Writers: Jason Aaron & Tom Waltz
Artists: Chris Burnham & Gavin Smith
Colorist: Brian Reber & Ronda Pattison
Letterer: Nathan Widick
Cover Artists: Chris Burnham & Brian Reber; Gavin Smith; Esau & Isaac Escorza; Vicenzo Federici; J. Gonzo; Rod Reis; Sophie Campbell; Chris Burnham (Gold Foil)
Publisher: IDW
Price: $6.99
Release Date: June 5, 2024
A safari park reinvents itself as a mutant fight club. A researcher experiments with a new and improved mutagen. How will these unrelated incidents reshape the mutant landscape? Let's grab our bō staffs, leap into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha #1, and find out!
Long Way From Home
Story
When Sunshine Safari Park closes its doors, the security guards discover a lucrative new opportunity. Two thousand dollars buys customers five minutes with the mutant of their choice. If they bag the mutant and want a trophy to show their friends, taxidermy services are available for an additional fee. But wait, these mutants are just animals, aren’t they?
In Long Way From Home, a white-collar worker needs a reason to hold his head high. The captured mutants want to survive and escape. A Turtle eggs on customers until they agree to fight him. But can they survive the battle with this trained warrior? Jason Aaron's ten-page story finishes too quickly and doesn't end well for the guards or the man who paid to take down a Turtle.
Art
Chris Burnham’s gritty art in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha #1 pulses with vitality and drama as the office worker attempts to prove himself to the dismissive guards and the hungry, determined Turtle. The customer grows furious while the guard grins behind his back. Panels reveal a foot, then intent eyes, before a hooded Turtle leaves his cell. The pens and fencing fade as the mutant dwarfs the would-be hero. The reptile bursts into action. And the guards watching the monitors lose their lunch.
A dark blue sky welcomes visitors to the glowing arena. Overhead lighting paints the ground yellow as the tanned guard in a blue shirt leads the gray suit toward barred pens. Highlights brighten the intent man's features and the green hands clutching the gray bars. The customer picks up a blue crowbar, and a star bursts behind him, shooting orange rays in every direction. Brian Reber lavishes a loaded palette on this dark story illuminated only by the artificial lights, Sunshine Security's cattle prods, and one Turtle’s determination to survive.
Monster Island
Story
Old Hob watches over Mutant Island, aka North Brother Island. Beside him crawls Herman the Hermit Crab, ready to shoot down any drones his boss spots. But while Old Hob worries about outsiders spying on his new home, he ignores growing problems among those in his care. After the crab destroys his latest surveillance drone, Colonel Wesley Knight sneaks onto Mutant Island under cover of darkness. What is his unsanctioned mission?
Monster Island updates readers on crime and politics in Mutant Town and lets Jennica and Angel Bridge reconnect. But the central focus of Tom Waltz’s story is Colonel Knight's mission on behalf of his mutant-traumatized wife and a research experiment gone wrong. It's a fraught action feature starring unlikely partners and a monster who begs forgiveness as she kills.
Art
A full moon shines down on Mutant Town’s three-story buildings and clustering tents in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha #1. The moon illuminates the Cat and Crab on the wooden pier. As the sky darkens, a boat pulls onto the rocky shore, and a soldier clad in armor holds a rifle in readiness as he charges across the grass. The Colonel trades night vision goggles for a flashlight and ventures into the compound. He follows a trail of blood and finds mutants wrapped in webbing and hanging from the ceiling.
Ronda Pattison lavishes a loaded palette on Gavin Smith’s art in the thirty-page Mutant Town. Pattison portrays darkness while hiding nothing as combatants seek their prey. The subdued coloring energizes the moonlit fight as guns blaze, a rotary cannon smokes, and a fierce creature with deadly talons bursts from the shadows.
Nathan Widick contributes large, uppercase black letters to white balloons and colored narrative boxes in both stories. The words grow bold for inflection and shrink for lowered voices. A monster hisses white letters into blood splatter, while vicious sound effects intensify the struggle for survival in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha #1. Paragraphs of white letters accompany portraits for profiles of nine characters in Mutant Town. Thanks to IDW for providing a copy for review.
Final Thoughts
One leader rallies the drugged and dispirited captives of a mutant trafficking ring, while another realizes that Humans and Mutants need each other in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha #1.
Rating 9.5/10
Preview "Long Way From Home," the prelude to Jason Aaron's forthcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, on my review at Comic Book Dispatch.
