Tag Trouble! is the comic in the thirty-third issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Appearing in Tag Trouble![]
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Synopsis[]
Down in the lair, Michelangelo is happily spray painting a large canvas. Donatello can’t believe that Splinter allowed him to paint in the lair because the last time he had spray paint, he used it as a pizza topping. Splinter tells him that his brother’s mind lacks focus and he has given Mikey an artistic exercise. It’s purpose it to concentrate his energies and block out distractions. It also has the advantage of keeping him from raiding the refrigerator and stealing all of Splinter’s cheesicles.
Splinter heads out of the lair, planning to be out for a few hours. Donatello then turns to Mikey and asks to see what he’s created so far. In a fake French accent, Mikey refuses to let him look, saying his masterpiece must be allowed to blossom in its own time.
Leonardo and Raphael return early from a patrol. Leo says that the Purple Dragons are up to something. They’ve been collecting crates from Shredder all week. The Turtles go out later to investigate, spying on the Purple Dragons and their warehouse from a rooftop. Behind the Turtles, on one wall, someone has painted a large multicolor dragon. Mikey complains about waiting around when he could be home painting. Raph agrees with Mikey, telling Leo they need to get down there and bust some heads.
Leo tells them to hold on and wait until he knows they’ve unloaded the last shipment of the night and that he has an accurate count of the Purple Dragons inside. Before they can move, Don stops them because he sees something unusual about the paint on Mikey’s shell. It has started moving, as though the chemicals are reacting to something. Mikey freaks out, hopping around and calling for his brothers to help.
Suddenly the graffiti dragon comes alive and chomps down on Michelangelo. His brothers rush the dragon, but it smacks them with its tail. Inside the dragon, Mikey urges his brothers to hurry and get him out. He is surrounded by swirls of color as he spins around and he thinks he’s going to hurl. Raph calls out to him not to worry; that they’re going to paint the town with the ‘overgrown lizard’.
The dragon turns on them and spits fire, but they attack, striking it with their weapons. It soon comes apart, splattering paint everywhere, and leaving Mikey lying in a pool of blue paint. His brothers help Mikey get up and Raph urges them to get on with their mission, glad that the Purple Dragons didn’t notice their little misadventure on the roof.
In the warehouse, Sid walks over to Fong and tells him that he’s finished painting dragons out back like he was told. He asks what the deal is with the redecorating and Fong asks if he wasn’t listening to what Stockman-Fly said. The spray they are using is nano-bot spray paint. It’s full of microscopic robots, so whatever you paint comes to life when it detects an intruder – which for them means the Turtles.
Just outside, the Turtles have heard every word. Don begins an analysis of the instability of the molecular composition required, but Raph cuts him off. They hear Fong say that Shredder wants the graffiti dragons all over the city by the end of the week and they will be in trouble if he finds out they lost a crate of the spray paint when it fell off their truck on Berkeley Street.
Mikey realizes that Berkeley Street is where he found his spray paint. The Turtles enter the warehouse and attack, while Don points out that Mikey’s been using the same stuff as the Purple Dragons. Mikey wants to know if that’s bad. It doesn’t take long for the Turtles to take down the three gang members and then Leo remembers them saying something about having painted more dragons outside.
His answer arrives through the windows in the form of three large dragons. The Turtles start running through the warehouse and Leo tells the others to stay out of reach, but make the dragons use their flame attacks. The dragons fly after them, spitting flames every which way and catching the crates filled with spray paint on fire.
Leo leads his brothers towards the exit and he tells Don that this is where he gets to explain what happens when you set fire to cans of compressed air. Don says they are about to get a full demonstration as they flee the warehouse. Before the dragons can get out to chase them, all of the cans of paint explode – very colorfully.
The Purple Dragons realize that their entire shipment is gone and Sid wonders if Shredder will notice. Having made it to the alley, the Turtles find themselves confronted by another pair of dragons. Cornered, Leo tosses down a smoke bomb and the Turtles quickly vanish.
Returning to the lair, Leo tells his brothers to relax because the graffiti monsters have no idea where they went. They’ll stay guarding the warehouse until the Turtles return to hit them tomorrow. Don says not unless the graffiti dragons hit them first and points out the blue paint tracks Mikey is leaving as he walks into the lair.
The pair of graffiti dragons enter the lair and the Turtles race in different directions. They try to avoid the fire breath and Raph says they’re going to have to muscle their way out of the lair. Pinned to the floor by one of the dragons, Mikey calls to his brothers to check out his painting. A giant gorilla arm is reaching out of it as the thing Mikey has created crawls out. Leo calls it horrible, Don says it’s disgusting, but Raph thinks it’s kinda awesome.
Mikey calls his masterpiece Gorilla-Samurai-Octopus, which he dubs as either Goramtopus or Octorilla. It has gorilla arms, a giant samurai body, and an octopus for a head. Octorilla grabs and smashes one of the dragons, then uses its giant sword to slash the other in half.
Victorious, Octorilla squeals in glee and Mikey begs to be allowed to keep him. Don says that according to his calculations, now that the threat has been neutralized, Octorilla will return his original form, which means… Raph finishes by shouting for them to take cover. Just then, an alarmed Splinter returns to the lair, having heard screaming. At the moment, Octorilla explodes, spraying paint everywhere. Mikey looks up at Splinter and says that was his art project. Covered in paint, Splinter merely growls.