Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Street Fighter #3

Welcome back to TMNT vs. Street Fighter, last time, the whole tournament premise completely fell apart and Raph and Chun Li were kidnapped by the alliance of M Bison and Dr. Baxter Stockman, who plan to unlock the respective fighters’ latent psycho power and use them as batteries to power a doomsday weapon called The Psycho Bomb.

Upon learning who’s behind all this, Raph and Chun Li are naturally pissed at the sight of their respective enemies. Raph thinks this is low even for Stockman and Chun Li thinks that if anything, this isn’t low enough for Bison. Stockman is furious that Bison had a cop and a Ninja Turtle brought to their lair, still feeling that the best way for the plan to succeed is to keep the Turtles as far away from it as possible. Bison’s rather humorous response to Stockman is to bitch slap him across the face. While the two villains are fighting, Raph says they attack, but Chun Li suggests waiting until they know what the villains are planning. Oh, by the way, I got a pretty good laugh out of Raph asking if Psycho Power was anything like Turtle Power.

Back at the casino, our remaining heroes, alongside a helpful security guard, are trying to figure out where the bad guys were coming from, concluding that the Shadaloo goons came in through the delivery tunnels. At the same time, a straggler for the earlier attack is spotted fleeing the casino. Guile and Mikey go after the fleeing henchman while everyone else investigates the delivery tunnels.

Down in the tunnels, our heroes discover several shipments of Halo Soda, not especially out of the ordinary given that Halo Soda is the sponsor of the tournament. Ryu starts speaking in what seems like gibberish, leading Donnie to ask if he’s having a stroke, but what he’s actually doing is moving around the letters in Halo Soda and figuring out that it’s a perfect anagram of Shadaloo. Upon learning that they have once again entered a tournament that’s actually a front for Shadaloo, Ken is pissed and asks everyone why they can’t ever find a nice, well-organized international fighting tournament. Ken, trust me, speaking as someone who has played Street Fighter III, a game canonically set after the ultimate defeat of M Bison, enjoy Shadaloo while they last because Gill and the Illuminati are a MUCH bigger pain in the ass. Bison may be a hard boss, but at least he doesn’t regenerate a full bar of health when you defeat him. In any case, Leo rightfully deduces that if these are Shadaloo delivery tunnels, then following them will lead them right to the bad guys. As they venture through the tunnels, Ryu thinks that Leo seems troubled. Leo says he’s worried about Raph. The whole participate in a martial arts tournament to test their skills outside of life or death battles with mutants, ninjas or ninja mutants thing was Raph’s idea. He wanted to test himself against the world’s strongest fighters and see if he still was one. Ryu simply says, if Raph has been taken by who they think, he’s likely to get his wish.

Back at the villains lair, Bison and Stockman explain to their captives what Psycho Power is. Essentially, what it is is a dark presence vested in those who are fueled by anger and hate that can be harnessed into an organic fuel source. Being the hardcore Street Fighter fan that I am I can tell you that there’s a bit more to it than that, but that explanation still gets the point across. Raph denies that he’s angry enough to have this “Psycho power” contained within him, but Bison, Stockman and even Chun Li can tell he’s full of shit. Bison then reveals The Psycho Bomb, much to Chun Li’s horror. Bison insists he has no intention of actually using the device, unless the world’s powers fail to recognize him as their lord and master. Well, our heroes know the villain’s plan now, looks like it’s the opportune moment to strike as Raph and Chun Li both leap into action.

Meanwhile, Guile and Michelangelo have tracked the one stray goon to an amusement park. While they wait for the thug to come down from the Ferris wheel, Guile mentions that Mikey is a bit too silly to attract someone like Chun-Li. However, when Mikey climbs the Ferris wheel, worried that the bad guy may take a hostage or hurt himself jumping off, he demonstrates that he can be serious when the situation calls for it.

Back with the villains, Raph and Chun Li start fighting with Bison and Stockman, and despite their hands being bound in high tech cuffs, they manage to do alright for themselves, managing to run for it while the villains are arguing. While Guile and Mikey get caught up with the others on the location of the villains lair, Raph and Chun Li run for their lives from a swarm of henchmen. After arguing over who going to hold the goons off to buy who some time, Raph wins the argument and gets dogpiled by the bad guys while Chun Li gets away.

Elsewhere, one of the glass tubes containing one of the kidnapped fighters being used to power the Psycho Bomb is seen starting to crack. As Bison and Stockman continue to argue, Stockman recognizes a voice down the hall shouting “I Am Free," the sound of it causing his blood to run cold. Bison says that the voice belongs to one of his earliest captures and an extremely difficult one at that. And so our comic ends with The Shredder emerging from the broken tube.

Let’s start with the positives. The character back and forth in this comic was excellent, from Raph and Bison, to Mikey and Guile to Ryu, Ken, Leo and the others. Also, the promise of Shredder in the next issue is a great hook for the reader, especially for yours truly since Shredder vs. Bison is one of my fictional dream matches. However, I feel I need to address the problem that’s been plaguing this story since issue two, that being, its inability to commit to its premise. As I said when we discussed issue one, the idea of a tournament featuring the cast of Street Fighter and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a really great idea, but I feel the book chose not to fully utilize that exciting premise to its fullest and instead chooses to pivot two thirds of the way through the second issue to a more generic “Heroes Must Stop a Supervillain before he unleashes a doomsday weapon. That sort of plot is fine in and of itself is perfectly fine, but it’s not what we were promised from the onset. I may have had a lot of criticism for the Street Fighter/GI Joe crossover I covered a few years ago, and I stand by everything I said, but at least that story committed to its tournament premise. For that matter, even the tournament itself feels a little bare bones. To demonstrate my point, across six main line games plus the Street Fighter Alpha and Final Fight series', the Street Fighter universe has a MASSIVE roster of unique and interesting characters, and so far we have seen exactly five of them. Mind you, these are arguably the five most popular characters in the franchise. Ryu is the series protagonist, Ken is Ryu’s best friend and the only other character who’s been playable in every game since the original 1987 arcade release. Chun Li is arguably the most recognizable female character in fighting games, Guile, in addition to being Ken’s brother-in-law, is a popular character in his own right, to the point where he was promoted to the role of main protagonist in the 1994 Street Fighter film and, like Chun Li, has a deep personal grudge against the game’s main antagonist and said antagonist, Bison, is the most easily recognizable villain in the series. If for whatever reason, the writers were limited in the number of SF characters they were allowed to use, then they definitely made the right choice. However, if no such limit exists, then, where’s Blanka? Where’s Zangief? Where’s Sakura, Dudley, Juri, Rasheed, Marisa, Dhalsim? Hell, to further illustrate how frustrating this all is, I will remind you that in the games, Bison’s two top subordinates are an angry Mike Tyson Clone and a Ninja Matador Serial Killer sporting a nasty set of Wolverine Claws, and yet, when Raph and Chun Li throw down with the villains in their lair, Chun Li has to fight Stockman!? Lame! By the way, Vega, the guy with the claws utilizes the same type of weapon as Jennika. Maybe that would make for a good fight, especially since we are now three issues in and Jennika still has yet to do anything to justify her inclusion in this story. Look, I’m by no means suggesting that this comic include every character from every Street Fighter game. The previously mentioned 1994 movie tried that and the result was a hot mess, a beautiful, glorious, so bad it’s good hot mess that I love unconditionally but a hot mess all the same. If you’ll all indulge me, I’d like to present this little rewrite. Keep the tournament premise, but this time, don’t discard that thread half way through issue two, but keep it going the whole way through. Bison and Stockman are still behind it all and their whole Psycho Bomb plot remains more or less the same. This time around however, make the tournament feel bigger. Obviously keep the focus on the Turtles and the main group of Street Fighters, but expand the tournament to include several popular characters from the Street Fighter series and pit them against our heroes in the early rounds. While we’re at it, sprinkle a few TMNT mainstays into the mix like Casey Jones and such. We can still have Bison and Stockman systematically abducting the fighters, but now, said fighters are characters fans of the two franchises are familiar with, raising both the stakes and the level of investment from the reader. Maybe have Chun Li and Michelangelo get knocked out of the tournament early and together, alongside April O’Neil, they investigate the disappearances, giving us a nice little B story where we can fit the “Mikey has a crush on Chun Li” subplot. The fight between Leonardo and Ryu being in round one was a mistake. That’s the match that should be the grand finale, the one that you want to spend the bulk of the series building to. Build a rivalry between Ryu and Leo, one based on mutual respect and love of fighting. Then, when the two are about to face off, that’s when Bison appears on TV and threatens the world with his Psycho Bomb. Then, Ryu and Leo agree to put their fight on hold and rally the remaining fighters to storm Bison’s lair and its Ryu and Leo who have to fight Bison as a tag team. Or, better yet, have The Shredder, now imbued with Psycho Power, escape his confinement and take out Bison before our heroes can reach him and now he’s the big bad. This would not only be awesome, but it would also be a nice nod to how, if your score is high enough in Street Fighter II, Akuma shows up, kicks Bison’s ass and replaces him as the final boss. Keep in mind, there’s still a few issues left in this sucker, so maybe it could turn things around, but as it stands, this comic just isn’t living up to its potential. These writers have two huge, expansive worlds populated by interesting and diverse characters to play around in and they’re just not taking advantage of that. As I said, maybe things will turn around in issue four, but my current assessment is that this crossover is not all it should be.