By Chris Tresson

The Batman and The Turtles... Another miniseries featuring these two franchises and a scary crossover for me, as I found the last one to be a complete and utter bag of wank. It was very disappointing to see two things I’ve loved since I was a child treated so badly. I’m hoping this miniseries will do these characters justice, because with characters like these, a crossover event between the two should be absolutely epic…

Before I get into the review, I just want to tell you about the covers. There are a shit ton of covers for this book, and I mean A SHIT TON. The review copy I got had all of them attached to it and it took me until page 26 of the PDF before I even got to the story I was supposed to be reviewing… Some poor little collector bastard is going to have to re-mortgage their house if they want all the covers for this series. I’m not a big fan of variant covers to be honest with you, but that’s just comics these days.

Set in the animated universe of both the Turtles and Batman (and drawn in the same style), this book sees Batman’s rogue gallery escape from Arkham Asylum and make their way into the sewers of New York City. The opening to the book is quite fun but the majority of the humour here fell kind of flat for me. It works well within the book and totally fits the animated universe; I just didn’t find a lot of the dialogue funny… I must just be getting old or something. I think my kid would love it, though, if he could read that is. The story moved a bit too slowly for my liking, it was nice to see some of Batman’s rogues out and about and it wasn’t a bad read but it was slower than I’d’ve liked for a first issue. I’m not sure how many issues this miniseries will run for but I’m hoping it picks up in the next issue.

Art-wise... I do love the art in this. Jon Sommariva has done an excellent job of replicating both worlds on the page. There are some lovely panels and overall, it’s drawn consistently well throughout. Leonardo Ito has also done an amazing job with the coloring. It’s bright and vivid when it needs to be and it looks really, really nice. I especially like his lighting and the red sky he did over Arkham. Very nice job from the art team.

Not a bad first outing for this creative team but I was hoping for a bit more than what I got. Whether it’ll get any better remains to be seen, but it’s done enough that I want to find out. I think fans of the cartoons will love it and your kids will love it, it’s got a lot of appeal to a lot of different groups of people. Plus, it already seems like it’s going to be a shit load better than that wanky miniseries we got last time. Pick it up, find out for yourself.

Score: 3/5

Batman/TMNT Adventures #1
Writer: Matthew K. Manning
Artist: Jon Sommariva
Colorist: Leonardo Ito
Publisher: IDW Publishing/DC Comics