Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- Battle Nexus # 5

 By Mark Rodriguez

The Turtles have been captured by Savanti Romero as he had taken over the Battle Nexus tournament so he could take his revenge upon them. The Turtles met a mysterious figure that explains that Savanti chooses opponents based on people they have a connection with. Leonardo was defeated by the Mirage version of the Shredder. Raphael and Alopex fought to a draw. Donatello defeated the 2012 Metalhead but Savanti banished him to where he sent Leo and Raph anyway. There they met other versions of themselves. Now the final match begins as Michaelangelo faces off his one-dead friend Slash!

 

The issue opens with Michaelangelo, who had refused to fight his friend, being bloody and battered. He jokingly asks if Slash has been working out. Slash tells Mikey to fight back or get destroyed. Mikey says he knows someday he'll get to the end of the road, but he doesn't want to get there by fighting a friend. He says he missed Slash and asks if he remembers anything about him. 

The narration explains that when Slash was caught in the explosion that killed him, he was actually blasted through time and somehow missed the Time Lord's notice. Slash ended up in the Battle Nexus locked in endless combat against the likes of the 2012 Pizzaface, 2003 Stonebiter and Archie Comic's Cryin' Hound and Bellybomb. The council missed how Slash's fighting which seemed like an eternity would affect his soul... but Savanti knew and started to plan.

Slash tells Mikey to fight or die as he sends him flying with a violent backfist. Slash stomps on the ground and Mikey backflips out of the way. Alopex and the mystery turtle watch the fight from heir cell, and the foxwoman tells Mikey to fight back. The mystery turtle says Mikey would rather die than give up and Savanti is hoping he does both.

 

Renet tells Savanti to stop the fight. Savanti is pleased that this will finally be a fight to the death. Renet storms over to him but Ninjara kicks her to the ground. Renet points out that Savanti's scepter is causing the current storm and if the Battle Nexus is destroyed, it will take the multiverse along with it. Savanti blasts Renet, Ninjara asks if he killed her. Savanti says he sent her along with the others so she can watch the turtles go mad and kill each other.

Slash is holding Mikey up, who is now a bloody mess, and Savanti tells him to drop him. Mikey asks Savanti if they've met as he can't quite place his face. Savanti angrily kicks him across the face. Savanti says he swore he wouldn't dirty his hands on his enemies, but Mikey's refusal to fight is mocking his Battle Nexus. He prepares to stomp on him saying the part that angers him most was that the turtle causing him the most trouble wasn't the tactician, the genius or the brawler, but the party clown. Mikey rolls over so Savanti hurts his foot trying to stomp on his shell. Savanti hops up and down in pain and the captured Time Lords laugh at him. Savanti blasts Mikey with his scepter.

Savanti tells Michaelangelo that he can use his scepter to tear him apart atom by atom. Mirage Shredder tells Savanti to finish him off and send them home as Renet is right about the Battle Nexus coming apart at the seams. Savanti asks Mikey if he has any last words. Mikey says he does, but for Slash. He tells him that he's glad he saw him again and no matter what, he'll always be his brother. This touches Slash.

Savanti is ready to finish off Michaelangelo, when Slash suddenly claps his hands over the villain's cape, yanking him back. Savanti says Slash is not above the power of his scepter and fires off a blast. Slash braces himself but the energy blast stops before it can hit him, as if hitting an invisible wall. Alpoex and the mystery turtle are surprised. Savanti is not amused.

Donatello arrived, using parts of Metalhead to use as a time scepter, and he's joined by Leo, Raph, 2003 Leo, Archie Raph, Rise Don, what's left of Metalhead and Renet. Mirage Shredder that this time he can kill them all. Savanti says the three of them won't be enough if their enemies have their own time scepter. Ninjara asks if they should surrender. Savanti says he has a hidden weapon he has been hiding for years. He unleashes a dimension of infinite amounts of Bebops and Rocksteadys.

 

Donatello says this is a nightmare and his Rise counterpart says it could be worse. Metalhead detects possible reinforcements headed their way as the wall of the nearby prison explodes. Now free, Alopex and the mystery turtle leap into action. The mystery turtle turned out to be an aged version of 80's Michaelangelo, wearing the bandanas of his brothers, similar to his Last Ronin counterpart.

80's Mikey makes sure his IDW counterpart is OK and says he hasn't seen this much chaos since he was a teenager. Renet sets Lord Simultaneous free and explains how she purposely angered Savanti so much, he blasted her to the same place where he banished all the other turtles. From there it was easy for her to help them make a new time scepter and bring them back. Lord Simultaneous snaps at her and tells her to fetch Savanti's war staff since the multiverse depends on it.

Leo faces off against Mirage Shredder again who tells him he can still sense his fear, knowing that he will always succumb to him. Leo asks if he's going to talk, or if he's going to fight. Leo leaps over Shredder's attacks and knocks his mask off him. He topples him and says that he'll break him and none of the Shredders can ever defeat any of the Leos. This is something Shredder will have to live with for the rest of his short life.

Savanti pushes his way back all the Bebops and Rocksteadys and Alopex leaps out at him. Ninjara tackles her and says she won't let her harm him. Alopex says she wasn't trying to and was only trying to get her attention. Raph takes this chance to take Ninjara's tail away from Savanti. Ninjara wastes no time in severing Savanti's head, which seriously impresses Archie Raph.

 

Ninjara kneels in front of Raph and Alopex and says whoever owns her tail has dominion over her. Raph and Alopex give each other a look and Raph just gives the tail back to her. Ninjara says no one gives up something like that so willingly. Raph says she needs to meet better people. Ninjara tells him to just call her Umeko.

Renet has the staff but trips and falls before she can hand it to Lord Simultaneous. The scepter shatters. Rise Don asks his IDW counterpart if their scepter can get them home. Don says it's out of juice so they're trapped. Suddenly a huge time rift opens in front of everyone. The rift sucks all the Bebops and Rocksteadys away. Archie Raph loses his grip on Savanti's head and it also goes through the rift. Rise Don holds onto Metalhead. 

Lord Simultaneous uses his power to create a bubble in time, protecting everyone from the dark waste of time, but it won't hold. Renet says they can't warp away without a working time scepter. Ninjara says there's another gate and they already have the key. She shows them a button with markings on it, saying this is the key to her home and every world has one. All the turtles facepalm.

Donatello says the time bubble won't last long and the time vortex will soon break through. Leo finds the door to the Battle Nexus. Ninjara says if they can carve the signal correctly, everyone will be sent back home. Everyone helps to carve the symbol onto the door. Green energy starts to form and all the Turtles say goodbye to their counterparts, IDW Leo and 2003 Leo, IDW Don and Rise Don, IDW Raph and Archie Raph, and IDW Mikey and aged 80's Mikey. Everyone leaps through the portal. 

The Daimyo asks Lord Simultaneous if the Time Lords will fix everything. Simultaneous says all of the turtles trapped in limbo will return to the exact time they were snatched up but the Battle Nexus is lost. Big Mama says as long as they exist, the Battle Nexus will exist. It would just need extraneous repairs before it can be used again. 

Mr. Ogg and the last masked Time Lord stay behind. Mr. Ogg comments on the tournament. The Time Lord says the bonds of brotherhood transcend beyond time and space. He knew that once the Turtles got in contact with their other selves, Savanti would never able to win. The Time Lord takes his mask off and is revealed to be Mirage Splinter. He says he couldn't have been prouder of these Turtles had they been his own sons.

In the first epilogue, Renet complains as she is stuck vacuuming up the time fissure. Lord Simultaneous shuts her up and says he has to focus if he wants the Battle Nexus ready in time for the next tournament.

In the second epilogue the Turtles are back home, joined by Slash and Alopex. Raph complains on how far the portal sent them back but so far from home. Slash is glad to be back at all, but he feels he doesn't deserve it after everything he did. Mikey tells him not to worry about it and that's just the trauma talking.

Raph asks Alopex if they're good now and she says they are. He asks if they're friends or something, and she says 'or something'. Leo tells Don he's proud of him for having made it through all the hell he went through before this and still being able to save every version of them. Don says he's not sure if every version was saved. Leo tells him not to sell himself short and take in the city. he tells him to just enjoy the moment and now that they're back where they belong and everything is back to normal. Elsewhere we see that Ninjara is in New York as well. 

 

Back Up Story- 

The final match begins and this time it's the 2003 TMNT VS the 2012 TMNT. 2003 Mikey, dressed as the Turtle Titan, reminds everyone that he's the Battle Nexus champion. He leaps in after 2003 Raph who comments that he thought their own Mikey was loopy. 2012 Raph grabs the Turtle Titan and flips him over to 2003 Leo. As both Donatellos and Leonardos fight their counterparts, 2012 Mikey says he has a secret weapon, Ice Cream Kitty. 

 

Ice Cream Kitty makes the mat slippery which makes 2012 Leo slip and slide and bump into everybody else. All of the Turtles are stuck in a heap and Ice Cream Kitty is declared the winner. Mr. Ogg says all bets are final so it's too bad for anyone that didn't bet on Ice Cream Kitty. He adds that now that Savanti is out of the picture, he can hold another regular scheduled Battle Nexus Tournament in no time.

My Thoughts- 

There was a noticeable art shift in this one which kind of threw me off. It was literally the first thing that hit me upon reading this. With only five issues, they couldn't keep the same art style for one more issue? There was at least extra care to make sure 80's Mikey looked like... well an aged 80's Mikey with that art style.

There were a few weird things here, mostly with Mirage Shredder and his urgency to 'go back home', considering that going back home to him is probably seconds away from getting impaled by Leo. Out of all the characters, Mirage Shredder was the one that got my interest so I wish he had his own origin story played out. We saw how Savanti got Ninjara to work for him and we got to see how Metalhead and Slash became Savanti's champions. 

I would have liked to see a brief flashback of Shredder being saved by Savanti before his death, and then being shown how he was destined to die at the hands of the Turtles early in their career and how Splinter was the one that sent them after him. After all, Shredder died never knowing about Hamato Yoshi's pet mutated rat, and this version seem to already know of him. Then we can see a montage of Shredder taking out several versions of the Turtles as he hones his skills and gets better and deadlier. Something like that would have answered some questions and better explain how he fit into this.

Speaking of Ninjara's story, how did Raph find out about her tail, and that her tail was what Savanti was using to control her? I mean, as far as Raph would know, Ninjara had no tail since that's how everyone was first introduced to her.

The mystery turtle turned out to be an aged 80's Michaelangelo, which opens the door to a lot of dark implications. It's bad enough it's implied that Shredder killed several different versions of the turtles, the ones trapped in limbo would eventually go mad and kill each other. So the lovable party dude from the 80's cartoon we all grew up got to see either a darker version of Shredder kill his brothers... or find out that his brothers killed each other in limbo. Not only that, but he pretty much lived out the rest of his teen and adult years up until old age trapped in the Battle Nexus. No wonder he had such a 'there is no way to win' attitude. He got to see his brothers and several different versions of them constantly lose, get banished or flat out die at this tournament. Assuming he has some memory of this, he'd probably give his brothers a hug once he's sent back home, presumably back to his regular age too.

The limbo is also a horrible place where it seems time is stuck. You have no idea how long you've been there and you also start to lose your memory of what things were like back in your original reality. Also since we saw a Leo, Don and Raph, all from different universes, does that mean they had to take out a few of their counterparts?

The overall story was fun but it felt like other than cameos in flashbacks, we didn't get to dig into the multiverse stuff until issue 4 of a 5-part series. I understand where they were going with Raph facing Alopex and Mikey facing Slash. Raph and Alopex finally made up, and Slash got a second chance at life. To be honest, I wouldn't mind a Slash mini to see how he re-adjusts himself to the land of the living and see what of all has changed since his absence. I want to see Slash (and Ninjara)  show up in the main series sooner better than later.

We could have had a 6th issue to let the story breathe a little more. I'm not sure what else they could have done to bring out more of the multiverse characters. Maybe bring in Jennika so she could have fought against the 2003 Karai. Or maybe have an exhibition match with Slash fighting against literally anyone from some other series. I guess the reason it went down this way was because at the point the IDW Turtles were brought into this, almost every other version of the turtles had already been defeated off-panel.

The back up was fun, and I just knew 2003 Mikey would brag about being a Battle Nexus champion in a Battle Nexus story. Now that we got the full story, such as it is, they were fun one-page gags. They were also clever in making the most overall loved versions win, like the 90's movie Turtles and the Mirage Turtles, or just end things in a tie so there's no clear winner. Seeing that IDW has done comics based on the 80's TMNT, 2012 TMNT and Mutant Mayhem TMNT, it's cool to see the 2003 crew get a bit of love.

The story was fun and full of cameos, it just needed a bit more 'multiversal' stuff since it seems to only started to kick in on issue 4. Now I really want to see Slash embrace life.