30 Years of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Friday will mark the release of the Michael Bay produced (although not directed) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle live-action movie.  This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Ninja Turtles themselves.  Granted, the team of heroes in the half-shell didn't enter mass consciousness until the 1987 animated series and accompanying toy line but their humble beginnings were in a simple, black and white comic that creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, self-published almost exclusively for sale at a local New Hampshire comic-con in the spring of 1984.

Many fans are lamenting what horrors Michael Bay and company will visit upon the Turtles.  Many details have leaked as to the various ways Bay is being unfaithful to the original concept but, there is an inherent problem with taking the Ninja Turtles this seriously:  they were never meant to be taken this seriously.  Many fans would be shocked at how dark that first, independently published comic was.  Perhaps this is where the myth of 'serious' Ninja Turtles comes from.  The problem is that it's not so much 'dark' as it is a 'parody of darkness'.
You see, the first issue of Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was intended as a send up of some of the most popular comics of the day:  they were Teenage because of Marv Wolfman and George Perez's popular New Teen Titans, Mutant because of Marvel's X-men and New Mutants and, finally, Ninja because of Frank Miller's Daredevil (which incorporated Ninjas in the form of a clan called The Hand and Daredevil's retconned sensei, Stick --- this is where we get The Foot and Splinter... get it? Get it?!?!). You'll also notice how the prose mimics Miller's own appropriation of the 'hard-boiled' aesthetic.

However, after the success of the first issue, the series quickly evolved to have a much lighter tone (albeit, still a far cry from the animated series).  In fact, while I, like every ten-year-old of the time, was introduced to the Turtles through the animated series and toy line, once I became more sophisticated (11 or 12), I learned about the original, independent comics. To this day, my favorite version of the Turtles remains the one in those first couple dozen independently published comics.  I owned a compilation that collected the first 10 or 11 issues of the series along with the individual turtle's 'micro-series' one-shots.  In fact, a couple of recent hardcover collections have collected those same issues (there is also a colorized version but I feel the art shines better in the original black and white).

Many fans might be shocked that, in these initial stories, there is a distinct lack of catchphrases such as "Cowabunga" and "Turtle Power" and the team's trademark love of pizza (I'm pretty sure they ate pizza at one point, just not exclusively). These were all the product of the cartoon and toy line's marketing department.  In addition, the early comics were black and white; the only color was on the covers where all four turtles wore red bandanas/masks.  Nevertheless, the series was a lot of fun with inter-dimensional space travel and a lot of Jack Kirby-esque action (the Donatello one-shot is an all-out tribute to Kirby).  In fact, the first live action TMNT movie from 1990 owes a great deal to the more terrestrial adventures of these early comics and it more closely resembles those than it does the super-silly cartoon of the same era.

However, what I find most interesting, was that all of these entities, the indie comic, the cartoon, the movie, managed to exist alongside one another.  Archie Comics even did a series that initially started as a close adaptation of the cartoon but, very quickly, developed its own continuity and fan base. Eastman and Laird had shrewdly managed to license their characters without giving up total creative control.  In an industry where there are dozens of stories about creators being screwed over while their employers make millions (and, now, billions) of dollars off of their creations, Eastman and Laird are a rare exception.

In fact, the sillier the licensed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles commercial juggernaut became, the more interesting the work on that original series became.  As Eastman and Laird became more invested in the day-to-day management of their property, the original series became more of an anthology series with indie comics legends like Mark Martin, Rick Veitch, and Richard Corben stepping in with their own distinctive visions of the terrapin heroes,  including a hyper-realistic version by Michael Zulli (famed for his wildlife drawings in his own Puma Blues) that was decidedly NOT for kids and which is, even now, a little bit creepy.


Yet, at the same time this was going on, the mainstream Turtles were embarking on the 'coming out of their shells tour' (which was really nothing more than a massive promotional tool for Pizza Hut).





A couple of years later, the Turtles would get their own live-action show so as to more effectively compete with the Power Rangers (this is the one with the female turtle, Venus).  Meanwhile, Eastman and Laird would merge their own studio with Image Comics, the foremost proprietor of the 'grim and gritty' era of comics, and the stories would get even darker.  Turtles were mutilated, lost limbs, were turned into cyborgs... in  fact, this era may have gotten a little too dark as Kevin Eastman has pretty much disowned the stories of this era and has since rebooted the series himself.


I guess my point is this, the ninja turtles have always been this weirdly mercurial property; they have been shaped and reshaped again to assume multiple incarnations for a variety of different audiences, often at the same moment in time.  The new movie will probably be terrible but, so what, that doesn't mean you can't still enjoy YOUR favorite version of the Turtles.  For me, personally, it's the original black and white comic and that very first live-action movie from 1990.... oh, and I do enjoy saying "Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!" from time to time....

And, if the Turtles can survive Vanilla Ice, I think they'll safely make it passed Michael Bay relatively unscathed as well....