TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures Continued # 31

 By Mark Rodriguez

Mutagen Man has returned and this time he mutates anyone touches without his control. Shredder, Manmoth and Aka show up, and after a battle with the Turtles, they managed to capture Mutagen Man. After the villains got away, the Turtles realize that Michaelangelo bumped into Mutagen Man during the scuffle has and now mutated into several animals at once!!

 

"Revenge of the Mutagen Man?!? (Part 2)" opens with the Turtles reaction to Michaelangelo's second mutation. Donatello says mutation shouldn't work that way. Leonardo asks Mikey if it's really him. Raphael asks if Mikey isn't hungering for living flesh. Michaelangelo says he's just hungry for pizza and reminds them that they have to rescue Mutagen Man from Shredder. 

 

Unfortunately, Donatello says Shredder's flying platform will be out of tracking range by the time they get back to their blimp. Michaelangelo says they can't have that and takes flight after them. Leonardo is surprised that Mikey's newly mutated wings aren't just for show and Raph feels a bit jealous. Donatello says they can be jealous later, for now they have to get back to the Turtle Blimp.

Meanwhile on Shredder's floating platform, the villain is gloating over his perfect victory. Mutagen Man argues that if he was kidnapped without a fight, it would have been even more perfect. Shredder and Mutagen Man argue, and the Foot Clan leader is tempted to just throw him overboard. Michaelangelo calls out and tells Shredder to do it since it'll easier for him to rescue him.

Shredder says that Mutagen Man belongs to him now, so if he wants him, he'll have to take him. Michaelangelo rams into the platform from underneath, making Shredder fall and bump into Mutagen Man. Michaelangelo, Mutagen Man, Aka and Manmoth are surprised to see that Shredder has now become a mutant vulture.

 

Shredder and Michaelangelo fight in the air, now that they can both fly. Aka and Manmoth consider making a wager on who will win. Aka says it feels wrong to do so for some reason, and Manmoth realizes he feels the same way and wonders why.

At the Channel 6 building, Burne wants to keep the current news story about the random mutants going and asks April, Vernon and Irma for an angle they can use. As Burne yells at his employees, Michaelangelo and Shredder fly by the window behind him, still locked in battle. April runs out and Burne tells her the meeting isn't over. April says she just found an angle but needs to work fast to see if it will pan out. 

April alerts the Turtles that she saw Michaelangelo fighting against a now-mutated Shredder just outside the Channel 6 building. Leonardo says this increases their chances of rescuing Mutagen Man. Donatello says Aka and Manmoth can use the distraction to take Seymour back to their lair. Raphael tells him not to ruin the optimism.

As the fight continues, Shredder says he never felt so powerful and doesn't need Krang or the Pantheon to take over the world. He can just use the army of mutants that Mutagen Man will create for him. Michaelangelo kicks him and says he'll never be able to wear a stylish suit again since most tailors can't work around wings. Shredder says he's right and he'll take out his frustration on him.

 

The Turtle Blimp catches up to the flying platform the Shredder used. Aka and Manmoth are having trouble trying to navigate the platform back to their lair without Shredder there. Raphael swings by and snatches Mutagen Man without their notice.

Manmoth sees the blimp and Aka says she can blast them out of the sky with her sonic scream. For somre reason, Manmoth doesn't really feel like chasing them. Neither does Aka and wonders if Mutagen Man mutated their minds instead of their bodies. Manmoth still wants to be rich and famous but without being an intergalactic gangster to do so. Aka says they'll just return to the lair and tell Hob that the Turtles beat them up.

Later on the Turtles take Mutagen Man to McGuffin's lab and he is able to adapt a cure into a omnidirectional laser. Leo and Raph are concerned the laser would de-mutate them. McGuffin says their mutations are already stable and this is set to work on the recent unstable mutations. Donatello says they'll be fine and if it were able to undo stable mutations, he would have already used it on Splinter. Raph says he's not sure how a laser light show can undo mutations and so will many other people, as he looks towards the readers. Donatello says most people can't explain how music can be stored on an album, they just know it works.

The laser is activated and all over the city, the mutants from earlier are turned back to normal, including Ice Cream Kitty and what looked like the 80's cartoon version of Koya. Shredder and Michaelangelo are still fighting in the air when they suddenly turn back to normal. Michaelangelo is lucky enough to be close enough to grab onto a building, but he lost sight of Shredder. Shredder falls into a dumpster and says Krang will never let him hear the end of this. He is reduced to calling a cab to get back to his hideout.  

Later on, April is interviewing Professor McGuffin on how he reversed the random mutations. He thanks his latest hire, Seymour Gutz. The Turtles and Splinter are watching the news and Raph is upset that April left out the Turtles fighting off Shredder and getting Seymour back to the lab. Splinter says Seymour deserves the credit since he did help undo the mutations. 

Donatello explains the first time around, Seymour used his powers to turn himself into a more handsome looking individual. The laser undid all that and turned him back to his original form. On top of that, due to being Mutagen Man and having the omni-laser used on him, he now became immune to mutations. Splinter says Seymour can help in possibly finding a cure for cancer, since it is a mutation as well. Raph feels better now but wonders where Aka and Manmoth ended up.  

We see that Aka and Manmoth are still lost and are asking a random guy for directions. It seems they are way off as the guy tells them they're in Philly. 

My thoughts- 

Pretty fun issue though I am very surprised to hear references to cancer, something too dark and deep for the original cartoon show. 

The story went by rather quickly, since most of it was the shock of seeing Shredder finally getting mutated, and his air battle against Michaelangelo. With games like Turtles in Time and Shredder's Revenge showing Shredder getting mutated into Super Shredder, he was never actually mutated in the cartoon series. Mutagen Man's powers seem to mutate people into random animals so that 'mutate into the last animal you touched' rule doesn't apply. That said, a vulture seemed like a fitting form for Shredder and it helped him fly to take on Michaelangelo in the air. I'm assuming Michealangelo's mutation went haywire with a combination of several animals because he was already a mutant.

While Mutagen Man's powers don't work on Aka and Manmoth, it seems to have their desire to do their usual evil activities. They decide to keep this to themselves in case this is a passing effect. They might have been in the city when McGuffin activated the laser... so they might still under Mutagen Man's effects. That might come into play whenever the Pantheon face their defeat.

It was a bit odd seeing Raph doubt how a laser blast can undo mutations... when Shredder came at them with a Retro Mutagen Ray during one of their earlier encounters. Actually a similar ray gun, the Muta-Zoo Ray turned Mikey into a hamster. Raph is so busy breaking the fourth wall in current stories he's starting to forget the events of previous episodes. 

 

Despite being on the cover, and granted it's a variant cover, Ice Cream Kitty was a cameo and turned back to normal at end. She already appeared in the last issue and even got in the middle of the fight between Donnie and Manmoth. I wasn't expecting a character that looked like the Fred Wolf take on IDW's Koya.

One thing I noticed about this one is despite the fact that the story is about Mutagen Man, he barely did anything, especially in the second half. I guess there's not much he can do since he was never an actual fighter and he was unwillingly dragged along into this. He did a lot more in his TV episode. Here, the most he did was argue with Shredder a bit. I mean once Shredder got mutated the focus of the story shifted completely to Mikey and Shredder fighting, the Channel 6 crew, and Aka and Manmoth's new outlooks on life. 

One thing I can say though is, the Drome forum posters commented on the fact that, despite this story taking place in the comics rather than on Saturday Morning, the 80's Turtles cured Seymour permanently and wrapped his story up where the 2012 Turtles never did. Despite constant promises and such, Donnie never got to cure Timothy in that version.

We'll see how the Pantheon story will advance as everyone is still trying to take their shot at defeating the Turtles to replace Hob as the leader. Of course they're doing this without knowing that Krang had taken leadership from Hob already. I though this Mutagen Man story was a detour to finally bring Shredder back into the action but we did see Aka and Manmoth here. The next issue seems to feature a new Krampus type character going after Raph and Casey so I again wonder how the Pantheon plot will factor in all of this. 

I have to say, between multiple attempts to bring Shredder back to our reality after being trapped between dimensions and the Pantheon on Earth, this is becoming an even longer ongoing story thread than the original Forever Blade story.