Enemy In Our House: Reviewing ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ #135

With the Splinter Clan split up across dimensions and the Armageddon Game intensifying, a familiar threat hits close to home. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continues to showcase one of the best ways to handle being part of a major event without losing anything of the spirit or direction of the series in the process.

I’ve been a fan of this current series run since picking up the first issue (actually #101) all the way back in the before times of early 2020, loving all the characters and the world-building that has gone on. All this time Sophie Campbell has done wonders with a pretty large cast of characters, here or there mixing in an issue with smaller groups. Being able to laser focus on Donatello and Jennika and a handful of their friends and family for this arc is so great. The Armageddon Game event is a nice frame around the story, as it allows the issues to naturally be split into two concurrent intertwined but separate stories, with Jennika dealing with issues in Mutant Town while Donatello helps protect Seri as the Utroms come for her.

Often when an ongoing series takes part in an event its own plots are put to the side till after the event ends, but not here. The Seri plot picks up right from the arc it began in right before Armageddon Game and takes on a new set of stakes thanks to the chaos of the Armageddon Game happenings.

As mentioned in the intro the overall Splinter Clan is spread all over the place, and one thing I really liked about this issue is just how contained it really is. We’re mostly seeing the folks that are locked into the Turtle’s Church fighting off the Utrom bounty hunger in disguise and in some alleyways as well as Mutant Town’s City Hall. It gives plenty of space for a lot of tightly placed and developed character interactions and some smaller fights, which just flow quite well.

Flowing under the hand of Fero Pe who gives this world and characters such a wonderful bit of life. Much of that confinement sort of appeal I mentioned comes from how well Pe structures the pages and panels where we get a lot of close-ups and tighter focused panels that put us right there on the ground with the characters. We can feel and see their world because there is depth and weight to everything and the amount of detail in both the setting and the characters is uncanny. Yet, there are panels where all that setting detail fades away to give us just paramount focus on whichever character is in the moment, against a colorful background.

There are some really tense moments that happen in the issue and Pe ramps that up through paneling choices, like when “Jeff,” the Utrom in disguise, tries to first grab Seri and we get three panels in a row just slowly showing his hands and claws going for her before he’s interrupted. Changing up the style of paneling also works for the action scenes where in many of them we get a series of panels taking on more angled shapes slashing down the page cutting right through the action.

I just fully love the coloring work that Ronda Pattison has been doing on this series, it never misses the mark no matter what artist she’s paired with. It’s always shifting too, meeting the artist’s style perfectly while still retaining the same distinct style and energy that Pattison employs. One thing that I really noticed with this issue is how perfectly the colors shift in vibrance or tone depending on the situation/space, speaking to the different lighting aspects of every space. Last issue review I spoke about how accurate the night scenes were, and I’m seeing that same accuracy here in every type of lighting situation they encounter.

By that, I mean how in the lower light spaces of the church headquarters there are a lot more moments of popping vibrance, especially with more colorful characters like Seri for example, followed by pages where Jennika and Alopex are fighting in an alley during the daylight where things are a bit more toned down because it’s in a shaded alleyway. Those colors shift as they reach night again, shadows taking over, and standing out more in enclosed spaces. It’s a thing that to me adds so much to the world-building that is happening because it’s realistic alongside the fantastic which is always a good mix.

Another person that gets to showcase a lot of natural changes is Shawn Lee as there are a variety of moments calling for a variety of lettering types and styles. Lee always makes sure that any emotions or moments on the page are not just seen and felt but heard as well. We see baseline dialogue and then emphasizers are dropped in to let us know that some words are louder, but then there are moments where the font dramatically changes shape like it shrinking in the moments Donatello is murmuring to himself alone in his lab.

The same goes for the ‘small’ thing where “Jeff” attacks Seri and Pepperoni (how dare that Utrom!) and we hear Carmen wondering about the noise, but the dialogue bubble font is smaller rather than normal sized.

It quickly sets up the fact that they are in another room down the hall, therefore hearing their words where Jeff and Seri are would be softer/quieter. It would be easy and fine to put it in normal font there, our minds would potentially assume it’s from far away but Lee makes sure that we get to that point right away just in the way that the words appear. Great lettering makes sure that we know right in the moment how things should be said/heard as we’re reading through an issue, taking away the need to try and guess about the volume/tone of anything spoken.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #135 is now available from IDW Publishing.