Warning! Spoilers ahead for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #115!
IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book series is putting the villains Tokka and Rahzar from the 1991 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze through a living hell. What's worse, IDW's rendition is making a major change to the characters that exacerbates their suffering.
In Secret of the Ooze, Shredder kidnaps the scientist who invented the film's eponymous ooze that originally mutated the turtles. The scientist then creates two creatures that would later be known as Tokka and Rahzar. While the scientist has no choice but to oblige, he alters the mutagen so that the mutated alligator snapping turtle and wolf have the intelligence of human infants.
In IDW's comic, Tokka and Rahzar are actually infants; they don't just have the intelligence of them. This is revealed when a mutant turtle named Lita Ford, who traveled back in time from the future, reveals that as Tokka and Rahzar are rampaging through Mutant Town in the present day, they are actually much bigger in her world once they grow up. Tokka and Rahzar are here in Mutant Town by accident. Kunai, a Foot Clan defector and former disciple of Shredder, had purchased the two mutated infants from Old Hob, the creator of Mutant Town, and began transporting them via helicopter. But while in flight, the infants break free, causing the helicopter to crash in Mutant Town, and Tokka and Rahzar run off into the night.
Also present on the helicopter are the villainous duo, Rocksteady and Bebop, who are tasked with apprehending Kunai's purchased cargo. Once they find Tokka and Rahzar, it doesn't take long before Rocksteady and Bebop realize that the task was going to be much more difficult than they had originally believed. So they resort to more drastic measures by brandishing a chainsaw and machine gun in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #115 by Sophie Campbell. The ensuing violence is quite gratuitous even for the series' darker tone, made all the more alarmingly disturbing by the fact that Tokka and Rahzar are actually infants and crying out for their mother as Rocksteady unleashes a wave of bullets on them and Bebop cuts into their strong mutant hides with his chainsaw. Michelangelo undoubtedly shares the same terrified and appalled expression as readers when he exclaims, "They're just babies! Bebop and Rocksteady're gonna kill them...!"
Tokka and Rahzar survive the attack, but the incident is just one of the many ways in which IDW Publishing has adopted a much more mature, darker tone than previous renditions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For example, Rocksteady almost killed Donatello earlier on in the series when he smashed Don's shell in with a sledgehammer. Another instance involved the mutant snapping turtle named Slash getting implanted with a bomb, forcing him to fly over a large body of water by the time he detonates, so the explosion won't kill his friends. What other horrors does IDW have in store for readers?