TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures Continued # 33

 By Mark Rodriguez

Krang has teamed up with Old Hob and has been given control of the Pantheon. Despite this, Krang announced a contest to see which member of the Pantheon can take out the Turtles first in exchange of leadership. After several run-ins with the Pantheon members, the time has come for the Turtles to take on all of them.

"Perils of The Pantheon Part 1- What's the Frequency, Mikey?" opens with April O'Neil on location at Washington Square Park, as the Turtles are fighting against a giant robot ape that escaped from TCRI. The robot throws Michaelangelo towards the camera which cuts the TV signal. We see that Mikey crashed into Vernon, which caused him to drop and break his camera. He complains about this ruining his chances to get a Pulitzer. April reminds him that they have a back up camera in the van.

Donatello and Leonardo are fighting the robot ape without much luck, their weapons not even making a scratch. Raphael says he missed when robots easily fell apart and says the next time Professor McGuffin loses a robot, he can go pound sand. The robot slams his fists onto the ground and pulls out guns from his chest. Raphael tells Donatello if he has any deus ex machinas up his sleeve. Donatello says he wish he did.

Just then laser blasts hit the robot. Raph thought Don had something to do with it and they look up to see the Neutrinos, Dask, Zach and Kala, in their Starcruiser. The Neutrinos grab the Turtles and they fly off as they have important things to talk about.

 

Vernon returns in time to see the Starcruiser fly off, and April tells him he would have gotten there sooner if the spare camera wasn't buried under junk. She says he can still film the robot ape before the cops shoo them away. Vernon says she's not his boss. April says she's just trying to help him earn that Pulitzer. Vernon quickly runs off to film the robot's remains.

Meanwhile, Donatello asks Dask why they came directly from Dimension X instead of contacting them on their interdimensional comm link. Dask explains the news was extra heavy. They were cruising around when they picked up on a nasty dimensional disturbance. They thought it was coming from the Technodrome, still stranded in Dimension X, but that place was dead. The signal was coming from outside Dimension X. Zach says there's a big interdimensional window coming from way outside Dimension X. The signal is even bigger than the Technodrome and someone is coming for Earth.

Michaelangelo asks who is trying to come over. Zach says there's a lot of people out there, but they found a way to short-circuit the signal. Donatello asks about the chance that the signal could be benevolent. Zach says the short-circuit will just send them back to square one. They'll have to power up their portal again, and if they're good guys they won't mind. All they need is a broadcast tower, and the Turtles tell them to head for Midtown.

At the villains' hideout, Old Hob stands before Shredder, Krang, Bebop, Rocksteady and the members of the Pantheon. He announces that after months of effort they were able to remotely start a transdimensional portal big enough to bring their mobile base to Earth. They can finally get back to knocking the planet around and make it a front for their intergalactic crime.

 

Drako thinks they should destroy the turtles first. Golgotha says they have a robot army with bombs to deal with them and reminds Drako that his early attempt failed. Drako calls her a coward. Hob tells them to stop arguing. While he also wants to throw the Turtles into the sun, he sees that obsessing over them will distract them from their goals, just like Shredder. Shredder says he won't stand for that insulting tone. Krang says those mutants have done nothing but steal their focus for years. Krang has seen the specs of the Pantheon base and says it's more powerful than the Technodrome and they can easily crush the Turtles with it. Just then an alarm beeps.

Shredder asks what the alarm was. Krang says something is jamming their signal, and if it fails it will takes months to gather the power to try again. Hob says this can't be a coincidence. Drako says it's the Turtles. Hob says this is too big to let fail so they'll have to show the Turtles that they're tired of their interruptions.

Meanwhile the Turtles, Neutrinos and April are on the roof of the Channel 6 Building. April asks if they're sure this won't affect their own broadcast signal since Burne will kill her if they went down during Sweeps Week. Dask assures her this will only affect signals coming from other dimensions. April says she can't believe that this is all it takes to interrupt a dimensional portal and asks if they could have done this years ago to save themselves the trouble.

Dask and Zach explain that normally even a portal large enough for the Technodrome only takes a few seconds to open and they would have needed to have a jammer running nonstop to stop it. Kala says it takes a lot longer to gather the energy buildup to hold a portal that huge open for a long time. Leonardo says they need to find a permanent way to stop these portals. Just then Old Hob and Shredder arrive on a floating platform, joined by Scratch, Drako, Bebop and Rocksteady. Bebop points out that the Neutrinos are with them. Hob says he hates them almost as much as he hates the Turtles. 

 

The villains leaps off the platform, ready to fight. Leo and Shredder clash swords as the Turtle tells his nemesis that they're outnumbered. Shredder says the Neutrinos are hardly a threat. Rocksteady is ready to stomp Dask and Zach but first tells them he loved their hair. Dask and Zach pull out their own guns which shoot out energy fists that knock Rocksteady off his feet. Rocksteady wishes they brought Manmoth along.

Hob tells Rocksteady that Manmoth and Aka would joined them if they didn't need to watch Golgatha's back in case Krang were to betray them. Raph comments that Hob can't even trust his own allies. Hob ducks under Raph's spin kick and says he wouldn't trust them either if he was smart. He then headbutts Raph.

Drako has Kala wrapped up with his tail and tells Michaelangelo they have a score to settle since he broke his wings and stole his fire. Mikey wants that if he hurts Kala, he'll get mad, and he won't like him when he's mad. Mikei smacks Drako across the face with his nunchucks. Drako punches him back and says he doesn't like now. Mikey says he really walked into that one. Mikey leaps towards Drako in a very familiar pose and says it'll take more than a lucky punch to stop him.

Donatello fight against Bebop and asks if he really thinks he'll win this time. Bebop quotes Alexander Pope and says hope springs eternal. Donatello asks him how he knows Alexander Pope. Bebop says he read it on a bathroom stall in the Bronx.

April watches the action and wishes she could cover it. Just then she notices that Scratch is messing with the signal jamming equipment. Everyone is too busy fighting to notice, so April takes it upon herself to stop him. April kicks Scratch back. Scratch commends her on her kick and says she could easily take him in a fight... but it's too late since he already disabled the Neutrino's device and the portal can open.

 

Everyone stops and look at the sky. Rocksteady comments that the Pantheon's fortress is even bigger than the Technodrome. The huge portal opens in the sky above the Channel 6 building as the employees look on. Irma says that Burne is gonna have a field day.

Old Hob kicks Raph away and tells the others they're finally back in the game and shouldn't waste time on the Turtles. Drako still wants to fight but Hob orders him to leave now. Drako tosses Kala into Mikey and says they'll finish this later. Shredder tells the Turtles that victory will taste all the sweeter for waiting as he joins the others on the floating platform. Raph says some days it doesn't pay to come out of your shell.

 

My Thoughts-

So here we go. After months of tinkering with the portal, the Pantheon finally got their floating base to Earth, despite the heroes attempt to prevent it. We knew the Neutrinos were gonna show up sooner or later, I wasn't expecting it to take over 30 issues for them to make an appearance.

Kala and Michaelangelo always seemed to have a thing for each other in the cartoon but the later CBS episodes did away with it. It's cool to see them act friendly around each other again. Speaking of the cartoon, I'm sure we wouldn't see Mikey actually smash someone across the face with his nunchucks and then have the villain actually punch him away in the old show. 

 

While we're never going to see blood in these comics (I think), the Turtles do fight a lot more physically in these comics than they do in the show. There's a subtle line between not pushing it too far but also not making the Turtles hide behind slapstick and throwing pizzas around like the show slowly devolved to. I mean there was a point in the show where all Raph ever did was throw his sais when it was time to fight, and here we still see him doing spinning kicks and so forth.

We get a few shout outs and deep cuts, like slight cameos of the other Channel 6 crew, mostly the guys in the first episode that served as April's camera crew before the pre-mutated Bebop and Rocksteady came after them with their gang. We also see Mikey do his famous 'jumping in' pose that he did in the first episode as well. Rocksteady also wore the helmet he only wore in season one of the show, though he usually is drawn wearing it whenever Dan Schoening covers art duties as his style matches the look of the show.

 

The story is ramping up as we're finally going to see the Turtles take the fight to the Pantheon and get some extra back-up while doing it. I got my hands on the second issue so I'll be covering it shortly. The last thing to say here is... Old Hob knows the Neutrinos? Have they crossed paths before? The Neutrinos didn't seem to recognize the Pantheon members?