#tmht baxter stockman

[bambiraptorx]

[I.D. Two panel comic of April and Mikey from an original iteration. Mikey has a rather snake-like head and stripes around his eyes that form vague heart shapes, and similar markings on his shoulders and thighs. April is a Black girl with a keloid scar on her lip and her hair braided back into an Afro, wearing a fluffy sweater and a skirt.

In the first panel, Mikey leans against the back of a sofa as April sits on it, looking at her phone. He asks "Hey April? what happens if I flush a tampon?" She replies "Bad idea, Mikes. Those things are designed to absorb liquid. It'll mess up the plumbing big time." In the second panel, Mikey leans backwards, a nervous smile on his face. He says "And, ahaha, what if I already did...?" April glares at him and yells "Mikey!" End I.D.]

Mikey thought it was gonna be like mentos and coke or something he didn't know it wouldn't be exciting and would cause property damage he's sorryyyyy

bonus:

[I.D. Simplified sketch of April calling her dad, the drawing of him separated from hers by a jagged line. She looks annoyed as she calls, and says "Dad one of my idiot friends flushed a tampon. Should I kill him." Behind her, Mikey smiles nervously with several sweat drops around him. Next to April is a note that reads "not serious but wants to make Mikey squirm". On the other side of the page, Baxter Stockman answers the phone. He is standing above a blueprint of a fly-like robot and clicking a pen. He grins and says "Just don't get blood on the walls. The landlord would be pissed." End I.D.]

[rapidkirby3000]

😂👍

[turtlethon]

“Enter: The Fly”

First US Airdate: November 12, 1988 First UK Airdate (TMHT): February 14, 1990

An accident causes Baxter Stockman to become a half-man, half-fly mutant.

We’re halfway through the second season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it’s time to mix things up in a major way. This is the third episode credited to Michael Reeves, who shares billing with the debuting Brynne Stephens.

We open with the Turtles on the lookout for Shredder and Baxter, who are on the roof of the World Trade Center. Not the first time we’ve seen the twin towers represented in TMNT but it’s worth noting that this time they’re given their correct real-world name – when they appeared last season in “Hot-Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X” they were called the Global Trade Center.

In this case Shredder and Baxter are attempting to power up a forcefield generator between the two towers. After it malfunctions Stockman gets chewed out again, and upon seeing that the Turtles are pursuing them the villains quickly make their exit.

The Turtles return to the lair. They’re determined to get to the bottom of what happened at the World Trade Center. (Insert your own truther joke here.)

Shredder and Baxter are standing on a fly-ridden refuse barge at Krang’s insistence when they phone home to Dimension X. After explaining that Baxter’s experiment failed, Shredder pleads with Krang to send him further assistance in the shape of Rocksteady and Bebop. Krang agrees, on the condition that someone is sent back in return to maintain the currently delicate dimensional balance.

Without warning, Shredder hurls Baxter into the opened portal, a fly following him in. Bebop & Rocksteady are thrilled at the prospect of returning to Earth, but Shredder is insistent that it wasn’t done out of kindness. He explains that his next plan will involve striking at the Turtles via April.

At Channel 6, a messenger delivers a plant to April. Assuming it’s from the Turtles, she visits the lair with the intention of telling them she only likes them as friends. With the Turtles away she instead encounters Splinter, who flips out upon seeing that she’s holding A DOKU PLANT?! Almost immediately after discovering that this rare specimen can be deadly to anyone who inhales the blossoms, she collapses in his arms.

In Dimension X, perhaps the darkest and most horrifying scene in the series so far unfolds. Baxter howls for mercy from Krang as he’s dragged away by Rock Soldiers, insisting that he’s a scientist and can still be useful. Krang is entirely nonplussed by this. He retorts that he’s a scientist too, and has no need for the assistance of “a measly Earth creature”.

Krang orders that Baxter be thrown into the Disintegrator Unit.

To re-iterate: Krang just ordered that Baxter Stockman be executed by way of total disintegration. That is, by some distance, the most unsettling thing to happen in this series so far.

Baxter doesn’t actually get disintegrated, but his fate is still gruesome. A fly makes it into the chamber with him and a fusion occurs, transforming him into a half-human, half-insect mutant. This sequence is masterfully done, just hinting at what Baxter has become, although when he emerges from the chamber in his new form the establishing shot of him lacks the gravitas that I feel it really deserves.

An enraged Baxter grabs a gun, fighting off both Krang and a pair of Rock Soldiers before jumping back through the portal to Earth. Presumably the dimensional balance isn’t so delicate now, though in his deranged state Baxter probably doesn’t know that.

Back in the lair the Turtles return to discover Splinter tending to an unconscious April. He explains that they will need to locate a Gazai plant in order for him to create an antidote, and the team immediately march into action.

The Turtles are on their way when they encounter Baxter in his new mutated form, who opens fire on them. Not knowing that the fly is Stockman, they retreat to the sewers and plan their next steps. During this sequence the animation switches to the quirkier style we saw in “The Mean Machines”, with the same googly-eyed Turtles and detailed environments. I particularly appreciate the shot from behind of the team racing through the sewer, which is so nice that it’s used to book-end both the beginning and end of the scene.

Above ground, Rocksteady and Bebop open fire on Baxter, who says he doesn’t understand why Shredder is attacking him. Shredder retorts that he doesn’t understand why Baxter is attacking him, and that he thought they were friends. This is a hell of a thing for Shredder of all people to say after everything we’ve seen so far over the course of this season. Shredder somehow manages to convince Baxter that it was the Turtles who threw him into the portal, and his mind is so frazzled that he believes all of this. Baxter heads off to get revenge on our heroes.

The Turtles visit a conservatory where they find what’s said to be the only Gazai plant in the western hemisphere, but as soon as they’re out in the open Baxter spots them. Meanwhile in a nearby location, Shredder tests out what we’re told was one of Baxter’s final inventions before The Incident, a spider-like robot that ties up Rocksteady. Shredder names it in honour of his mutant henchman by dubbing it the Knucklehead. This will be one of two new toys from the Playmates line to debut in this episode (three if you count Baxter’s new form), although it’s smaller here than it’ll be in future appearances.

Shredder uses Baxter’s location to track down the Turtles in a cheese van, possibly suggesting that he’s still operating out of “H. Cheese Co.” from “The Incredible Shrinking Turtles". After briefly losing his trousers for a couple of seconds, he unleashes the Knucklehead, which captures Donatello, seen here sporting Raph’s colours. The other Turtles intervene to rescue him and the team make their escape via the blimp, only for Baxter to open fire. With the glider disconnected from the balloon, the Turtles begin to make their descent as we head into a commercial break.

The Turtles make their way back up and catch on to the blimp only for Shredder’s goons to open fire on it once more. When Leonardo makes the decision to deflate the balloon, Baxter is able to capture the Gazai plant and take it to a jubilant Shredder.

In the debut of another vehicle from the toy line, the Turtles escape from the waning blimp with the use of their Turtle Trooper parachutes, even borrowing the “Geronimo!” cry from the packaging. Their high spirits aren’t on show when they return to the lair though, as they confirm to Splinter that they were unable to get the plant needed to save April.

Shredder hijacks the Turtlecom frequency (it’s silver/grey again, a recurring staple in season 2 episodes from A-1 Productions). He goads the Turtles into a showdown in a scrapyard, reminding them he’s still in possession of the Gazai plant.

In the junkyard, Shredder attempts to lure the Turtles into the forcefield generator that he had previously set up atop the World Trade Center, which will throw them into temporal displacement, leaving them perpetually out of time from the rest of the universe. His plans are foiled by the arrival of Splinter in the Turtle Van, who opens fire and disarms the villains. In the commotion, Baxter instead gets trapped in the forcefield and vanishes.

Back in the lair, Splinter uses the Gazai leaves to create a potion that revives April. Michelangelo creates a foul-smelling Gazai topping in the now near-obligatory end-of-the-show pizza gag.

Michael Reaves has provided some of the best episodes of this season thus far (“The Mean Machines” being a surprise highlight during the Eye of Sarnath arc) and this one is of a similarly high standard. Brynne Stephens – later Chandler – receives her first TMNT writing credit here and will return twice more across this season and the next, each time working in conjunction with Reaves.

“Enter: The Fly” is a landmark episode, offloading Baxter in favour of Rocksteady and Bebop. This change brings us closer to what I consider the classic era of the series, where Shredder and the mutants, joined by Krang, become a comedic villainous family that steal the show from the Turtles.

[bambiraptorx]

[I.D. Digital doodle of an original iteration version of Baxter Stockman. He is a Black man with a medium length afro and a stubbly mustache and beard. He holds a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, using his shoulder and cheek to hold a phone. He is wearing a red t-shirt with a yellow cartoon cat with a creepy smile, jeans, and a dirty white lab coat tied around his waist. He raises one eyebrow and frowns as he talks to the person on the phone, only his side of the call represented.

He says "Yeah no, I'm not marking down the cost of our "Rent A Robo-Soldier" for you just because you want 500 units. ...Yeah I understand that it's gonna be expensive. I checked your off-shore accounts, you'll be fine. ...Oh, I'm not supposed to have access to those? All due respect, ma'am, but my job title is Evil Scientist. I can do what I want as long as--oh you're reporting me to my boss? To get me fired? Good luck with that. He's impossible to reach." End I.D.]

TMHT Stockman doodle yay! This guy may be a Certified Villain but sadly that does not exempt him from dealing with cranky customers 😔 And yes, his boss being referenced here is Krang. Krang sucks ass at answering phone calls.

[bambiraptorx]

[I.D. Sketch page in blue of an original iteration version of Baxter Stockman, a Black man with a medium length afro and a thin mustache. The first page shows a profile with a neutral expression, a 3/4 angle looking to the right nervously, and a 3/4 angle face left and raising his eyebrow quizzically. In the third drawing, he also has a stubbly beard, which is in the rest of the sketches. Below those three is a drawing of Stockman holding a cellphone up to his ear with an exasperated smile. He says "You want what built by Tuesday? Ha. Funny. That's a three week project at least."]

Some rough sketches of my iteration's Baxter Stockman from me figuring out his design

[bambiraptorx]

thinking about putting STEM au Stockman and my iteration Stockman into a room together to see what happens (can't draw this yet because I don't have my iteration Stockman actually designed rn) but it would be highly entertaining. They have a conversation about how they're both functionally evil scientists and how that looks different for them based on how their universes and all of that gets derailed immediately when iteration Stockman offhandedly mentions that he's a single dad

[bambiraptorx]

So there's a couple options I have for this which is basically if the whole "supers partnering with TV stations" thing is official or not. If its an unofficial, under the table sort of agreement, then it's probably facilitated by a system of bribes and information exchanging, sort of a "tell us where to station our camera crew for good views and we'll help fund your Evil Scheme/your thwarting the Evil Scheme" sort of deal. In that situation, news stations (or wealthy news moguls) are probably subtly facilitating superhero/villain conflict in the interest of creating profitable stories.

It's probably generally agreed on that the press are neutral parties in conflict (because hey, they're paying for both of our fancy spandex suits) so targeting/threatening them would be generally off-limits. I could see an informal honor code developing, where protecting reporters during fights becomes something of an implicit expectation--to the point where people may be willing to stop fighting entirely if the reporter or camera crew gets hurt. This could also develop into a situation where the reporters/news stations have some level of power over when and where fights actually happen, maybe there's a bargaining system in place or something to hash out those details.

However it being an official thing is also interesting, and where I'm currently leaning. Because that can have all of the above, but it's done in the open. There's rules to the game, official ones now, and as long as you play by them being a supervillain is just as acceptable (or at least necessary to the system) as being a superhero.

There's probably levels or rankings involved, like "if you're a class Bravo Superhero you can cause x amount of property damage and the government superhero fund or whatever will cover it" or "if you're a Supervillain of Y ranking you can commit up to four felonies a year". The higher the rank (hero or villain) the less people are allowed to fill it, and those spots are probably very closely vied for since higher ranks come with more permissions/freedoms. These ranks probably have a whole system going into them based on strength/powers, experience, etc, but I'd imagine popularity might very well be a direct factor.

There's vloggers who try to get in the way of super fights to get good footage (they're probably a grey area in terms of press protection rules tbh) and there's heroes and villains both who are bloggers and regularly film their encounters. There's probably a bunch of youtubers analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of supers on both sides, talking about their powers, theorizing about their lives, that kinda thing. Whatever people do with celebrities lol.

Also, because of the publicity/benefits that both heroes and villains get, sometimes people who don't initially meet the success they want in one field will switch to the other. This was actually the case with Stockman, he started out working with the EPF and switched over to the Foot Clan (assuming I go the route of "this stuff is done in the open"). I like the idea that there's a lot of complicated paperwork involved in making the switch official to dissuade people from doing it too often lol.

I'm on the fence about whether heroes are open about their 'secret identities' or not, but there's one webcomic (I Don't Want This Kind of Hero, i think) where villains actively avoided trying to find out heroes' identities and/or family members, largely because they realized that harming someone's family was a pretty solid way of getting them to break their moral code in favor of revenge. Or something like that it's been a hot sec since I read it, but anyway I think that would be fun to play with.

The turtles are probably very much in the public eye once they start actively fighting villains, partly because their whole color-coded siblings gimmick is fun/entertaining so they garner a large fanbase, and partly because they were genetically engineered to fight supervillains are very, very good at that job. It might be similar to the direction that people somethings take with Rise AUs where Big Mama raises a turtle and puts them in the Nexus, honestly, where they're also doing a lot of interviews and photoshoots and what-have-you.

thinking about how exactly stuff like superhero/supervillain fights work in universe, and I kinda wanna go goofy and say something like "yeah it gets classified as entertainment where different heroes or villains are tied to different news stations and let them know ahead of time when their fights are roughly scheduled to occur so that the station they're tied to can get the best footage" or something like that idk

[turtlethon]

“The Case of the Killer Pizzas”

First US Airdate: November 5, 1988 First UK Airdate (TMHT): February 7, 1990

Krang sends Shredder alien eggs from Dimension X that hatch into fearsome creatures.

With the Eye of Sarnath portion of season 2 done and dusted, the remainder of 1988’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episodes are self-contained fare, kicking off here with “The Case of the Killer Pizzas”. The writing credit for this episode goes to Douglas Booth, another eighties cartoon regular who provided us with several Transformers adventures, most notably the entirety of The Ultimate Doom trilogy in 1984.

Making their return in this one are Rocksteady and Bebop, seen here flanking Krang. At this point their role remains relatively minor, with both of them only getting a couple of bits of dialogue throughout. Krang is sending alien eggs through the dimensional portal to Shredder and... Baxter Stockman?

“Curse of the Evil Eye” saw Baxter finally break off from Shredder after one insult too many, and making a play to obtain the Eye of Sarnoth for himself. That episode ended with Shredder punching Baxter in the face before getting flushed away after the Eye exploded. Now not only is Shredder still around, but he’s patched things up with Baxter and we’re acting as if nothing ever happened.

Shredder and Baxter hit the town and intimidate a young man into giving them the flyers he’s handing out for an upcoming pizza bake-off. Shredder floods the sewers with the flyers to get the attention of the Turtles, but Splinter spots the tell-tale signs of his spiked gauntlets on the paper. The Turtles decide to attend the bake-off anyway to stop Shredder and pick up some pizza in the process.

The Turtles hide out in a back alley as the bake-off is held. Shredder is also lurking, seemingly hiding in an archway. Meanwhile Baxter volunteers to help announce the winners of some free pizzas that are being given away as prizes.

Actually, Shredder was somehow hiding behind a leaning tower model. After he emerges the Turtles end up battling him in a kitchen. By “battle”, I mean a lot of dough gets thrown around. Shredder comes out on the losing end, understandable given that the Turtles are in their natural element here.

Back at the bake-off, Baxter has placed the alien eggs on the pizzas and rigs the contest so that the Turtles are announced as the winners. But two of the contest prizes end up being used to fulfil deliveries and substitutes are provided as prizes for the Turtles instead. The third pizza – which does have one of the eggs placed in the box – is grudgingly provided by Michelangelo to April as a thank you.

Later, April and Irma re-heat the pizza in a microwave and a small red creature emerges. Irma faints at the sight of it, which gives April cover to contact the Turtles on what appears to be a 1980s cellphone.

The Turtles arrive and attempt to capture the creature, only for it to burn a hole through the wall and escape. They assume that it’s left the building, when in reality it’s climbed up into the roof above them.

Realising that the original pizzas that had been substituted must have also had these eggs placed on them, the Turtles spring into action to try and track them down. April and the Channel 6 news crew are on the trail. She’s accompanied today by Vernon and “Handsome Vernon”.

Dropping in via blimp, the Turtles confront two children. They attempt to warn them that they absolutely must not re-heat those pizzas.

I mean he’s got you there.

Needless to say, the kids ignore the Turtles and two more creatures emerge. April and her crew chase them through town, our heroes also in pursuit via the Turtle Blimp.

Meanwhile Irma discovers the first creature is still in the apartment. The alien forges a path from the laundry room down into the sewer system, with Irma following it. Soon everyone involved is in the sewers, where the three mini monsters submerge themselves in water and transform into enormous terrors.

Shredder and Baxter are also here, the latter wielding a device that he can use to control the monsters and have them attack the Turtles. Realising what the contraption does, Donatello knocks it out of Baxter’s hands into the water, meaning now the aliens are out of control and a threat to everyone. A tenuous alliance is briefly formed between Shredder, Baxter and the Turtles.

Ultimately the Turtles defeat the creatures by having them make contact with some severed electrical cables, and the resulting power surge causes them to revert to their egg forms. Shredder and Baxter soon make their exit.

In the mix also were Irma and the news crew, but mid-way through all this action April explains Irma fainted again and Vernon fled. That still leaves one person unaccounted for though: Handsome Vernon, who despite having appeared in at least four episodes now still doesn’t have a real name. Was he devoured by the killer pizza creatures or has he survived? I’ll keep you informed of any further developments.

In the lair, the Michelangelo has prepared more pizzas and some meatballs. The show ends by hinting that he may have mixed them up with the alien eggs and that the Turtles are about to have to go through this all over again, but that much is left to our imagination.

A-1 Productions again handle animation duties for this episode, and both in terms of looks and storyline it’s the kind of standard Turtles romp you might expect from this era, with an even greater than usual number of pizza gags and no shortage of slapstick. An average TMNT outing all-round.

Next time, the B-movie horror of season 2 continues as a major villain shake up takes place in “Enter the Fly”.

[turtlethon]

"Curse of the Evil Eye"

Season 2, Episode 5

First US Airdate: October 22, 1988 First UK Airdate (TMHT): January 31, 1990

Shredder joins the three segments of the Eye of Sarnath together to obtain unlimited power, but its abilities soon fall into unlikely hands.

We've reached the end of the Eye of Sarnath arc. This one is credited to Martin Pasko, whose work you may have seen across a wide variety of sitcoms and cartoons in the eighties and nineties including Batman: The Animated Series and TMNT rival Bucky O'Hare.

Dressed as construction workers, the Turtles are on the trail of the third segment of the Eye of Sarnath using a new "Sarnath-o-meter". Once again Shredder has the upper hand here though, both in terms of the finding the fragments and in the style stakes. Today Shreds is sporting a fetching yellow nautical getup.

Throughout this arc we've seen small hints that Baxter is unhappy at taking abuse from Shredder, and here it finally starts to come to a head. After being ordered to go get lunch, Stockman quietly hints that he's planning to have the last laugh.

We get a rare glimpse of Shredder without his helmet as he fuses the three fragments to it. Meanwhile the Turtles have tracked the crystals to the bad guy hideout, and spot Baxter leaving the premises on lunch duty.

Baxter has also spotted the Turtles though, and uses a ray gun to... zap the Turtles, disintegrating their disguises (but somehow not their standard attire?)

With their cover blown, the Turtles attract the attention of some dock workers, who are unusually antagonistic to the team and outright call them fugitives. Thinking there's likely a big reward for their capture, the workers begin hurling barrels at them and generally being antagonistic.

The Turtles fight back, and we get the unusual visual of Donatello taking out a regular person with a flying kick to the gut. Eventually the two workers are laid out and the Turtles tie them up in a fishing net.

With that distraction out of the way, the green team confront Shredder, but he can now use the power of the Eye to transform objects at will, which he demonstrates by turning Leonardo's swords into ice cream cones, and bringing the dragon on Baxter's take-out box to life.

While all this is happening, Baxter manages to swipe the Sarnath-o-meter. Leonardo and Michelangelo tangle with the dragon in mid-flight as Raphael and Donatello confront Shredder on the ground.

The dragon is pursued by a Channel 6 news van containing April, Vernon, and a new character, van driver and all-round nebbish Blodgett. When the crew leave the van to report on the dragon Blodgett drives off in fear, before managing to drive the vehicle off the end of a pier. If you're keeping track, you may have noticed this is the second episode in a row where one of the news vans was destroyed.

Vernon evidently has it in for Blodgett, and surprisingly also has the authority to fire him on the spot after the van is lost. While all this has been going on though Shredder managed to lose his helmet in the battle with the Turtles, causing the dragon to disappear. Blodgett finds the helmet and returns to his apartment.

Returning from the last episode are "Handsome Vernon" and "Pete Rose", though their appearances vary greatly in each of the few shots where they're seen. I will keep you informed if they pop up again.

Blodgett mopes at home and we're treated to the true MVP of this episode, his cat Mortimer. Encouraged by Mortimer (in a non-verbal fashion) to listen to the self-help audio book "How to Fix Your Messed-Up Life" by Walt Kubiak, Mortimer engages in some visualisation - while still wearing Shredder's helmet - Blodgett is able to create a huge automobile just by thinking about it.

The Turtles have to get new disguises while they scour the area for the lost Sarnath-o-meter. They adopt pizza delivery driver costumes, which of course leads to Michelangelo doing his usual schtick until Leo shuts him down. "No, fuck YOU."

Elsewhere, Shredder is belittling Baxter over and over and over until finally he's had enough and walks. Arguably the best thing he could have done here would be to just go start a new life in a new town, putting everything that's happened since he met Shredder behind him, but Baxter is still a villain and seeks power for himself. He uses the Sarnath-o-meter - which Shredder wouldn't even listen to him talk about - and goes off to find the helmet on his own.

Baxter tracks down Blodgett and it's time for a good old-fashioned nerd-off. It doesn't take a lot of effort to defeat Blodgett of course, and soon Baxter is leaving sporting Shredder's helmet. He then throws the Sarnath-o-meter away, which will simultaneously prove to be a very wise and very foolish decision.

The Turtles are scouring the city streets for the Sarnath-o-meter in the most baffling manner. I don't know what this is supposed to accomplish as it’s not like it fell between the cracks of the pavement. They're soon distracted though, by the appearance of a Taj Mahal-like building Baxter has created for himself. When the Turtles intervene, Baxter creates a blob monster to take care of them, followed by an electric monster that resembles a super-sized Kremzeek from Transformers.

Meanwhile, Blodgett has found the Sarnath-o-meter and tracked Baxter down. With the Turtles briefly indisposed, the other three fight over the helmet. Once again Blodgett is quickly dealt with, and Shredder just straight up punches Baxter in the face to lay him out. The show tries to cushion this a bit by adding a comedy "bop" sound effect, but GEEZ.

Shredder traps the Turtles in a plastic bubble that begins shrinking around them, generates a magic carpet, and flies off, T-posing to assert his dominance the whole while. April and Splinter arrive on the scene though, and free them. Blodgett also gets to rescue April from some debris that almost falls on her, so he can have some semblance of a redemption arc before he's written out of the series.

The Turtles very briefly take on some giant rock monsters generated by Shredder before facing him in a final showdown. Donatello soon realises that Shredder is in possession of both the Eye of Sarnath and the tracker, which is in fact intended to destroy the artefact so no-one can use it. The Turtles attempt to warn Shredder that they're about to explode, and he hurls them into the water. The resulting blast almost knocks everyone off the bridge.

Take it as a given that Shredder's alive, given that we're only five episodes into season two. Will his supposed demise even be referenced next episode, or will he just show up like nothing ever happened? (You've gotta keep reading Turtlethon to see how this season plays out...)

Back at Blodgett's apartment, there's a resolution info dump required to wrap everything up nicely. April explains that she was able to convince Burne to re-hire Blodgett. Somebody was well aware that this would make for dull television, so their conversation is heard over scenes of Raphael channel surfing. In order, we get glimpses of the following:

1) Some Smurf lookalikes

2) Alvin & The Chipmunks if they were mice. The main one has an "M" instead of an "A", so Melvin & The Mice, perhaps?

3) Most bizarrely of all, what appears to be a GI Joe or Rambo / Ninja Turtles hybrid. Raph and Don are REALLY into this one. This whole sequence seems to be another Walt Kubiak in-joke, as he had been a producer on Smurfs, Alvin and the Rambo cartoon prior to taking on that role for TMNT.

Blodgett offers to take April and the Turtles out for a fancy meal to celebrate his re-hiring, until April adds that the cost of replacing the van will come out of his salary. He then suggests they order pizza instead and as you might expect, the Turtles are much more receptive to this. It does raise some questions about whether Burne expected April to take the hit for the van that got destroyed on her watch in the previous episode though.

"Curse of the Evil Eye" is another A-1 Productions episode, but curiously is a lot more even and consistent than "The Mean Machines", with none of the quirky characters or errors seen in that outing. There's some enjoyment here in seeing the Shredder/Baxter friction come to a head, and just to finally reach the finish line of the Sarnath storyline. The late introduction of Blodgett in the Macguffin hunt bogs things down somewhat, as he's not particularly likeable or entertaining. Don’t worry though, he won't return, ever.

That also means no more Mortimer though. Dang.

Martin Pasko will contribute another story in season 4, by which time TMNT will very much have found its groove. The next couple of episodes will gradually start moving the pieces into place to get us there, beginning with the return of Rocksteady & Bebop after a lengthy absence in "The Case of the Killer Pizzas".

[bambiraptorx]

The fic in question! It's a oneshot based on a dream I had a few days back that inspired me to start working on my iteration lol.

Summary: Baxter Stockman needs to talk to his boss, and if it has to be in a fancy restaurant for some reason, so be it. Doesn't mean he has to like it. It's just gonna be a normal conversation, right?

(Warning there is cannibalism in this one)

naming fics is so hard and for what

[bambiraptorx]

Unfortunately neither "Krang is human" nor "Stockman is Krang" is exactly what's going on here, although those would be banger ideas honestly.

Basically, Krang is an alien lifeform that spends a lot of time masquerading as a human, similar to 2003 Shredder. The difference is that while Shredder's disguise is a humanoid exosuit, Krang is a shapeshifter. Its 'true form' (not a term that truly applies to it since it can take any form it wants) is sort of like the googlyschmootz from Rise, where it's basically a vaguely human-shaped goopy thing that can adjust its shape as needed. Except since its pinkish it can do a pretty convincing facsimile of a human lol.

So it's in a bit of a grey area where Krang isn't really a human, but spends a lot of time and energy looking and acting like one. And also eats people. Technically not cannibalism in the sense the victims and perpetrator are not the same species, but like, functionally, it's pretty much cannibalism in my opinion lol.

The cannibalism also has a whole convoluted backstory about why Krang does that. Basically they were cursed not to be able to eat unless fed by someone else (full disclosure this part came from a nightmare I had two days ago so if it's nonsensical that would be why), but due to the wording of that curse eating people is actually not forbidden. It's basically the only way Krang can eat without having to rely on other people for it.

It's not actually a huge fan of having to rely on eating people (it tends to cause dissention in the ranks of the people you lead and really gets the authorities on your trail, among other things) but it also really does not like being at the mercy of others for survival. It tends to go hungry more often than not, which also tends to lead to it, shall we say, impulsively making poor decisions if it goes too long without food.

One way or another Stockman found out about Krang being an alien and being cursed, and kinda got roped into helping it out. And as it turns out, routinely having to be around a people-eating alien when it's hungry (and semi-regularly gets to the point of near starvation) puts you at risk for things like getting your hand bitten off.

Also I'm thinking the format of this iteration might be like a superhero universe? So there's superheroes, supervillains, organizations for both, the idea of people having powers is fairly normalized, that sort of thing. The Foot Clan, which Stockman and Krang are part of, is probably something of a supervillain league.

soooo I may have gotten a new project bug and it may or may not be an original tmnt iteration lol