Eastman & Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mirage Studios Volume 1, Issue 16
Story & Art by Mark Martin

It Was Fated to Happen Eventually

I take it all back.  Everything I said about E&L possessing only simplistic, placeholder storytelling abilities, about their writing consisting of mostly uninventive, trite templates for their wackadoo nonsense character ideas.  And everything I said about their inability to tie plot conflict to emotional conflict.  And everything about their repeated failure to pull off humour.  Okay, I never said those last two, but I should’ve.

But I see I was wrong.  This little one-off, completely untied it seems to the current story continuity, is genuinely inventive.  There’s an actual, interesting sci-fi story at its core, one that doesn’t serve merely to set up why the earth is being besieged by dino-alien-bots.  It’s a story for its own sake.

And wait, that’s not all at all — this book does character well.  Not the Turtles themselves, who are served up as a completely interchangeable group of goofy brothers (though it’s completely appropriate to serve them up this way in this story), but the new character — a time-travelling little genius girl — is instantly completely charming and cute and good.  She is a full character introduced effectively and layered through dialogue and action.

So what happened?  Even the art style — take a look at those frames I’ve scanned and posted in a completely non-profit, fair-use kind of way.  Why have E&L suddenly changed not only their storytelling abilities, but also their art styles?  If I didn’t know better, I’d say … Wait a minute.

Oh, now I see.  Well, I think I can salvage this.  I was praising E&L for … well, not for suddenly taking their authorial duties seriously, but for … for letting other people have a stab at it?  Yeah, I think that’ll do.

Good on them for letting the other kids play with their toys.  It’s really good to see creators who aren’t threatened by what others can do with their characters — some may worry that outsiders could better their own work, expose their success as a lucky stroke of autistic genius, one desperately in need of the molding of stronger minds.  Some insecure types may fear being one-upped on their own turf, but one thing E&L have never been is insecure.  Whether justified or not.

This isn’t actually the first time they’ve turned the reigns over to someone else, and it shan’t be the last.  In fact, a little bird tells me that this great issue’s author, Mr. Mark Martin, will be back again in the not-too-distant future.  By which I mean the past future of when this issue was published when his next issue would be published, not the current future of now when my post about his next issue will be posted.  That could reasonably be an entirely-too-distant future.

But it’s good that they got him and it’s good that he’ll be back, because I’m keen on him.  On top of the story and character work, this book is really goofy-witty, loaded with playful dialogue and fun art sprinkled with corner-of-the-panel gags.  I recommend it for anyone who enjoys enjoying enjoyable things.