The Splinter Clan’s home base and dojo has been burned down by a new and dangerous gang in Mutant Town—the Punk Frogs. The Frogs aren’t one for peaceable solutions, and are more than a match for the Turtles in a fight, putting the Splinter Clan in a bind until they can give the Frogs what they want. In the meantime, the fragile peace between the Utroms and the Triceratons has all but shattered, and war is on the horizon. TMNT #126, written by Sophie Campbell with story consulting from Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz, drawn by Pablo Tunica, colored by Ronda Pattison, and lettered by Shawn Lee.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been shifting through a lot of artists lately. So far, all of them have paled in comparison to Sophie Campbell’s work, though they’ve all had their own unique additions to the storytelling that helped moments land in ways that stuck with me. Pablo Tunica, handling the current Punk Frogs arc, is so far my favorite of these artists. Less because of how much I enjoy the art itself, but how much I enjoy the way it frames the story.
Three things are being introduced in this arc: the breaking down of the Utrom-Triceraton truce, the mad science-rat Dr. Jasper Barlow, and, of course, the Punk Frogs. Two out of those three things are just bizarre. And I don’t mean bizarre in concept—in a town full of mutants, plastic surgeon rat and a gang of punk frogs aren’t really a big stretch of the imagination. But the way they manifest in the panels they’re in does elicit the same feelings that bizarreness does, and Pablo Tunica is the perfect artist for it.
I love when an artist can make me feel like I’m viewing the world through the eyes of the most important person in that story. Tunica’s warped lines and shadings look like they’re about to crumble in on each other. Everyone’s facial expressions are stretched just far enough to achieve a garish effect. This work is ugly, and it’s a stubborn ugliness, a pride that’s spitting in the face of the tyranny of neater artwork. It’s easy to imagine that this is the world as seen through the Punk Frog’s eyes—the joy of seeing harshness in the world, and knowing you’re harsh enough to be sitting atop it all ready to bash down anyone who’d take your place.
On the other hand, it’s also easy to imagine that this is the world as seen through Dr. Barlow’s eyes. Hideous, monstrous, and impossible to look away from no matter how much you want to. A world desperately in need of fixing. Dr. Barlow was gruesome enough last issue, but his single page appearance in this issue was the kind of ghastly ugliness that goes all the way around into its own kind of beauty.
Pattison’s colors add to the garishness of TMNT #126. The backgrounds are tired, cold, drab in places, and the colors here enhance the sense that everything’s falling apart. Mutant Town is a section of the city that’s falling apart, and despite his fancy tea set and delusional attempts at graceful mannerisms, Barlow feels exactly like the kind of grubby little rodent that lives in its crumbling walls.
The highlight of this issue was absolutely the action scene, where the Punk Frogs reject any possible truce out of hand; they want to fight, and when it looks this good, I’m so glad they do. Last month’s fight was a claustrophobic affair, with almost a dozen people crammed into a single room, most of which was filling fast with flames. Here, though, everyone’s spread across the rooftops of Mutant Town and it’s a gloriously chaotic thing to see. It’s rare to see a group fight where it feels like everything’s happening at once, but the layouts, the lettering, and rapidly switching perspectives all have a wild energy to them that took my breath away.
Where the art falls, for me, is when it’s tackling the more familiar. This era of the TMNT is a kinder, gentler one, but in its quiet moments, our protagonists look just as garish and monstrous as the villains they’re fighting against. The art and the story being told in those moments feels like a real mismatch that pulled me out of the story a little.
As always, though, I’m enjoying the setting up of threads whose culminations we won’t likely see for a while yet. Between Future Lita’s vague warnings, and the promise of an Armageddon War, every new thing that’s introduced makes me wonder if this is the trigger for the havoc that’s been promised.
TMNT #126 is a messy comic, but the good far outweighs the bad. I may not like the fact that everyone here looks like a monster—but that’s really a matter of perspective, isn’t it?
