- Written by Matthew K. Manning
- Art by Jon Sommariva
- Inks by Sean Parsons & Serge Lapointe
- Colours by Leonardo Ito
- Cover by Jon Sommariva
The Joker and Harley Quinn escape Arkham Asylum and make their way to the TMNT’s NYC where they meet none other than the Shredder! Meanwhile, will Batman, Robin, and Batgirl be able to form a truce with the Turtles?
Pickup your copy of ‘Batman-TMNT’ #2 at Comixology now!
After a really solid start (reviewed here) ‘Batman-TMNT’ #2 gets a little ahead of itself by overstuffing its pages with a huge number of new cast members.
Bringing in Robin; Batgirl, Shredder, Beebop, Rocksteady, April, Snakeweed and finally Poison Ivy there’s only small number of pages which don’t feature an introduction. Surprisingly it still kind of works. ‘Batman-TMNT’ is still very much an animated series, albeit in print form. For that very reason it’s able to handle such a huge cast in such a small space.
It’s fairly common place for series like this to become overstuffed whilst writers try to bring in as many moments of characters crossing over as possible.
Adding conflict to the story would have been difficult. Having Batman fending off four Turtles, April and the trio of Joker, Harley and Shredder teased in the first issue would have made this series very biased towards the ‘TMNT’ side of things. This way Batman, Robin and Batgirl are able to stand together against the Turtles until peace is made and we get a great moment of the seeing them all stood together ready to take on Snakeweed and Ivy.
Interestingly this issue marks one quarter of the entire series and we’ve yet to identify a full over-arching plot line. It will be interesting to see how this develops but for now this feels a little like fan service over great storytelling.
That being said I still love this series. Its visuals are a perfect mix of the 90s ‘Batman the Animated Series’ and Nickelodeon’s current ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ series. The two different styles seen to mesh together really well. Artist Jon Sommariva seems to have been the perfect choice to bring these two franchises together.
The only character who seems to suffer slightly in the translation is sadly Joker. His clothes look like ‘BTAS’ and his attitude is there but the face just isn’t quite right.
Verdict
‘Batman-TMNT’ #2 is a hefty issue with a lot of characters to contend with but fans of both the ‘BTAS’ and ‘TMNT’ franchises will get a real kick out of this.
3 stars
