Complete and utter chaos has spread through Mutant Town and beyond, as Rat King’s game continues to build towards something. With the conclusion of this massive event only one issue away, the Hamato Clan and their allies move one step closer to finally confronting their rodent-themed foe.
Penultimate issues of big events can usually do a number of things depending on what the writer needs to accomplish before the conclusion. After spending much of the event following different avenues that the various Turtles and allies were pursuing, we’ve had some time with them in the same space as they came together to protect their home in Mutant Town. That leaves this issue to work as a massively packed one where Tom Waltz works to weave together every bit of plot threads together so that all the pieces save the King himself are wiped from the board.
Truly, this is a jam-packed issue from start to finish. All of it just works though because Waltz knows what he wants to accomplish and knows these characters/this world so well at this point (having been one of the main driving forces behind it for over a decade). With the other tie-in issues helping deal with some of the buildup, this issue can just focus on the final fights and both Madame Null and Krang completely dealt with, one of them knocked out and the other killed off at long last. Baxter Stockman is off doing his own thing after being somewhat removed from the game in the last Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Armageddon Game – The Alliance issue.
I really dug how much happens in this issue and how Waltz has orchestrated this event. In comics publishers love to state that after an event “things will never be the same again,” or some variation of that, but often it’s just marketing since the status quo of long-running franchises tend to reset or stick to a baseline. This is an event that I fully truly believe that things will not be the same again because some huge moments go down here and some seismic moves have happened to Mutant Town, the city, the universe, and beyond in these seven issues and the tie-ins.
Vincenzo Federici and Heather Breckel do such a fantastic job at continuing to breathe life into this story. We bounce around from heavily action-oriented moments to those that are more quiet/conversational but all of them have the same weight, detail and focus as Federici make sure that there is an overall energy that permeates the issue. It’s dynamic all around with the panel choices helping keep things moving at a rapid pace, there is really no slowing down till the issue ends and that is a great thing.
I really love the panels where the white space is brought into play, and the only background are stripes of vivid color, keeping our focus fully on the characters featured. There are several pages that play with different ways to stack or display panels that just feel fun and again, add to that overall energy.
Just as the artwork is both smooth and rough in quality, the colors match that as Breckel makes sure to incorporate darker colors and shadows into each space to keep that same coherent tone that has been here since the first issue, when Matt Herms was on colors. A highlight again is how each space, no matter where its taking place, has a different overall quality to the colors that matches what the lighting, or lack of lighting, would bring to the space. The streets of New York, Burnow Island, the Technodrome and elsewhere are completely unique but also similar with the choices in the color palate.
Capturing spirit is something that needs to be done with lettering to really make it work best in an issue, and Shawn Lee is always great at doing that. I note this in every TMNT-related review where Lee worked on the issue, and I love doing so each time. There is just a quality to Lee’s work that really captures the voices/personalities of the characters and their world so clearly. Not only that but there is a lot of colorful fun added in with things like bubbles of different colors, specific fonts for characters (which allows us to ‘hear’ that their voice is different than others), and never forget those big old fun SFX that are part of what is fantastic about comic books.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Armageddon Game #7 is now available from IDW Publishing.
Complete and utter chaos has spread through Mutant Town and beyond, as Rat King’s game continues to build towards something.COMICONRead More