This takes me back to when I was five, back when I lived my life by the way of the Ninja Turtle. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or TMNT as they seem to be known these days, are still fighting after a good twenty-five years. Things have changed, but not too drastically. The goofy play on words and plenty of bad jokes still highlight the dialogue, but there are a score of characters that seem new. But then, I haven't read a TMNT comic in about fifteen years, so I've missed a lot.

In this issue, a cosmic "stigmatifier" monitor goes off line in the dimension of Moo Mesa, a Old West type world inhabited by cowboys who happen to be cows. Not much of a stretch of the imagination, but it's meant for kids, so we'll give it a break. Glurin, some kind of alien that looks like a '60s flip wig with eyes, along with Raphael, Donatello, and Casey (I presume Casey Jones) all go to check out what's going down in Moo Mesa. The story definitely seems sillier then the older ones, and there are the usual differences from writer to writer, but it retains the spirit and that's what counts.

It's good to know that Mirage has maintained the Ninja Turtles property, and that at least Peter Laird still has his name on the comic of his brain child, which he co-created with Kevin Eastman. The art in some ways has remained true to the original comics where the only way to tell the turtles apart was by the weapons they carried, but it's much cleaner and streamlined. The comic has an American cartoon look to it, no anime influence which many reinvented cartoons have these days. The comic reminded me more of the cartoon shows then the older comics, especially the cartoon from the 1980s to 1990s era. Everyone is smiley and cute, and there's no hard violence or blood, so it's safe for the little kids. The writing has improved in these new comics; maybe Steve Murphy is better at story telling? Having gone back to read the original comics, the word flow is much more fluid in this new Ninja Turtles. It has a quicker pace to go along with the action happening in the panels, whereas in the 1980s comics the dialogue was choppy and seemed a little awkward in places.

While I haven't fallen in love with the new Ninja Turtles by reading this comic, I have to admit I enjoyed it, although it is obviously aimed at a much younger audience then the twenty-somethings who were around to see the birth of the Turtles. Where some franchises tend to fizzle when they reach the twenty-year mark, if they reach it at all, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has not only survived, but improved.

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