Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Batman, Comics, entertainment, idw, tmnt

REPEAT: Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1

Published Wed, 09 Dec 2015 07:30:32 -0600

This article originally ran on the 24th November. It is re-run, as the comic is published today.

While everyone is obsessed about one upcoming Batman comic book, I wanted to look at a different one.

Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 is a game of chess. It's all about taking characters and placing them in different positions across the board, The Bat and The Croc, The Turtles and The Foot, The Shredder and The Splinter.

They bring their favourite tropes. The Bat Cave, Alfred and the Batmobile are all pieces to play, But then so is pizza. And so they are arranged around the comic, letting the reader step from one to the other, safe footholds as we try to work out what the hell is going on.

Because it may be commercial contrivance that has arranged for this comic book to exist, DC and IDW getting back into bed again after Star Trek/Green Lantern. But the creative team want this to make as much sense as possible.

Which is a interesting one. Turtles was created as a parody of Frank Miller's Daredevil and Ronin. It could be argued that Batman is currently a parody of Frank Miller's Batman, but that would be untrue. Can a Batman comic accept Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles within them without descending into a Batman Meets Scooby Doo-style nostalgia fest? Let's find out.

It's one of the reasons why the art from Freddie E Williams II is lush and rich, painted, creating a false sense of deep reality that tried to sell the Turtles being in Gotham, just another one of its monsters. James Tynion IV uses Killer Croc to bridge the distance between the two – for the Batman readers, if we'll buy Croc, we'll get closer to buying the Turtles. And even Shredder.

So we begin with them in shadows, a report, an urban myth maybe, from a potentially unreliable narrator. And a Bruce Wayne and Alfred who can only interpret these reports in terms that they would normally be comfortable with, the ninjas of the DC universe, and meta-humans…. and a group that has a plan.

We even get a nod to all the rumours that Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were to be not of this earth, as the Turtles step out of the shadows, eat some pizza and freak out the good, and ba, folk of Gotham.

Although we get the idea that there may be some interdimensional travel that might be joining these worlds together…

It's not at all relevant, but it's a nice detail, hand holding the reader, whatever their principal interest in seeing these two worlds smashed together, into accepting what's being presented to them.

That's right folks, we were about to get a definitive statement as to where Gotham is and it was snatched from our grasp.

And it's in conflict with Killer Cros that this mashup seems the most normal, the most acceptable, until, bam, the Turtles are a part of Gotham. Living in Croc's sewers, fighting the Foot Clan with Batman just getting in their way.

But just as the Turtles have appeared in a way to ease themselves into Batman's world, so the Batmobile itself has been transformed in a way to fit into the Turtles world.

That's a character in its own right, right? And that's when I realised that, thanks to Williams this isn't just Batman Meets Turtles but it's "What If Simon Bisley's Batman Met Simon Bisley's Turtles?"

This is a new way of seeing both characters together, by changing both of them into a common denominator that allows them to appear in the same comic together without someone saying "dude.."

Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 is published by DC Comics/IDW on 9th December

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