Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles go on the attack

In this new adventure published by HiComics, writers Tom Waltz and Bobby Curnow offer a tale of war and tolerance. A secret group of the US military has just discovered the whereabouts of the Triceratons, an alien people recently arrived on Earth. They decide to invade Burnow Island and have great means. Should the Turtles intervene in this conflict? How could they act in the face of an army?

Without any heaviness script, the Turtles debate the role of the heroes. One of them, Raph wants to act locally and therefore he refuses to intervene on the island. In the other camp, Leonardo and Donatello feel responsible because they allowed the Triceratons to settle on this refuge. So they want to help them, even if it means taking up arms. We then find the overall theme of the series: the complicated relationship between the individual and the group and therefore the debates to seek a compromise.

This new volume of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opens with a landing but, as we are in a comic, there are also robots, robotic giant flies and a giant mutant turtle controlled by the commander-in-chief. The rest of volume 17 tells this battle from several points of view: the attackers, the resistance fighters and their mutant reinforcements in Manhattan. There are also both collective fights and decisive duels. Dave Wachter's drawings are more and more successful with very varied framing and very effective for war scenes. He does very well with military designs that are both realistic and close to science fiction.

Tom Waltz and Bobby Curnow render invasion and defense strategies very well. We see the different waves of the army that combine air, sea and land forces. The reader thinks of the landings in Normandy or Iraq. However, the US military is the aggressor here and the aggressors are the weakest. Indeed, the island of Burnow is the refuge of minorities: the Triceratons and the Utroms. The scenario avoids any Manichaeism by showing the divisions of the Utroms. The military advocates a violent solution while scientists prefer peace. This opposition is reminiscent of periods of civil wars or revolution.

Since the first volume, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been the pleasure of a comic book with complex characters that evolve slowly over several intertwined narratives that never stop, one story replacing the other. With each new volume, new tracks are traced that enlarge the territory of the turtles. The series annexes politics because a character is running for mayor.

The last episode is a Christmas story, a genre that recurs regularly in the series. It is a tribute to Dickens' tale but it also fits into the overall plan by focusing on Splinter, the father of the Turtles. By dint of working for the Foot clan, he lost sight of his morals. Three spirits will come to try to change his path.