Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #50
Writer: Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz
Art: Mateus Santolouco, Cory Smith, Ronda Patterson
Publisher: IDW
Released: October, 2015
I am living in the 90s right now reading this series. This past story arc has been a wild ride that hooked me immediately with issue #44 and the ‘death’ of Donatello. The arc leads up to issue #50 from the fall out of Krang and the Technodrome to the final showdown that would decide who would become junin of the Foot Clan. Much is revealed in this oversized special #50 issue, continuing with the falllout of issue #49 of the pit battle against Bebop and Rocksteady.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
The Turtles learn that they must work intelligently in order to beat the brutes who are known for taking a beating. After playing the mutant animals of the Foot Clan for fools, robot-Donatello performs a self-destruct explosion and out of the rubble appears Donatello in fit fighting form! This is huge but was inevitable with the return of Donatello. This then leads to a final showdown on the rooftop where Shredder invites the comiscally concerned Splinter who searches his memories of the past for the answers in defeating Shredder, his once childhood best friend.
On the roof Shredder fights the turtles, Splinters sons, while Splinter recalls a time where Shredder had executed innocent boys in front of him. This memory and more are what help Splinter get the ideas needed for defeating Shredder. While Shredder beats down the turtles one by one, Splinter decides thay it is time to fight Shredder himself in a final showdown of masters. Splinter fights and defeats Shredder in a great final fight scene, keeping to the high quality of action scenes that this book has that have all been visually phenomenal.
The way the book ends is that Shredder decides to take the honourable way out and has Splinter kill him be cutting off the head of Shredder. Splinter then accepts his role as junin of the Foot Clan, and lets any survivors of Shredders army leave, gaining a mutual respect with the daughter of Shredder who may become a future ally more than a future enemy. Mikey runs away from his family in an effort to live his life detached from the Foot Clan and ends up hanging out with the Mutanimals. Also, there seems to be many extra players in a game of families that might spring up later. The epilogue at the end of the book drops quite a huge mysterious ending as it shows Krang and his alien army collecting the dead bodies of the executed children from Splinters past that was revealed in his memories.
All of this combined with great writing and great art (followed by even better art in issue #51 onwards in my opinion) makes TMNT by IDW a great series to pick up and start following along. The TMNT animated TV series right now is really good, and following the big budget and mediocre Michael Bay movie we are being teased a really epic looking sequel. Right now is a great time to relive the 90s, we have the Turtle Power!
~ Tyler H34D
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