Dreamwave TMNT # 3

 By Mark Rodriguez

Back in 2003, Dreamwave got the rights to make a comic based on the new Ninja Turtles cartoon at the time. The first few issues adapted the cartoon episodes until they started going with original stories. Rather than adapt them outright, Dreamwave chose to show the stories from the point of view of a certain character. In this one we take a look at things from Baxter Stockman's perspective.

"Attack of the Mousers" starts with Baxter narrating about how in life there's always a woman trying to get to you and take what is most valuable. Baxter says he knows since he's 'been there, done that'. As he narrates, he oversees how his Mousers break into a bank vault and steal all the valuables. 

Baxter remembers his high school days as he accidentally bumps into a large dude named Tom. He says hi to his girlfriend April and Tom shoves him against a locker. April says Tom is always cranky before a big game and Tom says humiliating a geek always cheers him back up. Baxter opens his locker as he says 'a little humiliation is good for the soul' might even be an old saying. The inside of his locker has several pictures of April in them. Baxter says he prefers another saying, 'what goes around comes around'. He pulls out a football.

Elsewhere the Turtles and April watch the news on TV regarding the recent bank robbery. Donatello points out the teeth marks on some of the vault's twisted metal. April says Baxter must be sending Mousers to rob banks. Leonardo asks for more information regarding Baxter. April says Baxter is a genius, but he's also nuts. When April got too suspicious, Baxter sent his Mousers after her. Luckily the Turtles found her and saved her. Leonardo says that the Mousers destroyed their old lair. April says it must have been one of his test runs. Michaelangelo says their lair was their home. Donatello adds that now Baxter graduated to robbing banks. Raphael twirls his sai and says they should shut down 'Mouser Central' permanently.

April says it won't be easy since Stocktronics has the latest up-to-the-minute security tech. Michaelangelo introduces April to Donatello, their resident tech head and secret weapon. April says it's an insane idea, though Splinter did tell her that they were four ordinary turtles that were in the wrong place and the wrong time. She says she finds herself talking to turtles that were mutated by some unknown gunk, got adopted by a sewer rat that was also mutated, were given names of Renaissance painters and trained to be ninjas for fifteen years. That is a very consulted way to just blurt out their origin story, April. Raphael angrily asks if they can go now.

Baxter ponders on how normal the girl he pinned after in college seemed. There was nothing extraordinary about her and he wonders what he ever saw in her. The Mousers arrive with the stolen goods. He gets a call from his mysterious benefactor, making sure that he is keeping his end of the bargain and is still on schedule. Baxter says he's sick of constantly being interrogated and assures him that the Mousers are securing the funds from the banks that he requested. The benefactor reminds him not to presume too much for the price of failure will be extreme. Baxter angrily ends the call and calls the people in his life imbeciles. He says he supposes her should be grateful for them, since he wouldn't be where he currently is were it not for them.

We flashback to the high school days as college April is cheer-leading while Tom is on the field. Baxter activates a remote control device. Just as Tom is about to catch the football, Baxter uses his remote to make it fly in the opposite direction. Tommy tuns after the ball and crashes into one of the goal posts.

The ref calls for the medic, stopping the game, and says Tommy broke his arm. Baxter openly and loudly gloats that his guided robot football worked and Tommy is out of the season. He says that now April will move on since Tommy's a has-been and now he can make his move on her. Unfortunately for him, all of his other classmates overheard this and they beat him up.

 

Later on Baxter is in the hospital with a full body cast as he gets a visitor. This man is interested in his potential after seeing how ingenious the robot guided football was. He says when he's ready to start his own company, they'll be interested in backing him. Baxter says he's lucky if he can graduate high school. We see the man is Hun, and he hands him his business card which has the Foot Clan symbol on it. He says with their help someday people will be calling him.

We flash forward a bit and we see April O'Neil when she was interviewed for the lab assistant job at Stocktronics. Baxter is working on something asks her if she knows what it is. April says it's a laser, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. April says it's actually Oscillation rather than Amplification, but nobody wanted to work on a 'loser'. April introduces herself, and Baxter says he knew an April once, who was a real loser. He welcomes her to Stocktronics.

Back to the present, the Turtles are trying to sneak into Stocktronics and encounter a lot of machines aiming lasers at them. Baxter seems them through his security cameras and wonders what they are. He says he might have to dissect them to find out.

Donatello leaps onto the main device that all the laser arms are attached to, directing the lasers towards it, making it explode. The explosion leaves a hole in the wall for the Turtles to leap in. Leonardo points his sword at Baxter, telling him that his reign of terror is over. Mikey asked if Leo was practicing that line. Leo asks if he liked it. Mikey said he could have used more gritted teeth during the delivery. Baxter asks the Turtles what they are, and April steps up to say they're with her.

Baxter is surprised to see April alive. April says she has enough evidence to put him away for years. Baxter recalled all the Mousers back to them, and they will tear them to pieces. April and Donnie work on shutting down the system as Baxter gets away through a trap door. The Turtles notice that Baxter got away but they have bigger problems.

Baxter runs through the hall calling for his guards and bumps into Hun. Hun asks if he's running into any trouble. Baxter says everything is going according to plan. Hun says he can explain this plan to the master as he grabs him and drags him off. Explosions could be heard throughout the building.

At the Oroku Saki Tower, Baxter explains that this is all a minor setback, and with their continued backing, he'll be back to work by Monday morning. Saki says he must still learn the price for failure as Hun grabs him and takes him away.

One of Saki's men arrives wearing some sort of visor helmet. He says they suspect that April O'Neil, Baxter's assistant caused the Mousers to explode which triggered all the explosions. Saki sighs and says they're always a woman in the mix. The man shows Saki the last recorded image one of the Mousers captured before they all exploded, which is a bio scan of the four Turtles. Saki grabs a blade and angrily tosses it at the monitor.

My Thoughts- 

Well for starters, I'd like to say this issue did a better job of incorporating the Turtles and April and the plot the episode was based on. The story does explain that the Mousers destroyed the original lair and we get the Turtles' origin story though very rushed and sloppy exposition. We never got to see the old lair in this series and the panels with the crew are so 'zoomed in' you can barely tell they're in their new lair.

 

April even mentioned that Splinter was in the room and yet we never even see him. I'm also not clear on why the Turtles were not wearing their bandanas during that scene. They had them on in the show during this scene. Without the bandanas it's difficult to tell them apart unless their personality is heavily apparent. The 2003 series gave them different shades of green but that weird grey filter the Dreamwave series used doesn't help any.

The Baxter backstory was OK, if anything to show how he was recruited into the Foot Clan. If anything, issues 1 and 3 show how both the Purple Dragons and Foot Clan go around looking for kids to eventually recruit. We see some parallels here and there. April reminds him of the April he liked in high school. Bumping into Tom would be similar to his adult self bumping into Hun. The comic's 'theme' of 'there's always a woman in the mix' was odd. It was even odder to have Saki bring it up again, I guess to 'bring that story full circle'. I guess?

I mean Baxter's opening dialogue about women somehow getting close enough to take whatever is valuable to you would only apply if the two Aprils were gold-diggers. Both situations were his own fault. High school April was already taken, so Baxter got what he deserved for trying to mess with someone else's girl. He got her boyfriend injured and off the football season. Then anything that happened concerning April O'Neil is also his own fault for working with criminals and sending his murder machines after her.

I do want to add that my memory was fuzzy on this issue until I re-read years after the fact. For some reason I thought Baxter's mother would make an appearance, and I wanted to compare her design here with how she would look in 'Insane in the Membrane' episode which wouldn't be released until many years later due to gory content. While we did see Baxter in his younger years, his mom didn't make a cameo as I once thought.

The Dreamwave art continues doing what it's doing with the grey-ish palette, the heavily dramatic angles and other weirdness. The most glaring example here was when they showed the Turtles' origin. Most of us know the origin, as well as the Daredevil origin that inspired it. That's the only way you can tell that a person tackled the innocent bystander out of the way of heavy traffic because as it is the background is an absolute blur. 

 

Speaking of the grey-ish muted colors... the football game in the flashback is, naturally, taking place in broad daylight... and this is as bright as this muted color palette allows.

 

I never understood why Saki was so quick to call Baxter's schemes a failure. He wanted Baxter to have the Mousers rob the banks, and he did. I mean all he had to do is watch the news and see that the banks he listed were robbed. I can only assume he sent Hun to get the money but since everything was blowing up, they already were quick to assume the mission failed.

When it comes to classic ads, the one that mostly grabbed my eye was one advertising the TMNT episodes on VHS and DVD. It took me back to those days where they'd actually sell DVDs with only three episodes on them before they would eventually get the idea to cram entire seasons in there. Like for comparison, later on Lionsgate would really the 80's TMNT second season with all thirteen episodes on the same disc.

 

Oh man... I just got nostalgic for VHS. I remember owning some DBZ and DBGT VHS tapes around this general time. I also taped the first 2 seasons of this show back in Mexico. I don't know if they ever went back to dub the rest of the show. I know they did eventually dub Fast Forward, Back to the Sewers and Turtles Forever, but I can't say for certain about seasons 3-5 unless they got around to it later.

There was also an announcement for the upcoming Mega Man series, and we all know how that went. I feel a bit mixed here. On one hand I can feel their excitement to get to write Mega Man stories... but on the other hand the comic dealt with Mega Man crushing on some random girl that isn't in the games, while fighting against made-up Robot Masters that also aren't in the games.

 

The real kicker and 'what could have been moment' was during their new letter column. The column currently had no name and there was contest to see which reader could come up with a name. The winner would get a rare variant cover copy of Dreamwave TMNT # 1 autographed by the DW crew. Anyway, one of the fans sent a letter concerned that they heard this was going to be a 6-issue mini-series. He got a reply confirming that their series will actually on-going series. OOF. Sure they lasted one issue past issue 6... but OOF. I have to say, wherever Mr. Feltham heard the rumor about a 6-issue mini was one issue away from being right on the money....