Open Mike Night: Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 & X-Men/Teen Titans

Open Mike Night by Mike Maillaro and Mike Weaver

Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1

Written by: James Tynion IV
Art by: Freddie E. Williams II
Colored by: Jeremy Colwell
Lettered by: Tom Napolitano

Published by: DC/IDW
Cover Price: $3.99

Maillaro: You know, I am amazed that TMNT have never had a real crossover with Daredevil.  There really wouldn’t be a TMNT without all the homages to Daredevil, including Splinter (Stick) and The Foot (The Hand).  Not to mention they share an origin in the original comics.  

But, Marvel seems to have become really sheltered from the rest of the comic industry.   I can’t remember the last time they did any crossovers.  Thankfully, DC has been a little more willing to let others play in their playground.  We’ve had Legion/Star Trek, Green Lantern/Star Trek, and now Batman/TMNT.  

In this first issue, we find out that a bunch of characters from the TMNT universe have accidentally ended up in the DC Universe, and they are trying to find their way home.  Shredder has has his Foot Clan stealing tech in Gotham to try and get them home, which gets Batman’s attention, especially when he hears about “four green metahumans” being spotted at some of the crime scenes.

Weaver: I think Turtles and Daredevil is a little too obvious.  It would be difficult to merge the parody/homage with the source material without one or the other suffering.  It’s better, I think, to go with slightly less obvious crossovers.  After all, our favorite ever was Archie and Punisher.

Speaking of which, I was thinking that we did something recent that was a Marvel crossover, but I can’t recall.  JLA and Avengers was the last Marvel/DC one, and honestly, there’s no real way to top that.  I can understand that there’s editorial reasons for keeping things separate, but at least they ended on a high note.  It’s why the Beatles recorded Abbey Road, after all, since Let It Be was not what they wanted it to be.

Maillaro: It looks like there was a crossover between the Avengers and Attack on Titan, I had no idea.  But before that, Wiki says the last time Marvel did a crossover was 2007.

Weaver: You’d think that with Marvel and Star Wars in the same corporate structure, a crossover there would be a slam dunk, but so far, no dice.

Anyway, Batman and the Turtles.  This story simultaneously did a lot of things right and wrong in my view.  It was right to focus on the detective aspect of Batman and the slightly angsty teenage with bouts of silliness aspect of the Turtles, leaving each group to not step on the other’s toes.  But the focus on the detective aspects left the book feeling a little decompressed.  I also liked each hero facing off with the other hero’s enemies, but I feel like Killer Croc was a pretty random addition, probably just to contrast with Turtles.  He didn’t seem to fit the story well, but he was there.

Maillaro:  What was weird about this story to me was that it was basically a Batman story, just with interdimensional travelers tossed into it.  If this was the Silver Age, I could totally have seen this story being done without any licensed characters, just some random aliens.  I honestly am not sure if that was a good or bad thing, but it kept occurring to me as I was reading the book.  

Killer Croc was an odd one, just because his plan was so ridiculous, and even he seemed to realize it.  “I’m going to jack the Batmobile, because we can sell those parts for some serious bank.”  Seriously?  What in all of Killer Croc’s battles with Batman would make that seem like a viable plan??  Batman puts alarms on his sandwiches in the Justice League fridge (according to Teen Titans Go), you think his car can’t defend itself?

Now, the decompression was another thing that really jumped out at me.  While there are plenty of exceptions, a lot of the crossovers in the 90’s were single volume, prestige format stories.  No need for intermittent cliffhangers, just one fluid story.  I have had the same problem with Aliens/Vampirella and Green Lantern/Star Trek.  So much of the story seems decompressed just to make sure each issue ends with a BIG story beat...for six issues.

Weaver: I will once again hold up JLA/Avengers as “the right way” to do this.  Sure, it was multiple issues, but each issue felt like it had value, and with a cast that big...yeah, kind of needed it.

One thing I liked here is that while they didn’t explain why the Foot and Turtles are in Gotham, they did explain that they realized they were in the wrong dimension.  Heck, the Foot’s main plan is to get back to that dimension.  Which beats stealing the hubcaps off the Batmobile, Jason Todd style.  NOT THE PERSON YOU WANT TO EMULATE, CROC.  Especially since he spends several moments congratulating himself on his intelligence.

Mike: Yeah, I kind of admire Shredder and the Foot’s hard work...as opposed to Splinter and the Turtles who have just set up shop in the sewers.  You’d think they would have realized this world has a lot of heroes, and made an effort to contact them for help.  Say what you want about villains, but they are much more industrious than heroes for the most part.  Granted, they usually are up to no good, but I would rather trouble than shiftless...

Weaver: The villains always tend to be proactive, and heroes reactive, until you get into all of the Minority Report type stories.  I would say 1984, but I’m pretty sure Big Brother isn’t a hero.  I guess Squadron Supreme is also in this category.  If it weren’t for villains doing stuff, we’d have nothing but Henry Pym sitting around building robots to fight his friends because they made fun of him.  Does that count as villains doing stuff?  Probably.

I was pretty dismayed that the Turtles did, in fact, just sit around and eat pizza and play a My Little Pony video game.  Even though the Pony Racers running joke was one of my favorite parts of the issue, it really kind of said “we’re not trying.”  Similarly, we have Batman trapped in “anniversary of parents’ death” mode, which feels like it happens way too often.  With as many anniversaries as his parents’ death that there have been, he’s got to be the oldest man alive by now.  It really felt like both groups were honestly inconvenienced that they had to fight villains, and while I can appreciate a reluctant hero story, I prefer my reluctant hero stories to include elderly women inheriting nuclear reactors.

Maillaro: Yeah, Batman using his parent’s death as an excuse to build a new suit really feels like a stretch.  Clearly next year, he needs to spend more time designing a batmobile that can fend off reptile attacks….  By the way, I have no idea if crocodiles or turtles are reptiles.  

I feel like I am picking on this book kind of harshly.  I actually did enjoy it a lot, it just felt like there were a lot of little things that didn’t quite add up.  Which is a shame, because this book has a real top-shelf creative team.  Freddie Williams art here is pretty awesome, as usual.  But I didn’t think it was up to Tynion’s usual work.  The Woods and The Eighth Seal (not to mention his Batman stuff) are some of my favorite comics.

Weaver: Pretty sure they’re both amphibians.  I started out saying that this book did a lot right and a lot wrong, so it’s hard for me to judge.  The moments it got right, I was really into it and excited.  The moments it got wrong, I just kind of shook my head and rolled my eyes.  It was a roller coaster ride...if that roller coaster throws in a lot of stretches of just slowly ambling along a straight rail and never crests the big hill that you can see while standing in line.  But when it was working, it worked really well.  I feel like a low score undervalues its strengths, and a high score undervalues its weaknesses, and a middling score doesn’t represent the sheer range of good and bad.  I’ll give it a 3, but I’ll feel bad about that.  A 4.5 for art, because that was really good (but not quite perfect).

Maillaro: I think I will go a 4 for the writing.  There were definitely issues, but nothing that shattered the book for me.  You’re dead on with a 4.5 for the art.

The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans

Written by: Chris Claremont
Penciled by: Walter Simonson
Finished by: Terry Austin
Colored by: Glynis Wein and Rick Taylor
Lettered by: Tom Orzechowski

Published by: Marvel and DC
Cover Price: $2.00

Weaver: The X-Men and Teen Titans.  I remember when I first saw this issue in the spinner rack, with its beautiful wraparound cover.  It was pretty much an instant sale.  

Darkseid, with assistance from Deathstroke, is trying to harness Phoenix’ energy in order to turn Earth into a New Apokalips.  The X-Men and Titans both get mixed up in the affair due to Darkseid using the X-Men’s memories in order to track Phoenix energy, and the Titans running into the parademon army and doing some investigating on Phoenix.  Darkseid sort of resurrects Dark Phoenix, but without all of the power since the X-Men interrupted him drawing from one of Phoenix’ significant sites.  The X-Men and Titans meet up after both are defeated by Darkseid, followed by something too sloppy even for a James Bond villain.  Darkseid has them on a rock in the middle of nowhere with super advanced restraints that stop even Kitty from getting out...and he lets them all go free when he goes back to Earth.  No way that’s going to bite him in the ass, right?

Surprise, it bites him in the ass!  The X-Men and Titans use Metron’s chair to get back to Earth, face off against Darkseid, and use Raven’s empathic powers, Robin’s chicanery, and Cyclops’ True Love to save the day.

Maillaro: You know what really jumped out at me?   In the reality of this story, the X-Men and Teen Titans have always existed on the same world.  I thought that was a cool little conceit.  Too many crossover stories spend too much time worrying about how the characters could possibly meet instead of getting right to it.

I also thought that both teams were given a lot of time to shine.  More than Batman/TMNT, this really did feel like it could have been an X-Men or a Teen Titans story.  Which was kind of amazing since Claremont (to my knowledge) had never written Teen Titans.  Actually, this book is very Marvel heavy with an artist and writer both more known for Marvel work than DC work, but they still did an excellent job keeping it all balanced out.

Weaver: I’m going to talk about the characterization first, then the shared reality because I actually have a different opinion on that.

It did feel like both teams...and everybody on both teams...got focus, got to do things, and contributed to the win.  That’s hard to do when you just have one team of superheroes in a book, so that was handled really well.  I feel like some of the characters were more true to form than others, Cyborg in particular felt flat to me.  That may be because I’m more familiar with his more modern Justice League version.  The Kitty/Changeling interactions were priceless, especially with the Colossus jealous rage in the background, which again shows more depth of knowledge with the X-Men than Titans, but Claremont basically was the X-Men back then, so that’s understandable.  He also dropped a little continuing X-Men plot hint in there, with the unanswered question of who warned the X-Men.

As for the shared universe...it had strengths and weaknesses.  This was before Darkseid got pushed a lot, so I get the Titans not really knowing him, but I’m a little surprised they suggest calling the JLA or Avengers and have nothing but vague rumors as their X-Men knowledge base.  Meanwhile, the X-Men seem relatively unaware of them too.  I would imagine that in a true shared universe, they’d at least have accidentally watched a newscast on the other.  I liked not having to explain why the universes merged, but I don’t like that there was still a need for misunderstanding fight.

Maillaro: You make a real fair point.  If you really give it a serious look, it doesn’t make a lot of sense at all.  But I just took it as some handwaving to get right to the business.  It’s not like they had six issues to tell the story.

As for Cyborg, I have been reading some New Teen Titans, and Cyborg really was kind of “there” back in the day.  I think it was just because the rest of his teammates were so colorful, and he just didn’t have that much to offer.  I honestly thought the characterization was dead on for the time.  Though you are right, Cyborg is a far better character these days.  Definitely one of the best parts of New-52 has been the major ascension of Cyborg.

One of the biggest problems for me was that in the attempt to go EPIC, the book did end being a little dry at times.  You expect these crossovers to be a little more playful.  There were definitely some fun moments, but too often it devolved into mourning about “MY DEAD WIFE.”   I actually think this story would have been far better if they stayed away from Dark Phoenix and Darkseid and dealt with the more grounded threats these heroes deal with.   Deathstroke teamed up with Magneto for...reasons?  Okay, maybe not...

Weaver: You could do Deathstroke/Sentinels and it would make sense.  I would buy that issue immediately.  Who am I kidding, I bought this issue immediately too.

The epic parts were the worst parts...well, some of them.  Anything that had to do with the source wall looked beautiful, but felt like a major snooze fest.  And yet, Darkseid shooting the Phoenix beam into the Earth’s core was pretty much a perfect last minute fight for the safety of the universe moment.  I felt like everything involving prison rock could have been better executed without having a prison rock, just do it in a volcano or something and you don’t need to squeeze in the Metron chair.  Because if you’re emulating Bond villains like Darkseid was, you should have a volcano lair.

I felt that the Central Park crowd above the final battle was a misstep too.  Okay, it let Xavier get all “kill em all and let god sort them out”...er, needs of the many/needs of the few.  And it let the Phoenix fireworks be noticed by people.  But beyond that, the story would be better without them...and in a volcano.  But a different volcano from prison volcano.

Maillaro:  Yeah, it definitely seemed like they were trying to go for a light and satisfying ending...which is a little hard after everything the characters had gone through at that point.   Instead of “happily ever after” we got “fireworks in Central Park.”  I can almost imagine the shellshocked heroes just staring blankly at them…

Like Batman/TMNT, there was a lot I liked here, but also a lot I think they could have done a little better.   Part of me would have loved to see what George Perez and Marv Wolfman could have done with these characters.  Almost a response to this.  They did that with Batman/Spawn and Punisher/Batman with Marvel and DC each doing their own “version” and I thought that was a really cool way to do things.

But for the book we got, I will go a 3.5 for the story, and a 3.5 for the art.  Simonson is cool, but I’ve always preferred his writing to his art.  I did like the introduction where Claremont and the Simonsons came up with this story around the dinner table.

Weaver: I’m tempted to raise the story a bit, but there’s just too many little issues, and with judging Batman so harshly, I can’t do it.  I will give Simonson a 4 on the art just to be contrary, though.  I generally liked the art.

Maillaro: Next week...our last column of the year!  There is only one new series that jumps out at me: the new Squadron Supreme series by James Robinson.

Weaver: I’m all for that.  You know, I never read the more recent Hyperion focused series...Supreme Power may have been the title.  Want to trot that out?

Maillaro: Wow, JMS in the house!  I was going to say I hadn’t read anything by him in a while, but that’s a lie.  He writes Image’s Dream Police.  Yeah, I am good with that.  A pair of Squadron Supremes for next week.  Which is ironic, since when we planned on bringing this column back about a year ago now, we were going to do the original Squadron Supreme...which we never got around to…

Weaver: Permanently on our to do list.  It will keep us going forever.

Maillaro: Maybe after we’re old, retired, and the kids have moved out...

Final Scores