Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2025) # 2

 By Mark Rodriguez

Based on the cartoon series that follows up on the TMNT Mutant Mayhem movie, Donatello joins a robotics science camp where he uses Metalhead to win a competition. However this seems to be a front for Bishop who plans to mass-produce Metalhead for her evil plans. What will happen next?

 

The camp fire story continues as Donatello tells the others how he kept working on Metalhead at the robotics camp. The others laugh as it seems Donatello cuddled Metalhead in his sleep (why would Donnie tell them that part? lol). Donatello tells everyone to hush up since he was getting to the action-packed part of the story.

Donatello spars with Metalhead and explains that the robot has gotten so responsive, he doesn't need to control his movements with the motion-capture outfit anymore. Donatello tells Irma to shut the robot off for now. The camp leader is hiding behind a tree watching this unfold. Irma says with this final test they can officially retire the motion capture suit. Ian reminds that using Donnie in the mocap suit to help with Metalhead's functionality was his idea.

The camp leader approaches the team and all three of 'Team Metalhead' bring up the fact that he creeps them out. The camp leader congratulates them on Metalhead's recent win and says he wonders if any of the other robots can keep up with him. He says he can become a Camp Legend if they can defeat all the robots in the camp. Irma and Ian tells Donnie to think about it but he accepts right away.

The camp leader says he can put their equipment away for them and suggest they take a break. Donnie says they can play with the water trampoline. The kids (ever so gullible) hand over the mocap suit to the camp leader.

 

At the water trampoline, Ian notices that he forgot his floaties and runs back to the lab. Once he gets them he realizes a group of men working on all of the campers' robots. Bishop says the kid is one of Donatello's friends and the camp leader sends his men to grab him. As the men grab Ian, he recognizes Bishop as 'the one that wants to destroy Donnie and his brothers'. He drops one of his floaties as he's being carried off.

Later on, the camp leader announces a race through the woods with the Metalhead, Rusty and Donatello. Irma warns Donnie that if he goes running through the woods, they won't have eyes on him. She asks what happened to Ian since he never came back to the lake. Donnie is more concerned on beating his new rival Xavier and his robot Rusty in the race. The race begins and the everyone dashes off.

Donnie is in the lead as he navigates the obstacle course. As he's about to reach the finish line, Rusty knocks Donnie into the woods. As the Turtle recovers from such a fall, Rusty starts to attack him.

Rusty lunges towards a tree and Donnie flips over him. The robot wraps wires around the Turtle's leg while still in the air and slams him to the ground. Donnie sees a tree branch on the ground which is comparable to his staff. He gets free from the robot's grasp and rolls over to grab the branch using it like his trademark weapon. One of Rusty's hands suddenly pops out some spikes. Rusty lunges forward with his spiked arm and Donnie leans back to dodge it. He uses the branch to trip the robot up, making it fall into some bushes.

Metalhead wins the race but Xavier and Irma wonder what happened to Rusty and Donatello. Elsewhere, Donatello tells Rusty to stay back since he doesn't want to fight it. Rusty charges towards Donatello again and this time the Turtle pole vaults up onto the robot's head. Donatello apologizes as he punches into the robot and yanks out his internal wiring.

Donatello drags Rusty along until he makes it to the finish line where everyone was waiting. Once there, the Turtle collapses. Xavier asks what he did to his robot and Donnie says his robot attacked him. As Xavier, Donnie and Irma argue, the camp leader radios his superiors that the Turtles survived. He says he won't make it out of this camp in one piece. He also says he has the streamers ready for the dance later that night.

Later that night there's a 'Nitro Boogie' event which Irma calls 'cringe'. She wonders where Ian is since he missed the lake and the race. Donnie was told by the camp leader that Ian was sick but he wasn't with the nurse either. Irma feels that something's not right.

Xavier finds Donatello and accuses him of cheating. Donnie says he knew Rusty couldn't beat Metalhead so he must have written some code to make him attack him. Xavier says they should go to the lab to find out. They both leave and Donnie tells Irma to stay guard so Xavier doesn't later accuse him on sneaking around. Irma sighs as she's now involved in their drama.

The camp leader sees them leave and informs Bishop. Bishop 

is watching the dance through security monitors and tells him to enact the next part of the plan. The camp leader nods to several people and they leave the dance. The camp leader casually follows. Bishop says they're ready.

Irma keeps watch while Donnie and Xavier check out the lab. Irma spots one of Ian's floaties and says she knew something was up. Just then the camp leader and a bunch of men show up. The leader says she was always too smart for her own good. Irma backs away but is grabbed by the men and carried off.

 

Inside the lab, Donnie and Xavier work on the laptop and notice that someone downloaded Donnie's mocap data into Rusty so it would know how to kill him. The same kill code was put into Metalhead. They notice someone has been rewriting code and routing it to a microchip that's been installed in both Metalhead and Rusty. They realize that all of the robots have chips, but due to how long it would take to implement, this had to have been done by someone with 24/7 access to the lab. Donatello determines it has to be the camp counselors and adds the robot fights were done to help the robot perfect their skills.

Xavier asks why the counselors would do this and Donnie says it's more important to shut it down. As they work on the code, Metalhead and Rusty activate and get behind them. Donnie gets Xavier out of the way before the robots would smash the chairs they were sitting on. Xavier and Donnie head for the exit and find all the counselors there, but also Bishop. Michaelangelo cuts into the story and says there was no way that Donnie took on Bishop by himself.

We cut back to the Turtles as Donnie is still telling the story. Raphael says if Donnie is facing Bishop and robots, he's cooked. Mikey says he's legit scared now. Donnie says they don't have to be scared since this is the part where they enter the story. Raph and Mikey are excited and Leo wants to grab some pizza first.

Donnie says the other three Turtles might be too late to save the day. Back to the story, Donnie wakes up and finds himself strapped to a chair. He's surrounded by all the killer robots.

 

My Thoughts- 

This is a story that would have worked best if it was happening in real-time and now just a made up campfire story. I say made-up because Raph, Mikey and Leo clearly do not remember that one time they fought Bishop and an army of robots at a science camp. While we know that the Turtles will never face any serious harm in this kind series, the stakes are kinda gone since this is just a campfire story and we see the Turtles, Ian and Irma just chillin' safe and sound. 

My understanding is this was most likely done so it wouldn't have interfered or contradicted anything that happened in the cartoon show. Seeing as IDW had done 2 series based on the 2012 cartoon with minimal contradictions with the show, they could have done a better job. Or maybe not use Bishop as the main villain since they clearly have plans for her in the cartoon.

The story in itself is fine, if you can accept this new take of the Turtles going to school, hanging with human kids and pretty much everyone treating them as if they were regular people. It's just kinda funny in an odd way to see Donnie hanging out with Ian and Irma, having a rivalry with Xavier and going to camp with a bunch of kids and no one really acts as if it's weird that one of their classmates is a human-sized talking turtle. Say what you will about the 80's Turtles, they still had to sneak around in disguises. In that one episode where Donatello did an online college course, he still had to get Irma to accept the degree in his place due to him being a talking mutant turtle and all that.

 

I do wonder where April is during all this, since once again she's around the same age as the Turtles.. and I assume Ian and Irma. Sure, Ian and Irma have been shown to be science geeks like Donnie, but they still could have invited April to the campfire. Hell, they could have even had centered the story about the crew telling April about the camp adventure if she wasn't there. 

I still think them just handing the mocap suit to the same camp guy they were calling creepy was kinda dumb. At least decline before the guy insists on taking it or something. Not just 'yeah sure, creepy and shady dude, take our advanced technology'. 

One thing I found out about this mini-series is that it will have two multi-part stories. The first one is the current robot camp story featuring Metalhead. It's been revealed that the second one will be about Fugitoid. It's a bit unique since a Mutant Mayhem version of Fugitoid has not appeared in the cartoons yet, so who knows what contradictions will arise if he does appear in either the show or the upcoming movie sequel (assuming that still happens after Paramount cancelled the show). 

So we're getting a mini-series centered about two different stories that are about robots. That's a bit redundant, but maybe the next story will showcase all four Turtles and not just Donatello. I do wonder if Ian and Irma will appear in that one. It seems they didn't appear in any of the cartoon's two seasons so far, but they seem too chummy with the Turtles to just... not appear in the next story.