Inkspot Fancy

With Raph back, the Turtles are a whole family once again - and we learn a bit about the past of the man known as Hamato Yoshi, before he became a rat known as Splinter.

It seems that every version of the Turtles plays a little with the backstory and this one is no different. And as always, without spoiling too much, there are parts of this I like and parts I don't. All I can say is, I'm with you, Donatello.

But in addition to that, we're also getting some familiar faces diverging. Krang. Baxter Stockman (and of course the Mousers). April O'Neil and Casey Jones meet up in a way that, surprisingly, has absolutely nothing to do with the Turtles (I'll give bonus points there).

The series is still very much in setup mode, but this is a really entertaining volume. It's not as silly and jokey as most of the cartoon versions, so if you're coming in with that mentality, you're going to find yourself in strange waters. It is a lot of fun, and it never really strays all the way to grim territory, but there are definitely some outright dark moments.

I really love the Turtles when they're all together and behaving like brothers. So, I really enjoyed a bunch of this. The fight scenes here are also tense and dynamic, which I love. So, overall I'm still really digging the IDW take on this mythos and am going to go dig into volume 3 here shortly. :)