Honestly, I found the stand-alone issues (especially the ones not written by the main creative team) to be skippable and dull. I wanted to like the first issue where Casey is focusing on a crime in his hometown, but frankly I found the plot both confusing and slow moving at times. The most entertaining of the standalone issues was a time travel story where the main character and the turtles don't know which turtle is which, yes they look the same, but the Turtles (while holding their distinguishing weapon) get their own name wrong. The return to New York story attempts to get the ball role again, and it really feels like the book is back with the opening Raph and Leo fight, but I found that it rushed through some of the drama and the ending fight to be rather anti-climatic. I would have give a higher rating if the collection skipped the issues not part of the main narrative, but those and the empty feeling I had at the end left me rather disappointed in this volume after enjoying the first two.