Burden's storyline involves a freak storm, lost expeditions, mysterious jungle creatures, ancient ruins and aliens which, yeah, taken altogether might sound rather weird, but are really positively run-of-the-mill for superhero comics, of which this essentially is. It is, quite surprisingly, a perfectly ordinary superhero comic, in which one of the title characters just happens to be wearing a huge burning carrot mask and flippers.
The often more gonzo Flaming Carrot sort of fades into the large cast here—he is but one of the half-dozen or so of Burden's Mysterymen who team up with the Turtles—and he functions more-or-less like the comic relief. In perhaps his most out-there action, as his fellows gird themselves for an onslaught by the mysterious jungle creatures, the Carrot sets up a lemonade stand, complete with a wooden board for a sign and an asking price of a nickel, explaining to Michaelangelo that their opponents are probably thirsty.
Of course, because these are the Mysterymen, they almost all have an element of the weird or silly about them, even if Burden plays most of them perfectly straight, only Screwball vying with the Carrot for the comic relief role (Which he does mostly through donning silly costumes at a few points, although there is a brief appearance by his pet shoelace).
In a brief introduction on the inside cover of the first of the miniseries' fist issue, Mirage's Michael Dooley explains that this particular crossover was set in motion by Kevin Eastman years ago (Before 1991, when the Turtles appeared in Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics at Dark Horse one wonders, or was it around the same time...?) and that, at various points, the comic had been planned as a giant-sized annual, a two-part black-and-white miniseries and even a 150+ page epic before they settled on this final format, a full-color, four-part miniseries.
I wonder if any of that behind-the-scenes tinkering accounts for how relatively "normal" the comic ends up being, most of the expected silliness, toned-down as it may be, coming in the first issue, and the rest of the adventure reading more-or-less like something one could find in a DC or Marvel comic.
I also wonder if it explains the art credits at all. Mirage stalwart Jim Lawson draws all four covers and is credited with pencils and inks on the first two issues (even though it's abundantly clear about six pages worth of that second issue aren't actually drawn by him), while Neil Vokes draws the entirety of issues three and four (and those six pages in #2).
Meanwhile, Mary Kelleher provides the letters, and first Mary Wooding and then Eric Vincent the colors.
Before we look at the contents of the story, let's orient ourselves at where, exactly, we are in the grand scheme of things. The first issue was released in November of 1993, and the series was shipped monthly through February of 1994.
By that point, Turtlemania was in full swing, the cartoon show launching in 1987, the toy line in 1988, Archie Comics' ongoing Adventures series in 1989 (after a miniseries in '88) and the first two movies had unspooled in 1990 and 1991.
At Mirage, the original 62-issue 1984-1993 black-and-white series launched by Eastman and Laird had just concluded, and the first issue of what would end up being the short-lived, full-color volume two had just launched, the series now being written and pencilled by Lawson (Volume two, for those who haven't read it, was just collected by IDW this year as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Mirage Years (1993-1995)).
As for the Carrot, he was still appearing in his own erratically published Flaming Carrot Comics at Dark Horse (issue #30 had published in December of 1992, while #31 wouldn't be released until 1994).
When the story opens, narration boxes tell us that huge, devastating storms have wracked the Americas, and the Turtles are on some sort of relief mission with a U.S. military operative named Colonel Blade, who looks like a pretty generic army guy as Lawson draws him, save for the cavalry sword hanging by his side (Which Donatello will later get to use in battle).
They are riding in a blimp, but this doesn't seem to be the Turtle-branded blimp from the cartoon and toy line, just an ordinary blimp (As for where it came from, at one point Donatello calls it "spoils of war" from some previous, off-panel conflict with a "Mr. Cadaverous and his league of Blue Santas", which sounds rather Bob Burden-y).
As they are unloading aid in the fictional country of San Baloona, Blade is called into a meeting with an member of the American diplomatic staff, and then he and the Turtles get a new mission (Here, if the Turtles' existence isn't widely, publicly known, it's also not a complete secret, as Blade seems to have made their acquaintance somewhere earlier...remember, when it comes to the Mirage Turtles, it's often best not to think too much about continuity).
That mission? Apparently the storms and an attendant earthquake have revealed a bizarre ancient ruin, and the last few teams that were sent to explore it had disappeared. Now, Blade, the Turtles and a generic-looking scientist are going to investigate.
Meanwhile, back in the states, various Mysterymen are sitting around in their headquarters when they get a purple alert. They too are being assigned to investigate the site the various research teams that have gone missing, an assignment that comes via a man on a monitor they seem to know, who got it from the Pentagon.
There's a brief roll call in which most of the involved Mysterymen sound off and get a little sentence-or-two explanation—The Flaming Carrot, for example, is called "a simple minded Batman"—and then they all pile into their big, triangular plane "The Wing" and head for the jungle. (The Mysterymen involved here are, in addition to the Carrot and Screwball, Mister Furious, The Spleen, The Shoveler, Mystic Hand, Bondoman, Star Shark and The Zeke, if you're curious.)
In the jungle, the Turtle team has had their first encounter with what seems to have wiped out the earlier explorers, strange little humanoid creatures that resemble children on fire, only their flame is green rather than red. They are impervious to bullets—and there are a lot of bullets being fired in this story—and when Leonardo swings a sword at one, it is only temporarily cut in half, the top half plopping neatly back on the bottom half, the creature seemingly unaffected.
When the Mysterymen arrive at the beginning of the second issue, the Turtles fan out to receive the mysterious newcomers, and Burden actually honors the traditional superhero team-up ritual, wherein the various parties initially fight one another before discovering they are actually allies.
Here that means Raphael versus The Shoveler (who, for all intents and purposes, seems to just be a regular-looking middle-aged guy who happens to wield the legendary lost shovel of King Arthur) and Donatello versus The Mystic Hand (whose superpower is that his hands can leave his wrists to fly around under his mental command, as long as he can see them).
Despite Raph being an actual ninja, The Shoveler defeats him in their battle, but the fights don't go on too long, as Flaming Carrot eventually emerges from the jungle to set everyone straight: "Don't you guys recognize a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle when ya see one?!"
They then all come up with a plan to fight and defeat the little green flame men, creating a huge bonfire and using green flares to color it green, thus attracting swarms of them, which they then gun down (They are vulnerable to gunfire, it turns out, provided you hit the right through their "heart", a little blobby bit in the middle).
Vokes takes over art chores with about six pages left to go in the second issue and draws the rest of the series. His style differs quite drastically and notably from Lawson's, although in terms of design, the character who seems to change the most is Blade, who gets bigger and burlier, his eyes squinting and a big ever-present cigar appearing.
Shortly after the start of the third issue, most of the green fire guys are killed, our heroes turning fom guns to water as a weapon when they begin to get overwhelmed (and here the Carrot's lemonade does come in handy). One fire guy is captured alive and relates its story. Apparently, they maintain the mind of the victim they consume, and so this one has that of a U.S. soldier named Sykes.
Exploring the ruins of the newly revealed city, our heroes find buildings with no doors or windows, all built of some sort of strange plastic and, eventually, a giant wolfman in some sort of suspended animation tube, which they go ahead and release.
The wolfman is initially hostile, battling Mister Furious, until it notices they both wear Freemason rings and retreats for a bit. Meanwhile, Bondoman, Mystic Hand and The Spleen, guarding the Wing, are attacked by strange phantom-like creatures that spit some sort of freezing ray.
Ultimately, eventually, the wolfman gains the ability to speak—by consuming the captive green flame guy with Syke's mind in it—and he relates the origins of the city, which is basically a riff on the ancient aliens theory.
He was one of its inhabitants, all of whom came from a variety of races that dwell in the sun, and their civilization eventually fell to a civil war. The city was hidden and he was put in suspended animation, but now that the city is revealed it is beckoning some bad aliens, of which the phantoms with the freeze-spit are among, and so the wolfman decides to mechanically lower the city again, thus sparing Earth from invasion.
And that's it, a double-page splash centering around Blade, with the Turtles, Flaming Carrot and the Mysterymen all gathered around him ending the story.
All in all then, a few gags aside, it's pretty much a straight superhero story, and after Vokes spells Lawson, it even looks less like a weird indie effort than a traditional, if maybe slightly more cartoony, super-comic.
The tale's ordinariness is only accentuated when contrasted with the previous Burden written and drawn TMNT/FC crossover...or earlier Flaming Carrot comics.
For example, the Dark Horse-published Flaming Carrot Omnibus, wherein I so recently the first crossover, opened with 1984's Flaming Carrot Comics #1, which also featured the Carrot combatting alien invaders.
In that particular story, which was entitled "Road Hogs From Outer Space", the aliens were Martians, and they had come to Earth because long ago, before they had perfected space travel, an unscrupulous "shyster" among them had sold plots of land on Earth to his fellow Martians, the deeds for which were passed down generation to generation. After they invented space travel, these Martians came to Earth to claim that land their ancestors had bought.
These aliens could swim through the ground like humans could swim through water, they had ray guns that turn their victims' heads into balloons and they threatened to eat the feet of any human who didn't vacate their land. And, of course, they loved driving automobiles "with great enthusiasm" but had "no concept of traffic regulations." (Hence the title.)
The Carrot, fresh from the hobo encampment in which he was then living, manages to drive them off when he saunters into the alien city they have established on Earth, sat down with them and started talking. When he mentions the income tax, they take to their rockets and flee the Earth.
Perhaps that specific kind of crazy is kind of hard to maintain for too long...
Unlike so much of pre-IDW TMNT from Mirage, Image and Archie, this particular miniseries has never been collected. Based on its quality, I don't think that's necessarily a tragedy, but, had I not been around and paying enough attention to buy it upon its original release, I would certainly want to read it in trade now, out of curiosity, if nothing else.
Maybe IDW will manage to collect it along with the earlier Flaming Carrot crossover into a trade someday, though...
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