“Yesterday’s” Comic> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #7

Leave it to the Turtles to turn the pineapple topping debate into…this. By the way, how are anchovies doing?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #7

Mirage Publishing (March, 1986)

WRITERS/ARTISTS: Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird

LETTERER: Steve Lavigne

Everyone arrives in the TCRI building but the Triceratons are not used to Earth atmosphere and don’t have the filters like they gave the Turtles. Upon seeing the translocation device, the Triceratons try to take it only to be stunned by the TCRIs or killed by the Turtles. Then the Turtles are reunited with their healed sensei, Splinter, who explains how he ended up in the tube, as the aliens are friendly. With the device damaged, Honeycutt works with the TCRIs (they aren’t called Utrom in this story) to repair the device as the military tries to break in. One has time to share the part of the Turtles’ origin they didn’t know. The TCRIs crashed on Earth 20 years ago while on a mission to study our planet. Over time they hid using their robot exosuits and fake human coverings to acquire the money to turn a building into a base to build the translocation device and continue their observations. While moving the rest of their ship in one of the canisters of a mutagenic substance from their ship fell off of the truck just as a boy saved a blind man from being hit by them. Of course that was the ooze that made the Turtles and Splinter what they are. With the military finally getting past the TCRI’s defenses, the Turtles are forced to flee with the aliens back to their homeworld, beamed back three days later into April’s bathtub. (Luckily she wasn’t using it at the time.)

What they got right: They avoided April being in the tub. It’s a gag I would expect from that period. We get aliens who aren’t evil (until later comic retcons apparently), and the rest of the story about where the mutagen came from.

What they got wrong: Still not sure why they were carrying mutagen and just had the canister sticking out on the truck like that, but they could be incompetent. Might explain why they crashed twenty years ago.

What I think overall: A good finale to the whole storyline, and everybody is back together, including the healed Splinter. I have two one-shots covering one Turtle each that this seems a good place to drop into so this arc isn’t interrupted, and then I have to skip #8 because it’s not up on the website, possibly due to the Cerebus crossover story.