TMNT Compendium Vol. 2

The good, the bad, and the ugly

I started posting graphic novel reviews here at the beginning of last year with a review of IDW’s TMNT Compendium Vol. 1. A massive hardcover collection of Eastman and Laird’s early foray into what would become a phenomenon. If you’ll allow, here’s what I had said a year ago about that first volume:

“…reading this first compendium is like breathing a breath of fresh air into a fandom I’m already a card carrying member of, and it looks like I’ll be renewing my TMNT club membership on an indefinite basis.”

One more year around the sun and I find myself diving into IDW’s second collected volume of TMNT comics, but it was definitely a different experience. This compendium collects issues #15-23, #27-29 and #31-37 starting in August of 1988 through June of 1991. And as the turtles transitioned into the 90’s with a hit cartoon series and the live action films of 1990 and 1991 it was established that the green team was here to stay.

In my last foray into the early comics, I noted how a lot of the turtle hallmarks were missing from the original narrative: no “cowabunga!”, mentions of pizza, and April was no reporter. In some of the stories found in this volume I started to get hints of the Turtles outside personas leaking into these stories. While, in others, the creators were given leeway to tell a TMNT story regardless of any sort of lore. This is the main difference between this volume and the previous one.

I’m not a comic historian, but if I had to judge what was happening in the world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle writer’s room when it came time to pitch ideas, I imagine most of the responses sounded a lot like, “Sure, go crazy. Do whatever you want.” These stories contain time travel, magic, and mysticism; while others are downright silly. Some are silly fun. Some are just plain frustrating. And some have the best cartooning, inking, page compositions, action and sequential storytelling I’ve ever seen. It really seems like Eastman and Laird were greenlighting everything and while some things landed, some did not.

This doesn’t just go for the stories but for the art as well. Now I’m not here to point at another person’s artwork and judge it for good or bad. In fact, a lot of the artwork here is stellar, but to drive home my point of the diversity this collection contains, here are a few panels taken out of context to give you an idea of the wildly different styles you’ll find in this volume.

There’s a current TMNT comic series out now titled TMNT Black, White and Green, which is an anthology series that invites different artists and writers to create short 8 page stories which then are collected into a single floppy issue and published monthly. What that comic offers is fun takes on different aspects of the Turtles and their world. Some stories are lighthearted and fun. Some are action packed and gritty. It’s one of my favorite monthly comics. This second volume feels like that same idea on steroids. Instead of short 8 page one-offs, you get expansive, fully realized stories. Some last for one or two issues. Others go on for four or five, like one my favorite arcs titled Return to New York. It’s a solid story with amazing visuals where I feel like all the creators involved were at their peak. It is definitely one of the highlights of the collection. Juxtapose that against an impossible to follow story featuring a girl who time traveled from 1995 and is confronted by an alien creature who offers her a cookie. She responds by jumping out of a window…and that’s only the first few pages.

The volume 2 compendium is definitely a mixed bag and different stories and art styles will appeal to different sensibilities. It very much feels like Eastman and Laird had let go of the reins in some of these stories to the series’ detriment. But when it does deliver, it does so in spades, effectively redeeming any time wasted on the stories that are a bit more hackneyed or weird. This collection benefits from not having to prove it’s success based on the merits of the content. It serves more as a time capsule for die hard fans (like me) who didn’t read the comics in the early days who want to get a sense of what these comics were doing in the late 80’s and early 90’s; despite what 10 year old me was seeing on TV on Saturday mornings.

7/10

Published by IDW 2023

Story and Art by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird with contributors and collaborators: Michael Dooney, Ryan Brown, Jim Lawson, Steve Bissette, Eric Talbot, Mark Martin, Mark Bode, Richard Corben, Stephen Murphy, A.C. Farley, Michael Zulli, Jan Strnad, Rich Hedden, Tom McWeeney, Rick McCollum and Bill Anderson, with lettering by Steve Lavigne, Mary Kelleher, Rob Caswell