Family Feuds and a Mutant Army.
TMNT #37. The Turtles and Splinter, deal with whether or not Shredder is a priority at the moment, compared to the Krang and the Technodrome. Plus, Old Hob's Mutant Army presents some excellent results. (NEXT ISSUE)
So, in the last issue we had The Foot Clan and The Krang plan for their version of world domination. Now, we have the Turtles choosing what to do first. Either saving the world from the Krang or defeating the Shredder. (Seems like an easy choice, right?) WRONG! While the issue's story was paced well and can be classified as a good issue, there were problems within the story. One of those problems being Splinter's choice to go after The Shredder [first] who is trying to take over the city, instead of the Krang who are trying to take over the Earth. I did not like how this was handled in this issue, as the writers [when having Splinter explain everything to his sons] chalked it up basically as a "We must stop the Shredder first because he REALLY wants to kill us, and the Krang kinda want to kill us!" [just imagine that in a Splinter voice, specifically Hoon Lee Splinter voice] type of situation. Donnie was the only one who thought clearly in this entire situation as the reasons that the writers created to justify Splinter's choice were really sad, and had no effort put into them whatsoever.
Another issue I had with this was the human side of this comic. (I.e. Casey, April, and Angel.) Casey, April [and her mom and dad], and Angel all had a very small part in this comic, but they did not aid the story at all. I am no longer interested in Casey's family issues, so why continue to bring it up? It was interesting when Casey was in the thick of it, but now he's all depressed that he didn't get the ideal childhood with a perfect father. (Oh well!) Casey was useless in this issue because of his depression, but it also begs the question as to why he's depressed about his father choosing to be a bad guy over having a family. As Casey basically said "Screw you! You're dead to me!" when he last saw his father, and left with Hun somewhat emotional. Where did that Casey Jones go? And another thing, because of Casey's depression we have April babying Casey. This is not the time, nor the place for the fire of Casey and April's relationship to grow. Because of it, we get to see more of April's parents which have no clear role in Casey and April's life, except the new fact that April's dad was cured by the ooze. (Hoorah! Go home parents, just please go home!) And don't get me started on Angel, why was she even in this issue? We already know the exo-suit works perfectly fine!
Even though, there are these low points in this issue the story did an excellent job at introducing Hob's Mutant Army. I am excited as to seeing what the writers will do when Hob's army starts to look like an army, because he doesn't seem like the guy-cat-mutant to stop at taking down the Shredder and/or Krang. He seems like the guy-cat-mutant that would look to take over New York City as the next big boss or maybe even the world, but more realistically New York City. Hob vaguely mentioning how "animals were on the Earth before humans [screwed it up]" or "taking back the city [for the animals]" kinda leads me to believe that the writers are starting down that path. Which I think is really interesting. Old Hob is one of the coolest characters in the TMNT series and always has an agenda, so seeing as the character is always scheming, I would find it stupid to believe that he's just going to live underground with a bunch of armed and dangerous mutants, instead of going topside and "Fighting for [their] the right, to PARTY! (topside.)"
In conclusion, this was a good issue. It had its fair share of problems, but organized itself enough to pass as a good issue. I am interested in seeing what the writers will do in the next issue. 3 out of 5.