Batman & The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IDW/DC

For one brief moment, I held the amalgamation of my childhood in my hands. The Ninja Turtles and Batman team up for an epic take down of The Shredder? I was so excited I literally gasped as a work friend showed it to me, but that excitement was soon to be short lived. I should have seen it right away, but was too blinded by excitement. Why, you ask?

Because a team up of this caliber doesn't work!

Batman is serious,  no nonsense. There's a reason he's called "The Dark Knight" after all. If you take out the Adam West Batman of the sixties, he is all dark and brooding (actually, that would have been a better combo. That Batman met Scooby Doo once, and that actually turned out okay. Not much different here really).

Good job, Mikey. You're only supposed to be a ninja.

The Ninja Turtles? Well, they try to be dark and brooding (Raphael providing most of that drama on his own) but at the end of the day they're still pizza loving teenagers who just happen to be mutant turtles that also just happen to be ninjas. I don't care who you are, but looking at that on paper will never register as 'serious'. Also, their dad is a rat. Also also, two of their most popular reoccurring enemies are a talking rhino and purple haired pig. The most popular turtles adversary was turned into a walking version of the Iron Throne in the last "live" movie rendition of the series. This can't be taken seriously. You may like it, hell, if you're like me, you absolutely LOVE it, but - it is. Not. Serious.

Cue the plot real quick. The turtles are in Gotham.

Wait, what?

No, that's right. They're in Gotham, and they're stealing a piece of a device that essentially creates an interdimensional portal, much like the one that brought the turtles (and not too soon after we find, Shredder too) to Gotham to, of course, get back home. We learn this from a scientist who is retelling the story of the theft to Batman (apparently the turtles were stopping the Foot Clan from stealing said device, but then took it themselves, so our green guys didn't leave the best impression). Batman does what Batman does, which is say he'll fix it, and from there we go back to the turtles who are gushing about how different this world is from our own (hell it must be, you'd never get funding for scientific endeavors like that in our world).

Because this is a six issue miniseries, the kids meet up with Bats pretty quick, and predictably enough, they're owned. Hard. No one's hurt, but they're still pretty bummed about the whole thing, as teenagers often are when concerning these things.

Amusingly enough, Mikey and Leo are actually in pretty blown out awe of Batman, and Donatello was pretty smitten with the Batmobile upon first sight also. What's really odd about this is Raphael being the only person to really label Batman for what he really is: crazy. A man who studies martial arts and dresses up in a batsuit fighting crime? That's not normal! (One might press to ask Raph to look in a mirror at this point, but unlike Batman/Bruce Wayne, Raphael even makes the point in-story that neither he nor his brothers didn't exactly choose this life they live, which makes his assessment of the caped crusader all that more pointed and honest).

We soon discover that the turtles and splinter are going to revert back to their original forms if they either a) don't return home, or b) don't get more of the TCRI mutagen that made them what they were. The story is that because the mutagen doesn't exist (due to the lack of existence of certain chemical bonds or...some conclusive determination using comic book science) in this world, what binds them together is going to eventually break down. Ergo, the guys need to get home ASAP. Splinter, believing Batman can help, manages to track him down to his batcave and, after explaining the situation to Wayne, he agrees to help.

The turtles begin living with Batman in hopes of working together to stop their adversaries, but things don't go well. After a meltdown by Raph, Bruce Wayne reveals to Raphael why exactly he does what he does, and weird psuedo understanding is made between the two of them.  Eventually, they find that another portal has opened up and, low and behold, the Shredder is there working with Penguin for the exact same purposes. Cue Casey Jones, who was somehow broadcast a message that the turtles need more of the TCRI mutagen to slow their rapid return to their original forms. Casey arrives with the goods, but is thwarted by Shredder and beaten up and robbed of his cache. The turtles show up all too late to find that Shredder now has the mutagen, and, having now teamed up with Rhas-al-Ghul (because Penguin proved to be too incompetent) is taking the mutagen to Arkahm so as to infect the criminals there and make them super mutants.

Issue five is now out, but various heroclix purchases have offset my keeping up with the series at this moment, so depending on how this all ends, I'll be back with more news. At this point, my inner fan girl is obligated to see this through to the end no matter how badly my brain is trying to logic this series into the darkest recesses of my memory banks.