to Leo and Raph getting too intense with their training. Leo and Raph are still sparring while throwing out insults, so Mikey decides to call Casey instead.

Back to the present, Mikey helps Casey fight the gang members and says this is the worst pizza date he's ever been on. Casey says if he helps take the gang down, he'll pay for the pizza. Bobby Viper stands on top of the vat of mutagen, holding onto the snakes. He says he'll be able to mutate into the most powerful gang boss in the city. As he monologues, one of the snakes bite him and he falls into the vat of mutagen. 

Casey and Mikey watch as Bobby leaps out of the vat, now turned into a mutant snake. He's glad it worked and says he will use the mutagen to lead a more powerful Viper Boys gang that will take over the city. Just then a giant mutated snake hybrid of all the other snakes that Bobby had with him leaps out of the vat and slams down on him, busting a hole through the floor. The snake mutant and Bobby disappear down the hole along with the mutagen. Casey says they vanished down the sewers and Mikey hopes they stay away from the lair.

Mikey asks about the pizza, and Casey says they have one last thing to do. They both return the remaining snakes back to the pet shop, as Mikey tries to keep the snakes from choking him.

"If by Feast or by Famine" starts with Michealangelo narrating on how it's said that New York is the city that never sleeps. He says it's not that it never sleeps, but that it works in shifts, and his shift just started. Mikey is in a trench coat as he notes that someone ate his entire pizza he was going to have to breakfast. He looks at his brothers, sitting on the couch and knows that one of them did it.

Michealangelo ponders that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so whoever did this must want to leave him without fuel. He notices some ooze on the pizza box and starts to think back to the beginning. He ordered a pizza from Antonio's half past ten in the morning, and Antonio took the order. When the pizza got there, the box was empty. Mikey called Antonio again, who assured him he cooked the pie himself and sent his best guy to deliver it. 

As Mikey was pondering this, he was investigating a lab, when Baxter Stockman flies out to attack him. After a beatdown, Mikey asks Baxter about the pizza. Baxter has no interest in that and said he accidentally crashed into the delivery guy. 

Leonardo asks what this has to do with them. Mikey says that he wasn't alone when he ordered the pizza. Someone took their chance to grab the pizza during the confusion caused when the pizza delivery guy crashed into Baxter. Raph asks if Mikey thinks one of them snatched the pizza off the street. Leo asks how long Mikey left the pizza alone in the living room.

Mikey says he couldn't have left it there for longer then ten or fifteen minutes. Just then Master Splinter comes in. He says as he's become a father, the only birthdays that matters are those of his sons, but it means a lot to him that they remembered his. Splinter found the pizza and thought it was for him. Michealangelo realizes what happens and says it was a surprise and the rest of the turtles chime in to wish him a happy birthday.

C'mon guys, I'd expect at least Leonardo to remember Splinter's birthday

"TMNT and the Green Dogu" opens with Michealangelo being upset that Rizzos closed, which was his favorite pizza place. He adds that Pino's and Pascatti's both turned into coffee chains. Leo adds that all the bodegas in town are also closing shop. April says dozens of families have left their homes and their apartments are being converted into tourist attractions. She says this isn't normal and is worth reporting to Channel 6. Splinter says this is something for the Turtles to look into.

Meanwhile a businessman is making a barbershop owner sign away his property. The businessman has a glowing statue of some sort which hypnotizes the barbershop owner into signing. The man tells Mr. O'Connell that his barbershop is the past and he can get a fresh start in the suburbs. Michealangelo sees this from a rooftop.

The businessman and his bodyguards walk off, as now the entire block is theirs. The man is thankful that he found the statue on a random website. Just then, a nunchuck flies into the man's face. The bodyguards draw their guns but Michealangelo takes them down easily. Mikey calls the others, saying he found what they were looking for.

The rest of the Turtles and April soon arrive. Leonardo tells Splinter, who is still at the lair, they found some sort of old statue and he will sends them pictures. Splinter tells them that is a legendary Japanese relic called a Green Dogu. It is said to place anyone under the will of the person holding it. Splinter says that April can find a way to invalidate the contracts that were signed under it's hypnotic magic. 

Leonardo says they will head home, but suddenly Shredder and the Foot arrive, wanting to take that relic for themselves. The Turtles fight the Foot as Bebop and Rocksteady smash through the brick wall of the building next to them to join in on the battle. Shredder commands them to destroy the Turtles and bring the statue to him. The statue gets bounced around as the fighting ensues, and it ends up falling into April's hands.

April smirks and tells the Foot Clan to freeze, stopping all of the bad guys in their tracks. She then tells them to dance, which they do, giving the Turtles a laugh. She then commands them to dance their way over to the police station. 

Back at the lair, Michaelangelo is laughing at the 'Footloose Clan' and said they should have done the moonwalk. April said she was glad they could help their neighbors since that businessman was taking everyone's properties for ridiculously low prices. Michealangelo wonders how the Dogu ended up on the website to begin with. Splinter says this is why it should stay under lock and key.

Michealangelo says it's a good thing that their high ninja training makes it impossible for them fall under absolutely any temptation in the world. Donatello finds an offer online for shuriken chocolate cookies up to fifty percent off. The Turtles want to order ten boxes, as April smiles in the background.

"Deadly Delivery" opens with April O'Neil reporting from Bonchelli's Pizza. Popular restaurants are being forced to close their doors for the safety of their customers. Pizza buying customers are being attacked by Pizza Face. A group of teenagers watch the news and don't believe that Pizza Face exists. One of them dares another to call delivery. The blonde one calls several pizza places, which are closed, until Dante's answers the call. He orders a large pepperoni pizza and has it sent to their place. The other guys panic and one of them goes for a baseball bat.

The pizza arrives and at first it seems to be a regular pizza deliver guy. He then transforms into the mutated pizza monster Pizza Face and he starts to attack the guys. One of the Turtles is watching this unfold from a building across from them.

Pizza Face grabs one of the guys as the Turtles leap into action. Raphael sends Pizza Face flying back with a kick. The Turtles fight with him, and Pizza Face says they can't be everywhere at once, and the city will be his. After he escapes, the Turtles make sure the guys are alright. Donatello says Pizza Face is trying his old 'Army of Pizza Zombies' plan again and should try something different. Michealangelo says Pizza Face gave him an idea and tells the others to get April on the Shell Cell. 

April is crashing on the couch as she gets the call. She hears the plan and says it's crazy enough to work. Later on April makes a news report telling everyone to stop what they're doing and order pizza now. It will be on the house and their pizza-eating future depends on it.

This somehow makes Pizza Face giant-sized as he towers over the city. He continues to grow beyond his control and he blows up. Pizza rains from the sky and Mikey says that's what he calls a pizza party. 

My thoughts-

This was quite the collection of stories, though some could have benefitted from an extra page or two of action or exposition. Due to the limited amount of pages each writer gets, we get stuck with a lot of super-quick resolutions. Bobby Viper just mutated into a snake, but gets taken out by a larger snake monster before he can do anything. Pizza Face grows giant-sized and then blows up a few seconds after. 

In terms of the stories, I liked Buddycount, as it's not often we see Casey and Mikey team up. The title is also parodying Bodycount, a bloodier stand-alone story with Casey and Raph written by Kevin Eastman himself. 

I also liked the Green Dogu story since it felt like it could have been something from the 80's cartoon. That's the only version where I can envision Shredder and his crew dancing in the streets. 

We get an interesting mix of the turtleverse this time around. The Turtles themselves vary from wearing the initialized belt buckles from the 80's cartoon and the wrist wraps from the IDW and 2012 show.  Most of the stories have April as a news reporter and she even wears the classic jumpsuit in the Green Dogu story. Casey Jones looks right out of the 90's live action movie. 

We saw 80's mutant fly Baxter Stockman in the 'By Feast of by Famine' story, where apparently he just randomly flies around in broad daylight. The real mix was in 'Deadly Delivery' where we have news reporter April from the 80's cartoon, but Pizza Face is the mutated pizza monster from the 2012 cartoon. To top it off, the Turtles called their phones the 'Shell Cell' which is what they were called in the 2003 show.

The most confusing story was the Deadly Delivery one. What exactly was Pizza Face doing? Eating the people? How did having everyone order pizza at once make him grow to the extent it's beyond his control? Did the Turtles make the citizens of New York sacrifice themselves? I did like the horror movie vibe of that story though. With more pages we could have seen Pizza Face picking off the kids one by one until the Turtles would arrive in time to save the last one. 

Interesting collection of stories, the only downside is the limited time to flesh them out. Maybe they could go for three stories instead of four? I'll be checking out the third issue of this series.