Baxter Stockman
Story: Eric Burnham
Art: Andy Kuhn
Publisher: IDW
Baxter Stockman has never been a truly engaging character to me. In the 2003 Fox animated series, he actually seemed to have a purpose for the first time, which was to supply Shredder and the Foot Clan with weapons based technology. I liked that he was portrayed as an abused tormented evil genius, essentially a prisoner. When I say abused, I mean it. Every time one of his plans or pieces of equipment didn’t quite bring the results Shredder wanted, he lost an appendage until he was reduced to nothing more than a brain in a jar. Ouch. The IDW series seems to adopt this position, but for a new master.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m enjoying IDW’s current TMNT
series more than any other comic book out there. With this issue, it brings a
nice little subplot into the fold. Baxter has been recruited unwilling to
finish General Krang’s Technodrome,
which it plans to use to Terra-form planet earth so his nearly extinct species
can have a new world. Baxter discovers this will make Earth completely uninhabitable
for humans, this does not sit well for our evil genius. Evil he may be,
suicidal? Not so much.
In this issue of his very own, Baxter decides he will not
sit idly by as his planet is taken from him and made unfit for human life, could
we possibly be seeing a heroic turn? I don’t believe so. As this issue proves,
he has an evil plan of his own and knows exactly how to manipulate people. We
do get introduced to his newest creation, Flyborg,
which is a nice homage to the old 1987 cartoon Baxter Stockman. I can’t see Baxter becoming a major opposing force to Krang as much as Shredder is. But it
will be nice to see where they take this generally under developed character.
Note: there was also a fantastic little nod to the classic sci-fi movie “The Fly” at the end, that made me smile.
