Wednesday 29 May 2013

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #22 Review

If Marvel and DC can blast the market with one event comic after another, why can't the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles join in on the fun? Issue #22 kicks off a major new storyline called "City Fall." With the wackiness of the Dimension X storyline behind them, the Turtles are now forced to resume the fight with Shredder and the Foot Clan. Even at this early stage "City Fall" looks to be a strong shift in tone and direction for the series, and one that capitalizes on various lingering plot threads from the past year.

Mind you, "City Fall" isn't an event in the sense that there are tie-ins or multiple books to buy. This is simply a darker shift for the series that ramps up the drama and delivers a couple big twists to let readers know the writers have big plans in store. It's great to see Shredder and his minions take center stage again, particularly with all the great work done in the Secret History of the Foot Clan series.

Tom Waltz and Kevin Eastman are able to bring an extra level of menace to the villain that wasn't fully apparent in last year's Shredder storyline. He's more tactical than before, and not afraid to get his hands dirty. By the end of this issue, there's a clear and palpable tension to the conflict. It's exactly the sort of grim debut you'd want to kick off an event.

Speaking of Secret History of the Foot Clan, the series also receives a distinct visual boost thanks to new interior artist Mateus Santolouco. Santolouco injects the streets and sewers of Manhattan with a newfound layer of texture, while also delivering characters that are more varied and expressive than they have been in previous issues.

The best compliment I can pay to the art is that the four Turtles would be clearly distinguishable even without their color-coded bandanas. Each character has their own unique body language and fighting style that really spices up the key action sequences as well as the more dialogue-driven ones.

TMNT has always been an enjoyable book, but "City Fall" immediately kicks up the quality several notches. And the good news is that the writers manage to make the story accessible enough that it's possible to dive right in, though I'd at least recommend checking out issue #21 and Eastman's brief return as interior artist.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.


Source : ign[dot]com

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