Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 4

So yeah, things got… weird for a few years there. After the "Return to New York" arc Eastman and Laird were too busy overseeing all of the various facets of the dizzyingly massive popular culture empire their little comic book had spawned, and consequently the comics kind of got away from them. To put what they were busy with in perspective, the Ninja Turtles appeared in 2 feature films, 108 episodes of television, 4 major video games, and who knows what else in this period of time. There was a lot on their plate.

That whole period of the comics is considered non-canon, so a lot of essential collections pick back up in the 40s or so. #45 is where things start being canon again, this collection picks back up with #48. Basically you get show more a two-issue arc where Casey accidentally kills somebody in self-defense and goes into a bit of a spiral, and then everyone just sorta goes their separate ways for a little bit. April heads off to California, Casey separately heads off to California, not knowing that’s where April’s going as far as I can tell. Splinter heads off to do some really vague meditating and zen stuff that seems to frustrate him, eventually setting him up to meet the Rat King in the concluding pages of this volume.

Meanwhile, the Turtles head back to New York. Oh, that’s the other thing, they ended up back on the farm? Not too sure what that was about, and it’s never really clarified. But anyway, now they’re back in New York without Splinter or their human friends, and they’re being very angsty boys and just feeling very in over their head with the Foot Clan and lots of other gangs at war with each other. There’s some really pretty art in a lot of these battles, but I gotta be honest the storytelling isn’t really there to back it up?

There’s a lot more yelling between Raph and Leo, and even Leo and Donnie get into it at times? Just a real lack of consistent characterization there, in my opinion. I think they still didn’t have a lot of these characters as nailed down as it felt like they did during the first few issues when the character writing was quite a bit more minimalistic.

Overall this is a so-so volume. More consistent in quality than its immediate predecessor, but lacking any real defining moments to buoy it. show less