Notes From the Underground (Part 3) wraps up the story arc in a way that… I’m pretty sure means it’s going to be revisited later. As we pick up, the turtles and their buddies l, three sapient monsters, were trapped in an underground city with a horde of considerably less sane and peaceful monsters attacking them.
Luckily a bunch of glowing spheres come shooting out of nowhere courtesy of… some robed wizard guy who kind of looks like Uatu the Watcher, and the attacking monsters, most of the nice monsters, and also Donny, get disappeared by them before running off.
The Turtles chase him to another, yet deeper, considerably more alien city while the wizard guy keeps appearing to Chuck more light globes at them, and the turtles have to avoid the pitfalls brought on by the fact that the alien necropolis is in a tremendous state of disrepair, and eventually Mikey is the only one left when he reaches the middle of the city and the wizard. Who explains that he and his people came to earth Eons ago, and hide deep underground while humanity evolved on the surface, and he’s the last survivor of his race. Furthermore; he found out that the Shredder stole his people’s power source and was using it to kidnap and mutate people into monsters for evil ends and decided to solve that problem with *yet more crystals* to mutate them back..
This all sounds good, but the wizard looks weird and creepy, and he also blurts out that no part of his plan involved letting either the turtles or the monsters go; the raw loneliness and despair of being the last of his race has driven him mad (like… just that second, he was pretty chill until anyone mentioned leaving the city), and a fight breaks out. The turtles wind up winning and the wizard gets frozen in the same machine he was healing the monsters with, just as the healing process finishes and the monsters are reverted to human (Quarry was a woman btw, it was a very Metroid revelation), and that’s great *but* it turns out that the healing crystals that unmutates them only work in the city so they’re stuck there anyway, and the only guy who can help make the changes permanent is frozen in a block of ice and also insane so… well… it beats being a mindless killing machine monster. And so the Turtles leave kind of unsatisfied with the way this all resolved, and less happy when they return to their lair only to find the sewers swarming with Foot Ninja looking for the turtles to avenge the Shredders apparent demise. So they Turtles and Splinter leave the sewers and force themselves on to Aprils hospitality by barging into her apartment and declaring that they live there now.
Which brings us to The King which is, of course, a full episode dedication to Jack Kirby; complete with a “Dedicated to Jack Kirby” opening cue card and might be one of the weirder episodes of this cartoon about nuclear turtle men who fight ninja crime. Donny is earning his keep, since the turtles don’t pay rent or have paying jobs, by doing home repairs in Aprils building (apparently she’s a landlord in addition to an antique dealer and Mad Scientist Assistant? She has a lot of side hustles) and in the course of fixing the water heater, he’s attacked by a Parademon, straight out of New Gods. This, as it turns out, was inadvertently created by Aprils tenant, a comic artist named Kirby, who found a glowing crystal and decided to tie it to his drawing pencil and was then only *kind of* surprised that it caused everything he drew to come to life.
It should be noted that Kirby isn’t remotely surprised to see the mutant turtle man in his bedroom because when you’re Jack Kirby, that’s kind of… low on the list of creative imagery.
Jack Kirby also casually mentions that he drew a Boomtube that leads to another dimension but never bothered investigating it farther since, you know… he wanted to draw more stuff not investigate the things he already drew, but with Donnys coaxing the two of them decide to pop their heads in, and find themselves in a Fourth World/Asgard mashup populated by monsters and warriors juuuuust different enough from Marvel and DC characters to avoid litigation; taken entirely from the sketches in Kirby’s sketchbook. A magical sci-fi cosmic fantasy world is, like, two degrees removed from how Donny lives his life anyway so he gets up to speed pretty quickly and joins the warriors in defending the city from the endless monster hordes (Kirby sheepishly admits he drew waaaaay too many monsters) and Kirby helps by whipping up more defenders and weapons to fight the monsters with, before wising up and just editing the existing drawings of monsters to make them less dangerous. Then the Boomtube starts collapsing because the living drawings don’t last forever and Donny manages to make it out of the Fourth World but Kirby elects to stay behind, passing on a sentiment that isn’t “Comic Will Break Your Heart” but offers a similar sentiment. And Donny goes off to be sad at losing his friend that he knew for, like, ten minutes and is now the creator god of a world of his own imagination.
Luckily a bunch of glowing spheres come shooting out of nowhere courtesy of… some robed wizard guy who kind of looks like Uatu the Watcher, and the attacking monsters, most of the nice monsters, and also Donny, get disappeared by them before running off.
The Turtles chase him to another, yet deeper, considerably more alien city while the wizard guy keeps appearing to Chuck more light globes at them, and the turtles have to avoid the pitfalls brought on by the fact that the alien necropolis is in a tremendous state of disrepair, and eventually Mikey is the only one left when he reaches the middle of the city and the wizard. Who explains that he and his people came to earth Eons ago, and hide deep underground while humanity evolved on the surface, and he’s the last survivor of his race. Furthermore; he found out that the Shredder stole his people’s power source and was using it to kidnap and mutate people into monsters for evil ends and decided to solve that problem with *yet more crystals* to mutate them back..
This all sounds good, but the wizard looks weird and creepy, and he also blurts out that no part of his plan involved letting either the turtles or the monsters go; the raw loneliness and despair of being the last of his race has driven him mad (like… just that second, he was pretty chill until anyone mentioned leaving the city), and a fight breaks out. The turtles wind up winning and the wizard gets frozen in the same machine he was healing the monsters with, just as the healing process finishes and the monsters are reverted to human (Quarry was a woman btw, it was a very Metroid revelation), and that’s great *but* it turns out that the healing crystals that unmutates them only work in the city so they’re stuck there anyway, and the only guy who can help make the changes permanent is frozen in a block of ice and also insane so… well… it beats being a mindless killing machine monster. And so the Turtles leave kind of unsatisfied with the way this all resolved, and less happy when they return to their lair only to find the sewers swarming with Foot Ninja looking for the turtles to avenge the Shredders apparent demise. So they Turtles and Splinter leave the sewers and force themselves on to Aprils hospitality by barging into her apartment and declaring that they live there now.
Which brings us to The King which is, of course, a full episode dedication to Jack Kirby; complete with a “Dedicated to Jack Kirby” opening cue card and might be one of the weirder episodes of this cartoon about nuclear turtle men who fight ninja crime. Donny is earning his keep, since the turtles don’t pay rent or have paying jobs, by doing home repairs in Aprils building (apparently she’s a landlord in addition to an antique dealer and Mad Scientist Assistant? She has a lot of side hustles) and in the course of fixing the water heater, he’s attacked by a Parademon, straight out of New Gods. This, as it turns out, was inadvertently created by Aprils tenant, a comic artist named Kirby, who found a glowing crystal and decided to tie it to his drawing pencil and was then only *kind of* surprised that it caused everything he drew to come to life.
It should be noted that Kirby isn’t remotely surprised to see the mutant turtle man in his bedroom because when you’re Jack Kirby, that’s kind of… low on the list of creative imagery.
Jack Kirby also casually mentions that he drew a Boomtube that leads to another dimension but never bothered investigating it farther since, you know… he wanted to draw more stuff not investigate the things he already drew, but with Donnys coaxing the two of them decide to pop their heads in, and find themselves in a Fourth World/Asgard mashup populated by monsters and warriors juuuuust different enough from Marvel and DC characters to avoid litigation; taken entirely from the sketches in Kirby’s sketchbook. A magical sci-fi cosmic fantasy world is, like, two degrees removed from how Donny lives his life anyway so he gets up to speed pretty quickly and joins the warriors in defending the city from the endless monster hordes (Kirby sheepishly admits he drew waaaaay too many monsters) and Kirby helps by whipping up more defenders and weapons to fight the monsters with, before wising up and just editing the existing drawings of monsters to make them less dangerous. Then the Boomtube starts collapsing because the living drawings don’t last forever and Donny manages to make it out of the Fourth World but Kirby elects to stay behind, passing on a sentiment that isn’t “Comic Will Break Your Heart” but offers a similar sentiment. And Donny goes off to be sad at losing his friend that he knew for, like, ten minutes and is now the creator god of a world of his own imagination.