Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutanimals #1
IDW Publishing
Story: Paul Allor
Art: Andy Kuhn
Colors: Nick Filardi
Fresh off the pages of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ongoing series, comes the team of Mutanimals. Who are the Mutanimals you ask? This team consists of the massive snapping turtle Slash, Herman the hermit crab soldier, Pete the absent minded pigeon and Mondo Gecko the rad skateboarding lizard, all of them are led by the feline flea bag Old Hob (who is the on again off again antagonist for the Ninja Turtles). Old Hob’s mission is to overthrow the human order, fill the mutant-kind ranks with soldiers of his own making, and not the tortured, science lab side show freaks that humans have been creating, which is exactly what this comic explores.
The creative team behind this series is different from that of the TMNT ongoing series, but they still nail the character models and personalities. The art in this series seems to like to show the characters in one panel and again shortly after just to display the contrast of the varying mood and emotional shifts that the Mutanimals are going through. If you haven’t experienced the Mutanimals in the regular run,
then you are in for a ride. This team likes to fight fast and hard, usually without thinking things through first. The one instance they were cooperating with the Ninja Turtles was in the practice and training phase of a raid. Now without the turtles, the action gets hectic and chaotic quick.
This series is a reward for those reading the current run, as well as the hardcore fans from the late 80s early 90s series. The Mutanimals were present then and were just as fun and loose as the Ninja Turtles themselves. Now with they’re return signified by the return of another mutant from the original series, Mutagen Man, a human creature that was part of a science experiment that leaves the mutant as a liquid filled tank with human organs clearly visible. This perversion of science is the exact reason Old Hob is leading this crusade against human-kind, and the exact reason you should be reading this book. The Mutanimals are just as classic and fun to read about as the source material they come from. Side note: Mutagen Man also has made his appearance in the 2012 cartoon series, along with a large stable of mutants that were in the original cartoon and comic. Man I love being a turtle (fan).