“Yesterday’s” Comic> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #39

Okay, who replaced the Ninja Turtles with Mad Magazine?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #39

Mirage Publishing, Inc (September, 1991)

“Spaced Out” part 2

WRITERS/ARTIST: Rich Hedden & Tom McWeeney

COVER ART: Guy Romano

What the hell did I just read? Seriously, what the hell was this crap. Look, I have no idea how I’m going to explain what’s happening in this issue so I’m totally cheating and just posting the summary from the TMNTPedia entry and tossing my thoughts in or I’m not going to be able to do anything with this garbage. So I guess you know my summarized thoughts already.

The spacecraft crash lands on a farm, relatively unscathed. The aliens burst out of the ship, prepared to take over the world (one armed with a photon pistol, the other with a video camera). Raph eventually stumbles out of the ship, dazed and confused. Bessy the cow also emerges, and she is quickly romanced by the farm’s bull.

What’s Raphael doing on a spacecraft with pint-sized Elvis clones obsessed with recording themselves looking menacing? I have no idea. The comic tells you jack and I really don’t care enough to look up the pedia entry on part one.

Meanwhile, the military has deciphered the exact location of the crash and sends its men to the scene.

Raphael grows weary of the aliens lame attempts to conquer the planet and smashes their camera in a fit of rage.

The local townsfolk hear of the crash and alien invasion at a town meeting. Everyone panics, but since they don’t have any cars to flee the area, they’re forced to mill about town.

This is what passes for comedy. By the way, the town’s name is Simpletown. There are also jokes about the other three Turtles in bed fantasizing about a hot human chick before Splinter’s astral form takes her away to “punish” her, a government agent with three guys in suits with him in the shower, a scene of four…well, three people in a horse (one dude in a cowboy hat and another in a stereotyped Native American headdress, plus a girl) in bed being shocked the reader caught them, and a panel with cavemen. Do they add anything to the plot? Absolutely not! Neither to the panels where the creators themselves all of this is garbage. Raph telling himself only 17 pages left (which was the only good news to me), and one where Eastman and Laird fight over which one was dumb enough to hire these two. I blame whomever let this comic reach the printers.

Raphael decides to hitchhike back to Casey’s farm, so naturally he dons a dress and heels in the attempt to entice a local into giving him a ride. In no time at all, a pickup truck stops and Raph is on his way – but so are the aliens, as they decide to stowaway in the back of the vehicle.

Back at the crash site, the farmer, his wife and their dog go into the spaceship to investigate. Unfortunately for them, as they’re exiting the empty craft the Army arrives and mistakes them for the alien invaders… and thus the farmer and his kin are taken into captivity.

Note that I needed this entry to even know which Turtle is suffering through this. Raph doning women’s clothing off the clothesline to hide himself I don’t believe. Mikey I could ALMOST believe.

Meanwhile things are getting heated in the pick up truck – the driver is attempting to smooch Raphael! As Raph struggles with the huge trucker, the two aliens assume control of the truck… sending it careening out of control… right into the local downtown where everyone is milling about!

On the plus side, this is part of the “guest era” and non-canon so you can totally ignore this entire four part story. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t tell you how badly this sucks since I have it on the Clutter For Sale: Comics section of The Clutter Reports (under miscellaneous comics) as of this writing but I have a responsibility as a reviewer before a declutterer. Unless you absolutely need the full run of Mirage’s first volume, and if you do you know how to get it, avoid this thing. It’s not funny. It’s not good. It’s not worth your time. Just keep it in your collection so you can say you have it. Better you than me!

So that was my attempt to finally get into the Mirage comics and I regretted both issues. That means I’m done with Mirage because none of the other issues are available to me legally and free (unemployed, remember). I’ve reviewed the IDW run when they came out during Today’s Comic but I do have some Archie and Dreamwave comics to go over, and maybe some ComiXology/Amazon stuff if they don’t delete it on me before I can see if I missed it. So we aren’t quite done with Turtle Monday just yet.