Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #48

Written by Tom Waltz
Art by Cory Smith
With Colors by Ronda Pattison and Letters by Shawn Lee

It’s nonstop action in Turtle-town this week, and while I usually attribute the success of these issues to Mateus Santolouco, Cory Smith is the one drawing issue #48. He brings his best to the proceedings, selling every car-flip, robot-shred, and weapon swing with aplomb. It’s all the mayhem a fan could ask for, as nearly every TMNT cast member engages in the melees, with promise of more to come.

The turtles themselves get the bulk of the focus, as they flee from Baxter Stockman’s army of fly-borgs and mousers, fighting all the way. It’s a purely reactionary story, but it’s fittingly full of personality. Leo takes charge, Mikey tries to keep up and Robot Donatello is once again two steps ahead, more concerned with Splinter’s safety than his own. It’s the most selfless and assured the Turtles have appeared in a while. They’ve really been through it all at this point, and the confident faces they display against overwhelming odds are fitting given the upcoming finale. They’ve grown a lot as characters over the course of this series, and what we have now are terrapins maximum, seemingly ready for anything, which is good, because the odds are not in their favor.

Tom Waltz keeps it exciting by knowing when to stay with a character and when to pull away. Shredder, Kitsune, Hun, and even the Mutanimals all make appearances, however brief, and they all leave us with questions. Waltz never gives us time to gauge those questions, moving from death-defying scene to death-defying scene, meeting the characters at just the right time. He takes the theory of starting a story as deep into the middle as possible and really runs with it. It’s a repetitive issue with nonstop fights and chases, but at only 22 pages, it never becomes overbearing.

In these final months, TMNT has become an ever-increasing snowball of action and plot, and the funnest ride in comics today. Rock on, turtles, rock on!