Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #12 ★✬☆☆☆

~ Bookstooge

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #12
Authors: Peter Laird & Kevin Eastman
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 39
Words: 2K

Everyone in the group is out having a picnic when some random student stumbles across them. He escaped from ‘hardcore survivalists who made him build them an atom bomb” so they could cleanse America. Said student is then shot by the leader, one Skonk, from 600 yards away using what appears to be an M16 machine gun. Casey and April take the super genius student to a hospital while Splinter and the boys take on the Good Ol’ Boys with names like Jess, Bubba and Skonk. Who want to set off a nuclear bomb (in case you’d forgotten). Donatello removes the plutonium from the bomb without any safety gear and suffers no harm and Kronk remote detonates it thinking it is still a nuclear bomb. In the middle of the woods. In their “bunker”, which is nothing more than a ramshackle old cottage with a dilapidated garage.

This had me rolling my eyes so hard. I was all prepared to show some righteous review anger but man, this was so bad that I ended up just laughing at it. 600 yards is about 900ft, or 600 meters. You don’t shot ANYTHING through the woods that far. It is mainly in urban environments or treeless areas that that is even possible. And you certainly don’t do it with an M16. Sniper rifles are precision tools with wicked long barrels and you pretty much carry them in a case, not dangling over your shoulder on a strap like a man purse. Then you have the “genius” student who builds an a-bomb. I am not even sure where to start in dissecting how stupid that is. Those plans are highly classified and no mere student is going to have the know-how to do any such thing. And then Donatello “simply” removing the plutonium. Awwwwwwwww come on! Seriously? That’s where I simply gave up and just laughed my head off. Next, you have Skonk setting off what he thinks is the a-bomb. In the middle of the woods, with no viable target and no plans for what comes next. That’s not hardcore, that’s just stupid, hahahahaa.

And here’s a picture of the deadly A-bomb. In the garage. Up on saw horses. How can you not laugh at that?

This was a prime example of how to tell a bad story within a framework of the readers already suspending their belief (mutant turtles that are ninjas, for goodness sake). I couldn’t suspend my belief because I happen to know a little bit about guns, about militias and about nuclear bombs. How things were presented simply don’t work the way it was shown. What it shows is that the author knew as much about those things as I do about alien triceratop warriors. Guns, militias and bombs were as real to the author as alien dinosaurs, so he just makes up whatever crap he feels like and runs with it. That’s exactly what bad story telling does. If the authors had talked to even 2 hunters, they could have corrected all of their ideas about guns. If they’d gone to the library and read up on militias (this was done in ‘86 I think?) they’d know that militia groups have to be organized and skilled to survive and are not just cults with guns. If while they were at the library they’d read up on nuclear weapons, they’d know about radiation poisoning or how almost impossible it is to obtain fissionable material. But nope, they sat in their little room and made crap up.

I had no idea going into this issue that I’d be going off on a rant like this. But come on, what else am I supposed to do? Just let it slide?

This was also the issue where Eastman and Laird decided to kind of split and each would do an alternate issue, thus allowing them to focus on other comic ideas they had. I’m going to just keep on listing both their names in my reviews and even when guest authors come in, simply ignore that. Keeping track of the whims of the Artistic Type is more than I want to deal with when reading a bleeding comic book.

I’ve also realized that several of the covers I have for these issues are the complete spread, encompassing the front cover and the back, which forms a complete whole. Instead of chopping them up like I have been doing and making the “usual” sized cover, I’m going to be using the full version. So the first part of the review will have all the data under the cover instead of beside it like is normal. And this review is now approaching 900 words, so it is beyond time to quit before I lose myself here.

★✬☆☆☆

32 thoughts on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #12 ★✬☆☆☆”

  6. I’m in the same boat as you, Bookstooge 😉 Suspending disbelief is all well and good, provided the internal logic of the story holds up. Yeah, these are teenage mutant ninja turtles, but they live in our world with our physics. You’d expect at least a semblance of that bleed through into the story, as it used to. Not that handwavium stuff about interspace/dimensional travel, which is part and parcel of TMNT, but things like the speed of bullets and and curvature of their trajectory, or the availability of plutonium 😉 So, rant all you want, I’ll be cheering you on!

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    1. I was talking to a friend of mine about this and he pointed out that most people don’t know that they don’t know something. While i technically agree with him, I still say it is the author/artist being lazy.
      And for goodness sake, a flipping A-bomb on saw horses?

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  7. Pingback: December ’22 Roundup & Rambling – Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road

    1. It really awful and it showed that Eastman and Laird made a big mistake going their separate ways. I don’t know when/if they come back together, but I do hope it is soon.

      with only reading 1 of these a month, it makes much more likely that I’ll stick around and try to get through the crap ones. But I’m doing a yearly evaluation (purely mental) of the comics I’m reading and if TMNT doesn’t improve during ’23 I’ll probably be dropping them in ’24. But it would take about 4 or 5 issues of storylines even worse than this to get me to drop them mid-year.

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    1. Also wanted to add that people who write about guns when they don’t know about guns are so funny. I’m not even close to an expert in firearms and I see a lot of general misconceptions and just plain flat out wrong info in fiction. Husband and I always point them out to laugh about them.

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      1. I wish I could be that detached. But with all the issues going on in America about guns, I just wish the public would inform themselves so as not to be led astray by other people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

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