Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vs Street Fighter #3 Review

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vs Street Fighter #3 Review

On the subject of video games, if you are of that certain age, then there is a very real possibility you will be a fan of Street Fighter, a tournament-style fighting game franchise which is done pretty much the same as The Turtles, though that last live-action movie was about the same level as the second TMNT film, The Secret Of The Ooze(the original second movie, not the new ones). So, hearing that there was a comic series from IDW that brings these two worlds together, it can only be a win, right?

To be honest, I’m a much bigger fan of the Turtles than Street Fighter. I’ve read quite a lot of the TMNT comics, from the original ongoing series to a few of the mini-series. If like me you’re a fan of the comics, then you’re probably going to think that they aren’t going to be able to outdo Last Ronan (NB: if you haven’t read the Last Ronan mini-series then you definitely need to sort your life out, it’s epic, or just wait for the game that they are currently producing based on that run.) And, well, you be right.

In TMNT Vs Street Fighter the turtles take a “vacation” so that Raphael can take part in a fighting competition made up of the best fighters on the planet to prove that he can still hold his own among them. Unsurprisingly most of these fighters are from the Street Fighter lineup. Also, unsurprisingly, everything goes to crap pretty quickly. Turns out that Baxter, the fly guy from TMNT, and M. Bison, the big boss from the Street Fighter games, have joined forces.

Now, bad guys from different franchises teaming up to be even bigger and badder might not be that shocking, and the fact that the pair have humongous dueling egos, is also not a shocker, even the fact that the pair got together for world domination will not make you gasp out loud, but maybe their chosen method will!

In the third book we see that the bad guys have kidnapped Raphael and Chun Li and the two good guys and bad guys are facing off in the standard exposition episode where the baddies tell the subdued goodies their plan in exquisite detail. It turns out that the bad guys are harvesting “Psycho Power”, the power that gives M. Bison and others their special powers when fighting, from fighters who rely on their anger as their strength.

While it is still a little unclear what Psycho Power actually is, it turns out they are harvesting this power from as many fighters as possible in order to create a “Psycho Bomb” (yes, really!). They will then use this bomb to hold all world leaders hostage so M. Bison can rule the world. Simple as that!

The one thing I was expecting from this book was puns and corny jokes, but even I was hoping that they would chill with them by halfway through. The story itself is quite simplistic, and nothing that we haven’t seen before. Let’s be honest though, the story isn’t the reason why people will pick up this book.

People will read this mini-series because they are a fan of both of these franchises and really want to see the characters interacting with each other. And I’ve got to say, even though I only read issue #3, all the characters are well-defined and individual, no mean feat when you’re dealing with so many different characters, and well-known characters as well.

The art is simple and very clear, but some of the panel layouts make the reading order a bit iffy in places, but It’s still understandable and doesn’t lose anything from it. There’s a little too much speech in some of the panels that is a little overbearing at times, but as I said, there are a hell of a lot of different characters in this book so there was no other choice.

Overall this is a fun read. This being issue three of five we can see it building to a big final dust up which will hopefully be as epic as we’d all want from a book featuring these characters. A fight that looks like it’ll be made all the more epic by the introduction of another big bad at the end of this book! It should definitely be worth having a look at.