TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures Continued # 17

 By Mark Rodriguez

Now that the Turtles have defeated most of their villains as well as new ones, like the Pantheon, what other adventures await them? Let's see what happens when Mona Lisa returns once again.

"Mystery at the Museum Part One- The Box of Ptah" opens with April doing a report on a new Egyptian exhibit that was gifted to the New York Museum of Science and History. The artifact was found in an ancient Egyptian tomb, but the mystery lies in the long time it's taken for it to be revealed to the public.

April interviews the head of Egyptology, Dr. Aida Hosny if the item is cursed. Dr. Aida says the only thing cursed in the museum is the coffee machine in the break room. She says reconstructing the piece will take time and sometimes science is slower than they'd like it to be.

Later on, Dr. Aida is on the phone telling someone to keep the donors off her back, since she knows that one of them got Channel 6 interested. She thinks something weird is going on and she doesn't want anyone poking around until she finds out what it is. Just then Mona Lisa sneaks into the room through a vent by crawling through the ceiling. Mona Lisa recognizes Dr. Aida as her teacher before her mutation. Dr. Aida feels she drank too much of the break room's cursed coffee. 

Dr. Aida says she'd love the help, and Mona Lisa says she's glad she isn't afraid of her. Dr. Aida says Mona isn't as scary as some of the budgets she's had to work with. She explains that every day they try to reassemble the artifact, but then every night it gets disassembled, but alarms are never tripped and nothing is ever missing. Mona asks about security and guards, and Aida says they can't afford either. Mona Lisa offers to be a security guard to see what happens, and she knows some friends that are willing to help.

At the Turtles' Lair, Donatello is angry at Raphael for ruining his pizza-flavored ice cream maker that took months to build. Raphael says his inventions are usually not that shoddy, which just makes Donatello angrier. Splinter comes in to break it up, admitting that Raphael is in the wrong, but this isn't the way to resolve things. Raphael will stay and help repair what he broke, and he's grounded until then.

Raphael says he will miss the Brooklyn Food Fest. Splinter says he isn't allowed any frivolous outings until the machine is fixed. Raphael says the festival is only open for a week, but Splinter says his word is final. The others prepare to head out, leaving Raphael behind. Splinter is also leaving, as he will visit Obento-San, who is lonely after Usagi returned home. 

Later on, Raphael is playing on the original Nintendo as he gets a call from the Turtlecom. He thinks it's the others calling in to gloat, but he is surprised to see that it's Mona Lisa. Mona says she needs some help. Raphael says the others are out so he will go and help her out. Raphael thinks the others won't return from Brooklyn in time and Master Splinter only told him not to go out for pizza, so he figures this should be fine. He decides to leave a note, just in case.

Later on Raphael joins Mona Lisa on the stakeout as they see a mummy walking around the museum. Raphael thinks the mummy is the one behind disassembling the artifact and leaps into action. Raphael was expecting the mummy to be slow, like in the movies, but it's fast enough to dodge his attack. Mona Lisa whips his tail out at him, but the mummy dodges her attacks too. 

Raphael legs weeps the mummy, finally knocking him down. The mummy speaks, and says it's not nefarious. He can't allow Ptah's device to be rebuilt, and he will continue to disassemble it until the museum gives up trying. The mummy says that he won't allow anyone to stop him as it unravels itself into a pile of bandages. 

Raphael notices that the mummy is literally just bandages, so he feels free to be able to throw a sai at it. The mummy opens itself up enough to let the sai fly through it. Mona Lisa says they can't trust and Egyptian mummy that speaks English. The mummy explains it found a Rosetta stone in storage, but he must not be fluent since Raph and Mona don't understand what he's trying to say.

In Brooklyn, the Turtles enjoy Naya Tang's cheeseburger and donut pizza. Leonardo has an odd feeling that Raphael is in danger. Donatello says they haven't heard from their most dangerous enemies in ages, and Leonardo is probably feeling guilty that they left Raph behind.

Back to the museum, the mummy has tied Raphael and Mona up with his bandages so they can hear him out. Mona Lisa does point out that the mummy hasn't actually tried to hurt them. The mummy introduces himself as Bakari and says he was the assistant of Ptah thousands of years ago. Ptah was what people in modern day would consider a scientist, but he was a mediocre one without any discoveries. 

One day Ptah and Bakari see a strange tear in the desert sky. They were strange beings speaking a foreign language, which Ptah now understands is English. The 'strange beings' were actually the Turtles going after the Shredder who has a canister of mutagen on him. The mutagen fell through the portal and spilled all over Ptah and Bakari. Bakari was wearing bandages so he mutated into a bunch of bandages, which looks like a mummy (HOW????). Ptah mutates into a huge crocodile with an exposed brain in a glass dome (where did the dome come from???). In this new form, Ptah has gone mad. Raphael recognizes the 'strange liquid' as mutagen, and realizes that Bakari is a mutant and not a mummy. 

Ptah was now a great scientist and he created a device that can trap his enemies within it forever. He was planning to use it to take over the world. Raphael guesses that Bakari rebelled against Ptah, trapped him within his own device and hid it away forever until now. Mona Lisa gives Raph a face, but the sarcastic turtle tells her that ten bucks says he's right. Bakari tells Mona that she would owe him ten bucks.

Mona Lisa asks why he doesn't completely destroy the machine. Bakari explains that Ptah added a failsafe so it couldn't be used against him. If it's assembled, he will be released in time. If the device is completely destroyed, he will be freed instantly. The pieces are leaked together so he can't even separate them. Raphael says he faced several enemies with plans that have more holes than swiss cheese, so he's lucky he doesn't have to face against one that actually covers all his bases. Just then a bong goes off. 

Bakari says too much time has passed and he has to return to the workshop before it's too late. He says he should taken care of that before he started explaining his origin story. It is too late, and Ptah has been released. He says that Bakari has arrived just in time to witness his ultimate triumph.

My thoughts- 

So this issue had a lot of stuff to go over. The overall story is ok, and I wonder what Ptah plans to do now. He's another new villain created for this comic, as most of the show's villains have been dealt with. I do wonder if or when the comic will create its own evil scientist since the original show had quite a bit of them during the CBS two episode era. I guess Ptah counts... but he's definitely very different from Professor Sopho and the like.

The one part that confuses me was the random portal that opened up with the Turtles fighting Shredder. I don't know if that was a reference to a specific episode or we're supposed to just chock it up as 'one of those random countless fights against the Shredder'. Also, I'm surprised Ptah remembers that they were speaking English, but doesn't seem to remember that Raphael was one of the guys he saw in that portal.

The real kicker is mutagen somehow mutating Bakari into living bandages. OK... maybe Ptah ate some crocodile lately, so his mutation somehow makes sense, if you ignore the logic of the brain under a glass dome, but how does Bakari work? Bandages aren't living things, and the 80's TMNT's mutagen works based on the last animal you touched. This batch of mutagen reminds me of how it works in the 2012 show where it's literally 'whatever pushes the plot forward'. How does Bakari function though? He's literally a walking pile of, presumably, ageless bandages. Other than Mutagen Man, this guy really got it bad when it came to becoming a mutant.

It's always fun to see Mona Lisa again and I did like the banter between her and Dr. Aida, with comedy that matches the humor of the old show. As expected, Raph is paired up with her. They only met in that one episode, so the comic does give us time to see them team up more than once. It was wild seeing Donatello that angry. I also like Splinter mentioning Obento-San, and the fact that in the comic series, Usagi finally went back home. 

Overall a good story and I'm curious where all of this will lead, especially since now we are seeing new and different villains.

Also shout out to the NES. I mean, look at that controller. It has to be the NES. Maybe Raph can finally get past that annoying dam level.