Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles New Animated Adventures #1 Review (IDW)

Story: Kenny Byerly
Art: Dario Brizuela
Colors: Heather Breckel
Letters: Shawn Lee
Edits: Bobby Curnow
Released: July 2013

Wow. That is a really LONG title for a comic. It's clearly a reference to the old TMNT Adventures comic. It's also doing the exact same thing as the old Adventures comic and translating the TV show into a more kid friendly comic than what currently exists. The difference between this first issue and the other TMNT Adventures first issue is this one doesn't suck.

The comic opens on April working on her stealth and attempting to sneak past the Turtles. She's caught on the first page and I really like that. So many incarnations of April have had her turn into a ninja essentially overnight, and I like that the show and clearly the comic are taking a nice slow transition into it. By the second page, you know this comic has something going for it. The character voices are in tune with their TV counterparts. The art also translates better than I thought it would. I was unsure if going from CGI to a comic format would work, but the characters still maintain the same look and feel.

Donatello continues to have his crush on April and brings her out to a military junkyard for parts. Leonardo objects to this and their is some good humor that plays out. Of course, they get caught and Donatello has to get help from his brothers to save April. If that's not a classic TMNT setup, I don't know what is.

The big difference with this April, compared to some other versions, is that she is not completely useless. Fred Wolf and Archie version? Useless. Mirage version? Useless. 4Kids? Less useless, but holds down a job with a strange dress code. Using Splinter's training, she is able to use her brain to help the Turtles escape and gets Donatello the part he came to the junkyard for in the first place. It's a nice twist for her to be the hero of the story instead of the Turtles.

One things I'm questioning with the comic is the narrative. It's going alongside the story of the first season right now. So where exactly does it fall? No idea, but it mentions Kirby O'Neil missing so it's pulling some influence from the other timeline. Given that this issue came out with a month to go left in the first season, it seems like a poor story choice to try and go hand and hand with the show. Hopefully this series will take the smartest decision the original Adventures series took and go off on its own direction and make its own story line.

3/5