STRANGE TURTLES

Crossovers...

Sometimes they are good (Civil War, Dark Reign, Secret Invasion).  Most of the time they are eye-rollingly bad.  In any case, they are both a bane and a boon for comic book shops and readers alike.

I am not gonna lie but when I laid eyes on this Stranger Things/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cover, I did just that: roll my eyes and shudder, nearly in fear at how atrocious this could turn out to be...

Now the day is here where the feared comic is physically in front of my very eyes.  And it is actually not that bad.

So basically, in this first issue, the Hawkins gang, minus Eleven, are in New York for a school trip. Eleven had promised Mike she would join them in New York, and se does, but not fast enough for them not to be separated from their group and chaperone when they tried to take the subway.  Of course, that is when they hear Demogorgon noises and decide to investigate the issue, fearing what would happen if New York got overrun, Hawkins having been bad enough so far.

So in the tunnel they go, where they eventually find cyborg looking Upside Down creatures, young Demogorgons, specifically.

As they start taking care of business Eleven style, their attempt gets interrupted by sais and nunchuks, startling the group, even more so when they realize the weapons belonged to oversized talking turtles...  The Turtles initially misinterpret their surprise with fear but they quickly realize that the teens are capable to fend for themselves and know more about this than the Turtles themselves...

Soon they are being brought the the Turtles sewer lair, where both groups explains themselves and a thorough inspections of the creatures they battled make the Turtles suspect that one of their enemies is involved: Baxter Stockman, which they thought was in prison...

They eventually meet Splinter, 'father' of the Turtles, and it seems to dumbfound them further, despite their Ghostbusters-level experiences with the supernatural and the weird.

Eleven proposes to find Stockman, using her void walking powers, and she does just that:  Find a not imprisoned Baxter, who seems to be awaiting her visit and wanting her to find him, even going as far as providing an address...

Totally forgetting about their field trip, their teacher and common sense, the two species split themselves up in groups: one to investigate further the Upside Down breach and another to go see what is up with Baxter Stockman...

The issue ends, of course, with a cliffhanger and we will have to read more to see how far the deep end the story actually goes, but so far, so good.

The story appears to be set between Seasons 3 and 4 of Stranger Things, as Max is around and well, but Eleven has the stylings of the end of Season 3 and is clearly not coming from Hawkins with the rest of the group.

One annoying thing is that the Turtles seems to all wear the same colour of masks, orange, so it gets difficult to figure out which one is talking at times.  So much so, they have to use a writing artefact where the Hawkins kid basically tells us the name of the character they are talking to, by asking them their name or reasserting them, since they just met... It works, but it gets tiresome quickly.  It would have easily fixed itself with the differently coloured masks, like all the other books, movies, etc.  It is probably happening in some sort of alternate universe, but still...

The comic book seems to have been spinned off a line of action figures based on the concept created by Playmates, exclusively for sale at Target.  They seem to halve been half-assed, but they sure as hell expecting you to shell out in full for them.  So much for our heroes who have been litterally half-shelled:  While all the Turtles are in, but no Splinter and four Hawkins heroes: Eleven, Dustin, Lucas and Hopper (still unseen in the comic at the moment).

I have seen worst crossovers based on toys. as the original Secret Wars comes to mind, being basically an excuse for a small group of super heroes and villains to bash each others head in on another world.  So fingers crossed, this zany crossover could actually be something quite entertaining!  We will let you know once the series has run its course!