Comics from before, being read now

[Rascally Badger]

Based on the teaser for the upcoming Black Adam movie starring The Rock, it seems that said movie will likely be an adaptation of the Black Reign storyline. It only makes sense, as every big Black Adam storyline is a variation on that. So I thought I would take a look back at that story and see how it holds up almost 20 years after it was published.

Black Reign was a crossover between JSA and Hawkman. At the time, both were written by Geoff Johns. It actually marked the end of his 2-year run on Hawkman. The Hawkman issues were drawn by Rags Morales, the JSA issues by Don Kramer. It is the culmination of Johns’ Hawkman run, and pays off a ton of threads that had been building for around 4 years in JSA. Rereading, I don’t know that it quite pays everything it wants to off, but there is some good action and the central moral question is at least interesting as posed, if not quite as much as answered.

It starts in JSA # 56, a comic with this cover:

I feel like I am very close to naming the actors drawn on that cover, but I can’t quite do it.

The issue follows Black Adam and his team as they conquer/liberate Kahndaq, one of the DC Universe’s stand-in Middle Eastern countries designed to allow them to write stories without having to think about real world implications or accidental political statements. Black Adam had joined the JSA a couple of dozen issues before, ostensibly seeking redemption, but he was growing increasingly frustrated with how little of an effect the team actually had on anything.

He is joined here by Northwind, who was once a bird-looking Hawkman ancillary character (a Featherian), now ‘rapidly evolved’ into a true birdman. He joined because his race of bird people needed a place to live after being abandoned by Hawkman. Then there is Brainwave, Jr., the son of a villain who was a hero in the 80’s. He has mind control powers and, most recently before this, appeared to be being driven insane by said powers. Next is Alex Montez/Eclipso. Alex is the cousin of Yolanda Montez, the second Wildcat, who was killed by Eclipso in a truly execrable story near the end of that villain’s 90’s series. To get revenge he covered his body in binding tattoos and injected himself with crushed up black eclipso diamonds to give him power over the villainous spirit. Fourth is Nemesis. She is a genetically engineered assassin who turned against those who trained and is trying to do good. She has been hanging around the JSA book since its first annual without anyone really seeming to notice or care. And finally there is Atom Smasher, a member of the JSA who has slowly formed a bond with Black Adam, especially as he has faced some personal tragedies that made him rethink his approach to being a superhero.

Black Adam narrates the issue and lays out his goals, problems with the JSA and thoughts on his teammates. The army of not-Iraq provides little resistance and they pretty quickly take the country over. It also features Black Adam pushing Atom Smasher to be more brutal than his usual approach.

Hawkman #23 features the main JSA team going to Mardi Gras Hawkman’s birthday party in Hawkman’s hometown of St. Roch.

The team mostly acts like a bunch of old fogeys, complaining about the ‘debauchery’ around them, other than Wildcat who just wants to join in. Dr. Mid-Nite tries to ‘save’ a prostitute. Power Girl, Stargirl and Hawkgirl are accosted and catcalled, leading to this:

The most interesting bit is probably Hourman, a hero who gets superpowers for one hour a day by taking a pill and struggles with addiction. He also has a time gauntlet that lets him spend one hour with his father, the original Hourman, who has been snatched from the timestream just before he is supposed to die. Not wanting to go out into the party on the street, he goes and talks to his day, who tries to give him a pep talk and advice about dealing with addiction.

Hawkman finally shows up midway to chop the arm off a villain with his ax, and then ruin the party, having seen a news report of what Black Adam did in Kahndaq. He then proclaims himself the chairman of the JSA, a position currently held by Mr. Terrific, and he is going to decide how the team responds.

In JSA #57, we see the people of Kahndaq celebrate Black Adam and his crew as liberating heroes, having freed them from a ruthless dictator. Meanwhile, the JSA debates who will lead them, ending with Mr. Terrific eventually ceding to Hawkman for this mission, since Hawkman has more experience with Black Adam and in the Middle East in general. I guess he’s swayed by Hawkman’s argument that it takes a fascist to stop a fascist.

Meanwhile, Atom Smasher starts hearing a voice, which berates him turning away from his heroic ideals by killing. Atom Smasher goes to Alex for help, but he is busy hooking up with Nemesis. And Brainwave is busy doing secret plots with Black Adam, and being threatened by Black Adam not to mind control any of his team.

The JSA heads to Kahndaq by plane, and now Dr. Fate starts to play a role. I don’t want to go into everything going on with Dr. Fate/Nabu/Hector Hall, but it is important to know that in ancient days, Nabu/Dr. Fate was an ally of Black Adam and Hawkman’s ancestor. The current Dr. Fate is Hector Hall, who is the son of Hawkman/Carter Hall. So he is a man with conflicted loyalties. And Nabu think’s Black Adam is in the right.

Right as they enter Kahndaq airspace, Black Adam blows up their plane, and Northwind and his Featherian allies attack the JSA. The issue ends with the flying team members trying to catch the non-flying team members as a battle starts.

In Hawkman #24, after the old guys complain about Black Adam corrupting the kids, and being told that the kids were corrupted before Black Adam came along, Dr. Fate uses his ill-defined, as always, magic powers to turn all the Featherians into just birds.

Mr. Terrific and Dr. Mid-Nite were captured by Black Adam, who tries to reason with them. Why was he given his great power if not to help people? And what could he do that is more helpful than removing a bloodthirsty dictator? Mr. Terrific counters that you can’t end lives to save lives. Meanwhile, Atom Smasher is growing increasingly uncomfortable with how things are going, and Black Adam continues to play a second, secret game with Brainwave.

The JSA is trying to get to the capitol to confront Black Adam, but they are having to fight through wave after wave of civilians, who see Black Adam as a savior and the JSA as the invaders. Nabu then seizes control of Dr. Fate and changes sides, changes the Featherians back into hawkpeople and pretty conclusively turning the tide against the JSA. At this point, Captain Marvel finally gets free of the wreckage of the JSA plane, where he was rescuing Wildcat. He starts a fight with Black Adam, but Brainwave takes control of his mind and forces him to change back to Billy. At the same time, Nemesis cuts Hourman’s gut open. Thinking quickly, Hourman activates his time gauntlet and switches places with his dad in the time bubble.

In JSA #58, Hawkman, getting increasingly brutal as the fight goes on, rips Northwind’s wings off. Also, Hector Hall wrests control back from Nabu, and also finds out that Nabu was hiding his wife Lyta Trevor-Hall in the helmet, and frees her. (Look, I am not about to try to explain Hector Hall and Lyta Trevor. Fuck that.)

In the midst of the fight, Hourman causes Alex Montez to get scratched, breaking the binding tattoo that allowed him to control Eclipso. Now free to do his own thing, Eclipso zaps Nemesis. Realizing that he can no longer control Eclipso, Alex commits suicide to keep him from killing anyone else.

Meanwhile, Black Adam tries to explain himself to Billy, it ends like this:

Atom Smasher, who has captured Stargirl on Black Adam’s orders, finally has it out with the voice in his head, which is revealed to be The Atom, who snuck in before the JSA team and has been messing with Atom Smasher the whole time. When Black Adam arrives, Atom Smasher does not tell him about the Atom.

Then the second part of Hawkman’s plan for the Atom is revealed: He is going to have the Atom go inside Brainwave’s head and, with the help of Dr. Mid-Nite, lobotomize him. Heroic. Nice dad Jay Garrick has finally had it with Hawkman’s bullshit and demands he stop escalating the conflict.

Brainwave then mind controls the whole team, and the Atom is unable to stop him because Brainwave is actually being mind controlled himself, by Mr. Mind.

The final issue is Hawkman #25. It starts with Atom incapacitating Mr. Mind/Brainwave. Then Stargirl and Atom Smasher free Captain Marvel. Black Adam loses it and starts to fight the team straight up. You get to see his thoughts on the team, which is some nice character stuff for both them and Black Adam. Like the fact that old BA is kind of a sexist asshole.

They fight for a long time, before Captain Marvel, Atom Smasher and Stargirl show up, having worked out a deal; Black Adam remains ruler of Kahndaq, but he is not allowed beyond the borders of the country. In the wrap-up, Hawkman realized he messed up going off half-cocked and resigns from the JSA.

This is a lot more of a straight fight comic than I recalled. Especially if you don’t have the years of build-up that the comics did. This is the culmination of a Black Adam storyline that essentially began back in JSA #6. The same is true for storylines for Nemesis, Atom Smasher, Hourman, Dr. Fate, and Alex Montez. This storyline is where a lot of the seeds that Johns, and former co-writer David Goyer, had been planting since they took this book over.

It is also worth noting that this came out right around a year after the US invaded Iraq. I don’t know that this story is reflecting on that as much as it is echoing it. I don’t know that it actually has anything to say about US adventurism in the Middle East. Ostensibly, the JSA team is going there to talk with Black Adam and crew, and it only becomes a fight because Black Adam attacks them.

The real tell for what this story has to say is how feeble the JSA’s response to what Black Adam is doing is. They treat it like he has committed some great crime, but all acknowledge that the fictional Middle Eastern county was run by a murderous warlord. Black Adam and crew removed his regime and destroyed his army; that is the extent of the fighting as they liberate. And Black Adam is legitimately from the country in question. He is freeing his homeland.

The JSA says you can’t kill, and the book seems to be written from the perspective that that is the correct approach, but everything in the story seems to be establishing that Black Adam is in the right. I mean, he is also a murderous loose cannon, but he’s not wrong to free his homeland.

I see a lot of Kingdom Come influence in this, which fits with my general understanding of Geoff Johns, that he only knows comic books. That book is in large part about a more violent, younger generation unafraid to kill making things difficult for the older, more idealistic generation of superheroes. It is a commentary on the uber-violent 90’s comics characters. This is asking whether it is okay for superheroes to kill and while it’s characters say no, everything else says yes.

I don’t know, it is not as good of a story as I remembered it being. JSA still remains among my favorite comic runs, and this story does a good job of paying things off, but it really isn’t much more than that.

 

[Felicia]

The revelations about Dr. Fate's wife in these issues always felt a little wrong to me, since Hector's arc in the earlier parts of the run had been about dealing with grief and finally accepting that Lyta was dead. But now suddenly he's told that no, never mind, she's been alive all along. I wonder if this was the intent all along, or some sort of retcon.

My personal high point in this storyline will always be the Mr. Mind reveal. Every comic becomes infinitely better when The Wickedest Worm in the World is present.

Oh, and those panels of Jay looking suspisciously at Stargirl and Captain Marvel will lead to what is possibly my favorite single issue of JSA, with one of the most clever (and evil) uses of time travel by a villain I've read.

 

[Beowulf]

I'm stealing this thread's broader topic for a different "comic from before", Animal Man (1988-1994).

So, Ixo had a pile of Animal Man comics they were looking to offload and I was interested, because it was pre-Vertigo stuff from before I was allowed to read Vertigo anyway. I’m reasonably certain I’ve read a few of these stories collected in trades, but I’m going to need to dig through the boxes and connect up what I already had with what I just got. To wit:

I got a complete batch of #3-21, and in the early issues, two things become clear: One is that Animal Man is kinda lousy at being a superhero. The other is that Grant Morrison is interested in writing about pretty much anything other than Animal Man. There are entire issues devoted to cartoon coyotes or Thanagarian artists where Animal Man kinda shows up at the end and accomplishes nothing. The “aliens” who ignore fourth walls rewrite reality to fix Animal Man’s post-crisis origin…but we see much more of the side characters than anything meaningful about said rewritten origin. Animal Man joins the Justice League and a bunch of the other characters guest-star; none of them hang around or do anything of significance. Then we have half a dozen issues of Animal Man being an eco-terrorist in “plight of animals” one-shots, only for his family to get killed and set off a reality-bending time-travel adventure…that I don’t have. The collection skips to issue #26, the final issue of Morrison’s run, where he reveals the comic-book nature of reality and makes fun of his own bad writing, and brings Animal Man’s family back to life at the end.

That issue also contains a sneak preview of Peter Milligan’s brief run on the book, where Animal Man wakes from a coma to discover that the world and his powers are wrong. But the next issue I have is #32, the final issue of that story, where it’s revealed that time travel and quantum superpositions messed up reality and Animal Man gets home.

Issue #33 was when Tom Veitch took over as writer, but I don’t have that. The next issue I have is #41, then #45, #47, #48 and #50. Which means I got the culmination of Veitch’s storyline, which involved both a drawn-out evil plot at STAR Labs to build a superhuman with Animal Man’s powers (that ends with that entire cast unceremoniously dead) and the former B’wana Beast returning, getting possessed by a destroyer from the beginning of time, and unceremoniously dying. Animal Man’s powers are revealed to not have come from out-of-continuity aliens, but instead from an immortal shaman named Stone who exists as part of the morphogenetic field. (We’re seeing the slow evolution towards the existence of “The Red” as the source of all animal powers specifically.) There’s also some sort of side-story where horrible things are happening to Animal Man’s son to keep him off-screen as Animal Man’s daughter develops mysterious superpowers, but I’m missing too much material to know what exactly was going on with that.

Then Jamie Delano takes over. I have three issues of the “Flesh and Blood” storyline (#53, #55, #56). Animal Man dies and has a wild ride to being reborn; but more notable is that this actually picks up a bunch of Veitch’s plot threads: Cliff is being abused by his death-worshipping great-uncle and eventually gets rescued. Maxine’s growing powers and pet dinosaur become the instruments of Animal Man’s rebirth.

Then we jump ahead to #62-68, where Animal Man starts collecting a new supporting cast to live on the farm. Fears of ecological apocalypse abound; it’s interesting that 30 years ago the “the human race has destroyed the world and there’s nothing we can do about it” was already such a prevalent train of thought. I’m missing an annual which apparently introduces a change in his powers (he transforms into chimera monsters as he takes animal powers) and got his daughter’s soul lost in the Lifeweb, turning her body into a feral child-monster. (As opposed to his son, who is just a normal severely-traumatized teenager.)

And then we jump ahead to #75, where the party has split, with Ellen and half the new cast off on a new farm, and Animal Man (in a dragon-man form) has formed a religion and is leading a parade of people and animals through America leaving devastation in their weird-hippy wake. And there are apparently other repercussions and chaos from this as well, but we’ve moved far enough from the world of superheroes in the early years that none of them have anything to say about all this. (At this point, we’re officially part of the Vertigo imprint; Buddy hasn’t worn his costume at any point in Delano’s run and is fully into his role as an “animal avatar”; and he’s existing in a different world from the mainstream DCU.)

The last issue in this collection is, entertainingly, #77, which holds a special place in my heart because I colored the first page of it.* In the midst of the “life-power church” trying to reunite in the Promised Land (Montana, apparently), Animal Man (still in dragon-man form) has knocked up his side piece, and Ellen is busy being bicurious. I’ll admit, I was kinda surprised it took as long as it did for Animal Man’s marriage to fall apart. Maxine has apparently recovered her soul and is imparting perfect childish wisdom. Cliff is calling himself the Kannibal Kid and gets shot in the butt.

There are only two issues after that in Delano’s run; the internet tells me that Animal Man’s crusade makes it to Montana and he dies again. Then the book changes creative teams for ten more issues and is canceled; and the next time Animal Man appears he’s back in the mainstream DCU and back in costume. (Entertainingly, the character biography on Wikipedia skips over Delano’s entire run, jumping straight from the events in #50 to Animal Man’s reappearance in the mainstream DCU five years later.)

Overall: This was entertaining to read (or, in a few cases, re-read—I think I have a few of these stories in trade, but I need to go digging through the Vertigo boxes to see), but it’s not actually a great run of comics. Animal Man is a shitty superhero and a crappy father pretty much throughout; and “there’s something weird going on with his powers” is far and away the most common plot element and it gets very tiring. The fact that the nature of the world realigned itself multiple times in the 6-year run because the writers ignored each other’s worldbuilding and characterization doesn’t help for a straight read-through, either. Of the great pre-Vertigo/Vertigo titles, there’s a reason nobody’s clamoring to have Animal Man get his own TV show.


*My dad was running the Production department at DC, and the company doing the computer color separations was based in Ireland, and flew us out to wine and dine him. While he did a bunch of business meeting and my mom and sister went shopping, I was parked in front of one of the coloring computers, where I colored the first page of Animal Man #77 and a page of a Star Trek annual. I apparently did a good-enough job, because they used my work, including a mistake I made on McCoy’s face.

 

[Violentvixen]

*My dad was running the Production department at DC, and the company doing the computer color separations was based in Ireland, and flew us out to wine and dine him. While he did a bunch of business meeting and my mom and sister went shopping, I was parked in front of one of the coloring computers, where I colored the first page of Animal Man #77 and a page of a Star Trek annual. I apparently did a good-enough job, because they used my work, including a mistake I made on McCoy’s face.

That is bonkers and great

 

[Beowulf]

Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures (Archie Comics, 1989-1995)

The Ninja Turtles started life as comic book characters, in a parody of dark and gritty superhero comics of the time. (Particularly Daredevil—in certain canons, the ooze that mutated the turtles is the same that blinded Murdock. And there’s the master named Stick/Splinter and the fight against the Hand/Foot. But I digress.) But they rose to popularity as cartoon characters and were established to be a property aimed entirely at children. So Archie Comics got the license to chronicle their further comic-book adventures.

In 1989 I was eight years old, and squarely in the demographic for these guys. I was also already a big comic fan and making weekly trips to the comics shop on top of all the free DC books my dad brought home. So I have a fairly complete collection of these.

Issues #1-4 directly adapted from the cartoon, taking the stories “The Return of Shredder” and “The Incredible Shrinking Turtles” in two issues each. Dave Garcia handles both the art and the adaptation of a script originally by Christy Marx and David Wise. Garcia doesn’t quite have a handle on good comic pacing and doesn’t really believe in backgrounds, but the art is decent and captures a lot of the action of the cartoon, if in a slightly slowed-down way. The second story ends with Shredder and Baxter Stockman escaping with the 1st Eye of Sarnath (an alien gem with mysterious powers). In the cartoon, this was the first of a four-part collection of episodes where each of the different eyes does something weird and eventually Shredder gets all three, attaches them to his helmet, and makes terrible use of matter-transforming powers until he’s defeated. In this series, the plot is dropped.

Issue #5 marks the introduction of writers Dean Clarrain and Ryan Brown, who’ll generally shepherd the series from here on. I don’t know what was going on behind the scenes, but it seems pretty clear there was an effort to diverge from the TV series but a requirement to use all of the characters they wanted to sell toys for. And so in Issue #5 we meet Man Ray, and in #6 Leatherhead. We also have a brief meeting with Swamp Witch Mary Bones, who transformed Leatherhead with her magic crystal ball. This will very shortly be the source of the series’ first retcon, which I find entertaining.

As a side note, "Dean Clarrain" was apparently a pen name for comic writer Stephen Murphy, a Mirage Comics staffer who later went on to be a staff writer for the 2003 TMNT show, and write the 2004 relaunch of the Tales of the TMNT comic. There’s a theory that this comic served to “insulate” the Mirage Comics TMNT line from the toy-driven, kid-friendly needs of the cartoon tie-in.

Issue #7 brings in Jim Lawson and Gary Fields as the art team, and they’re…not good. It also introduces Stump and Sling (who run an intergalactic wresting arena), the dimensional-traveling cow-head Cudley, and wrestlers Cryin’ Houn’ and Ace Duck. On the way home, Cudley accidentally brings them 100 years into the future (where global warming has caused ocean levels to rise), foreshadowing several later plotlines. Another interesting point is that the turtles are given new costumes for the wrestling match, and while three of them are discarded within two issues, Raphael keeps his all-black head-to-toe suit for quite some time.

Issues #8 introduces Wingnut and Screwloose, and is done by alternate art team Ken Mitchroney and Dan Berger, who are significantly more capable. (I feel like a decent number of the “Mutanimals” acquired different origins in the comics versus the cartoon. They’re more commonly aliens than former humans in the comics.) After that first foray into space, we then see a bunch of issues that hew very close to the TV series, taking place in New York and generally involving Shredder, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady doing evil and various new mutants being created along the way. Issue #9 is done by Lawson/Fields and introduces the international superspy the Chameleon, who gets turned into an actual Chameleon when he’s captured by Shredder. Issue #10 introduces Scumbug and The Wyrm (and seemingly leaves them both dead) with Mitchroney/Berger art. This flip-flopping of art teams will continue for years.

Issue #11 looks like it’s going to be a normal foray against the Rat King (again with Lawson/Fields art) but opens with Bebop and Rocksteady being kidnapped by alien grays...which it’s later revealed are called the Sons of Silence and are being directed by Krang as he searches for Mary Bones and the “Turnstone”. And then we spend #12-13 back in space, it’s revealed that Mary Bones was secretly an alien warlord named Cherubae the whole time, and her crystal ball was actually the Turnstone. There’s a big battle, but then Leatherhead helps Cherubae regain the Turnstone, and she banishes Bebop and Rocksteady to a wild animal planet, Krang to Dumpworld, and Shredder to an Earth prison. (And removes the Turnstone itself from existence.) So right as we finish our first year of comics, we’ve had our first “final battle” featuring most of the new characters, and radically changed the status quo from the cartoon.

Issues #14-18 involve another round of one-shot stories and introducing new characters. A trip to the rainforest in Brazil introduces Jagwar and Dreadmon (and sees the return of Man Ray), and then we return to NYC to meet Mondo Gecko. We also get some nice strong environmentalist themes going, as the turtles raise concerns about destruction of rainforests, water pollution and bad fishing practices.

Issue #19 brings in a point that will recur both in later issues and later media: Splinter begins teaching April how to fight with a katana blade. We also establish some new villains, including an evil businessman named Null, who’s working with Queen Maligna and her alien bug lackeys, Scul and Bean. Raph and Mondo follow that plotline as it kickstarts the new Mighty Mutanimals series (starring Man-Ray, Jagwar, Dreadmon, Leatherhead, Wingnut and Screwloose), while in issue #20 the rest of the cast meet the Warrior Dragon (aka Hot Head).

#21 introduces Vid Vicious, a mutated master of technology who’s able to pull people in and out of cyberspace. While Donatello and Vid fight on a computer, Shredder breaks in and copies them both to a floppy disk, and destroys the original computer afterwards. This deserves special mention because Vid is actually an environmentalist villain: His plan is to use the nuclear waste that contaminated him to irradiate all of the world’s oil, so that world leaders will be forced to sit down and rethink policy. (It’s a terrible plan, but it’s shockingly “trying to do a good thing but going too far” for a cartoon villain of the era.) It’s also noteworthy that Donny apparently fits onto half of a floppy disk, and that the Donny who exists for the rest of the series is a computer clone of the original, who died in cyberspace.

In #22, Shredder extracts them from the disk (and Vid escapes, never to be seen again) to use Donny as bait to trap Splinter and get revenge, but he’s foiled at the last minute by Raphael, back from his adventures with the Mutanimals and back in his original red attire. (Shredder is never shown escaping from prison; it’s just assumed that he broke out and acquired some new Foot soldier robots at some point in the interim period.)

#23 picks up with Krang on Morbius, the Dump-world, where he meets Slash, an alien turtle inexplicably searching for a palm tree. They team up with Bellybomb, hijack a ship, and go retrieve Bebop and Rocksteady. Then they catch up with the Turtles and Shredder, and #24 ends with Krang placing himself over Shredder’s head and taking over his body.

This makes for a fantastic image, but also raises a lot of questions: Can Krang take over any body? Why hasn’t he done it earlier? Why take Shredder specifically when there are much stronger (and dumber) mutants around? The battle in #25 is a little disappointing, but the Turtles free Shredder and defeat Krang. Bebop and Rocksteady, having had their fun, drop Krang and Bellybomb back on Morbius and return to their beloved animal planet. (There’s also a series of backup stories featuring April and the Warrior Dragon.)

Issues #5-25 were also republished in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics Digest series #1-7, and in some ways that first two years of the comic felt like the “definitive” run to me, despite the fact that a third of the issues had the terrible Lawson/Fields art. There’s clearly a bunch of push-and-pull with the desire to introduce new characters and the desire to create ongoing plots with them; and the desire to get away from the Shredder/Krang villain dynamic and the requirement to appeal to fans of the cartoon.

I have almost the rest of the series (my last issue is #69; the series ended with #72) and a number of the tie-ins. By the time the series ended in 1995 I was in middle school and reading pretty much DC’s entire product line (including some Vertigo stuff I probably shouldn’t have been), so it occupies my brain differently. I’ll do some more write-ups soon.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

23 picks up with Krang on Morbius, the Dump-world, where he meets Slash, an alien turtle inexplicably searching for a palm tree.

This is a holdover element from the cartoon. In there, he isn't an alien, he's Bebop's (or maybe it was Rocksteady's) pet turtle he kept from Shredder and Krang (cause they don't like turtles) who ends up getting mutated and misses his little little palm tree from his original little fishbowl he was kept in.

 

[ghosttaster]

Interested in seeing summaries of the latter half of TMNT Adventures... I would pick up random issues as a kid and found them unbelievably strange and disturbing. I would go as far as to say they're much, much weirder than 90% of the Mirage TMNT comics (barring a handful of issues of the latter)

 

[Beowulf]

Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, Part 2

After the big wrap-up in #25, Dean Clarrain takes a break from scripting duties and Doug Brammer steps in for two issues. In #26 Master Splinter is telepathically contacted by a Tibetan yeti named T’Pau with dire warnings, and he and the turtles are teleported to Tibet and then abducted by the alien Boss Salvage. Salvage isn’t a villain, though, he’s just trying to save rare species from dying worlds, and fears human pollution will destroy Earth.

In #27, April gets stranded in Innsmouth, MA where a trio of animals mutated by toxic waste are getting revenge by feeding the waste to the townspeople and turning them into zombies.

These two issues also continue the April/Splinter backup stories, which lead directly into the Midnight Sun trilogy in #28-30. (This is also the point where Chris Allen becomes the main artist on the series, and he is notably better than any of the teams before him.) The Turtles, along with April and Splinter, travel to Japan to rescue the Warrior Dragon, who they learn was kidnapped by Chien Khan and his sidekick Ninjara. Chein Kahn’s plan is to use magic to control the Warrior Dragon, have him attack a nuclear plant and cause a meltdown, and use the energy from that to create a gateway to the wold of demons. As the battle rages, Splinter meditates and summons the creators Izanagi and Izanami, who seal away the demon. In the aftermath, Kahn escapes, but Ninjara has a change of heart and decides to accompany the turtles. An interesting side part of this story is that it reveals that Splinter was born in 1930, and in 1945 he and his great-uncle witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima. So in 1991, he’s old for a man and ancient for a rat.

Over the next few issues, the turtles travel across Japan and then continue across Asia. In issue #33 the human characters fly back to the US (including Oyuki, who becomes April’s ward/sidekick in the background of the rest of the series), and Splinter, Ninjara and the turtles begin a wider pilgrimage, first across China to Tibet. #33 also introduces the four-armed tiger Katmandu, and then #34 the great spiritual leader (and former mentor to Splinter) the Charlie Llama. In #35 they continue to the middle east, where we learn the story of The Black Stone of Mecca. (And the lost White Stone.) Which includes a comic page that could be published in 1992 but boy oh boy...not ten years later. Or today.

See, back in pre-9/11 times, most Americans knew nothing about Islam. And honestly, Clarrain wasn’t that far ahead of the rest of us. I’m pretty sure that dude in the middle is supposed to be Mohammad, which is a huge no-no, but there clearly weren’t a lot of Muslims reading Archie comics in 1992 and the Christian Moral Guardians had just had the entire Reagan-Bush era of running the government and were falling out of ascendance, so they weren’t combing through comics for things to be upset about. To the best of my knowledge, there wasn’t any scandal regarding this.

Anyway, it turns out Shredder is there to steal the Black Stone. The turtles meet Al’falqa and chase down Shredder and Verminator-X, but the villains disappear into a mysterious portal after the turtles recover the stone. (Shredder also lets Splinter go free because he owes the turtles for freeing him from Krang. Which creates some confusion in continuity, but we’ll get there.)

Then we hit a gap in my collection: I’m missing issues #36-40. TMNTPedia tells me that in #37 Cudley takes the turtles for a round of wrestling at Stump Asteroid; in #38-39 the turtes team up with the Mighty Mutanimals to fight the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Null in Brazil; and in #40 a spirit takes Donatello to 1492 to try to defend the natives against Christopher Columbus, but he fails.

#41 is another Brammer story, a flashback to the earlier era framed by Raph and Ninjara on a date, in which an evil scientist clones a mammoth-mutant the turtles had previously encountered.

#42-44 are the best-named set of comics: The Future Shark Trilogy. It features a shark-mutant named Armaggon, who’s working to control the future with Shredder and Verminator-X, who had been sent back to retrieve the Black Stone of Mecca for their plans. Donatello and Raphael appear in a time portal and bring the present-day turtles, Ninjara, and Splinter into that future: A flooded New York City that Cudley had first revealed to them way back in #7. In the intervening decades, Splinter died of old age, the Greenhouse effect melted the ice caps, Donatello made a fortune inventing rat traps (and earned the ire of the Rat King), and his partner Manx became the evil cyborg Verminator-X. And then Donny invented time travel, digging out the crystal locator and finding the Second Eye of Sarnath (remember that dropped plot from #3-4?) to use as a power source. Armaggon and Verminator-X stole the time-slip generator (and the Eye, and kidnapped the other two turtles and Merdude), then plucked Shredder and the first Eye out of the timeline. The villains have been making limited jumps to the past to retrieve power sources for the generator, including nuclear fuel from Null’s schemes, the bones of the Roswell alien, Hitler’s brain, and the White Stone of Mecca. The turtles jump in before the villains can complete their plan, but an accident with the time-slip generator traps half of them with Armaggon in a strange fairy-filled realm called Thanatia. In issue #44, half the group fights the Rat King (come for revenge) and we answer a bit of turtles lore: Can the Rat King control Splinter? (Answer: Yes!). The other half defeats Armaggon and strands him in Thanatia, which the stinger reveals is a farther-future Earth. Then Future-Don retrieves the generator and sends everybody home, with seemingly only Verminator-X escaping.

It’s never explicitly stated when in the future this storyline takes place, but none of the human characters are mentioned in the future and the idea that the turtles could live more than 400 years is floated. (Raphael has a serious talk with himself about both his attitude and his romance with Ninjara.)

Shredder’s personal timeline becomes an ungodly mess, though: Armaggon picks him up from issue #4, taking the Eye of Sarnath and leaving Baxter behind. That Shredder appears in Saudi Arabia in #35 and steals the two Stones of Mecca (but loses the Black one). Then he loses to the turtles in #44 and presumably is sent back to #4, where he returns to plotting with Krang, gets sent to prison by Cherubae, escapes and copies Donny and Vid Vicious, gets Krang put on his head, and gets freed by the turtles. But then...how would he know in #36 that he “owes” the turtles (from #25) if, from his perspective, it hadn’t happened yet? (TMNTPedia claims they erased Shredder’s memory before sending him back; there’s nothing in the actual comic to support that. And it wouldn’t solve the problem.)

#45 is a one-shot with Mitchroney art that retells the Turtle’s origin, in case you’re a new reader or have forgotten it after all this time.

#46 is another one-shot starring Raph and Ninjara. We learn that Ninjara’s birth name is Umeko, and meet her brother Naga. They travel to the secret enclave of fox-people who Ninjara was estranged from and rescue her grandmother, with a side-trip through Yomi, the Underworld. But also, a giant robot shouting “Sarnath” appears in Central Park, so in #47 the rest of the team go and meet the giant robot whose eyes we’d been wondering about since issue #3. Seems the alien who showed up in #3 was a Mergia, creators of the Triasts (which Sarnath is one of). The robotic Triasts were kept as slaves, but revolted, seeking equal rights as sentient beings. When the Mergia lost, Sarnath’s master stole his eyes and fled. Sarnath eventually made it to Earth and found one of his eyes near the alien’s buried body in Central Park. Sarnath assimilates a news camera because he needs his other eyes to see, otherwise. (And the turtles have to break the bad news that Sarnath’s other two eyes are one hundred years in the future—which is not strictly accurate, as only one made the time-jump and the other stayed buried until future-Donny found it, but is good enough when you’re trying to prevent a paradox.) The turtles rescue Sarnath’s alien dog Qark, but are briefly caught on live-broadcast news cameras in the process. But that’s a problem for another day, because they pick up Raph and Ninjara and head for Dimension X in Sarnath’s ship.

#48-50 are the Black Hole Trilogy. They arrive in Dimension X to discover a new black hole has appeared, and they’re attacked by the Imperial Aerwyl Fleet who mistake them for “Nova Squadron.” The battle damages the ship, and it and Sarnath fall into the black hole while the turtles are rescued by Nova Posse—deserters from the Imperial fleet’s Nova Squadron. They convene with a bunch of guest stars at Stump Asteroid where an armada is massing; but then Don is abducted by the Sons of Silence.

Donny wakes up in a white void where the Sons appear to be worshiping the Turnstone, which Cherubae wished out of existence back in #13. Sarnath and a crashed Imperial fighter both appear, and we learn that the void is the inside of the black hole. And the Turnstone, somehow sapient and running the show, starts speaking to Donny. Meanwhile, the rest of the coalition goes to defeat Emperor Mazool of Aerwyl, who’s trying to use the chaos of the expanding black hole to conquer the remains of Dimension X. (Joke for adults that went over my head in 1993: The ship the turtles use is the Imperial Starship P’ntaang.)


Finally, in shiny-cover issue #50, Donny is possessed by the Turnstone and starts growing the black hole out of control. Sarnath frees him and takes the Turnstone, sending Donny to safety and banishing the Sons of Silence. (It seems to be that this entire crisis was manufactured by the Sons at the Turnstone’s behest, and they kidnapped Donny so the Turnstone could use him. Sarnath accidentally falling into the black hole saved the universe.) He then collapses the black hole on itself, seemingly destroy himself and the Turnstone in the process.

A side story: I didn’t read #50 in 1993. It had a shiny variant cover and the local comics shop didn’t order enough for the demand from collectors, so I didn’t know how the story ended for years. Then in 1999, I was at a high school party and struck up a conversation with a cute goth girl, and we ended up talking comic books. I mentioned that TMNT Adventures #50 was a white whale in my collection, and a month later she produced a copy for me for a birthday present. (The flirting never went anywhere and I lost touch with her not long after, but I’ll always be grateful that she went bin-diving for me.)

(Additional side note: I should think about editing TMNTPedia, because issues #49-54 are missing from it!)

In #51, the Chameleon returns, having significantly upgraded his shapeshifting abilities. He hunts down the turtles to see if they know how he might become human again...but they don’t, so oh well. In #52 we discover that Scumbug and Wyrm have been living in some sort of weird symbiosis in the sewer, but a new alien villain named Toxzeem freezes them into “crystal death” and they’re shattered. (During both issues, April’s reporter colleagues bumble their way through trying to get more footage of the turtles or other mutants and mostly fail.)

#53-54 are the two-part The Animus War storyline. An alien creature called Animus steals “The Scroll of the War of the Children of Light and Children of Darkness” from the Dead Sea Scroll collection in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Which, just starting off, um. UM. Then, continuing to remind us that it’s pre-9/11 America, April gets the turtles into Israel by packing them in her luggage. They arrive to a special news report about riots being lead by Al’falqa and Katmandu, who are clearly under mind control. Ariella Yahuda, the Israeli soldier who’s been keeping tabs on April reveals herself to be Golani, a blue-skinned Twi’lek-like being with magical superpowers. Animus has been called forth by the children of darkness he calls the Hashasheem (I’m guessing a misspelling of hashashim, the Islamic sect we get the word “assassins” from), in a ruin called Nimrod’s Fortress. They discover they can hurt Animus with light, but Mike is blinded during the battle. Eventually they hurt down Animus’ lair, steal back the dead sea scroll, causing him to weaken and shrink, so they seal him in a snow globe.

While all of this is going on, a 7-part backup story called “Megadeath” is also running in issues #48-54. (Just in case you wanted reassurance that the Moral Guardians still weren’t looking.) Future Don and Raph come back to try to change history, but by the end of it, all of the Mighty Mutanimals are dead anyway. This also features the return of Jim Lawson’s painfully terrible art. This leads directly into the Terracide trilogy, which I’ll pick up with next time.

 

[ghosttaster]

Chalk me up as a Lawson-liker. I haven't read TMNT Adventures in years but I like his art in the Mirage vol. 1 stories, particularly City at War. I like the way he draws the turtles (relative to Eastman and Laird, anyway). I feel like people generally think he sucks, but I don't get it. His LATER stuff looks like shit to me, though.

One of the first issues of this comic I had was the one where the Mutanimals get blown away. I was like, 6 or 7. Weird comic.

 

[Beowulf]

In issues #55-57, “Terracide” picks up right after Megadeath (thankfully with Allen doing the art), as Future-Don and Future-Raph discover that the Mutanimals are dead, but that doesn’t match what was supposed to happen, indicating the timeline is being changed. Meanwhile, the plane the present turtles are taking back from Israel gets shot down (also not according to history), and Mikey gets captured by the coast guard. The turtles, along with Slash (seeking revenge for the death of his only friends) and Candy Fine (Mondo’s girlfriend) hunt down the “gang of four” that killed the Mutanimals and discover that Null is running the show and also has Skul and Bean on his side. When the gang of four are revealed to be robots and destroyed, Null kidnaps Candy and heads to the dark side of the moon, where Maligna’s hive world is hiding. Their ship is destroyed, but the spacebound party (Future-Don, both Raphs, Slash, Ninjara and Splinter) time-slip onto the hive world. (The rest of the turtles stayed on Earth to rescue Mike.) They damage the hive-world and slaughter the drones, and the damage sends the hive-world tumbling into the sun, and the time-slip remote is lost. Null escapes, and Slash stays behind to make sure Skul, Bean and Maligna all burn up as the party boards an escape shuttle.

Two side notes, both relating to the fact they weren’t bound to cartoon show standards & practices: The first is that the word “death” gets thrown around a lot, and we have extended scenes of the Mutanimals lying in pools of their own blood. The second is that Null uses mind control on Candy and clearly has turned her into a sex slave (wink, nudge, plausible deniability, she’s clearly just feeding him grapes in that dress) and I wonder what the average age of the readership was by this point. In 1993 I had certainly hit puberty, and as we noted, I was the prime demographic for this comic when it started.

(I’m missing #58; it’s apparently a one-shot flashback of “how the turtles got their colors” that Mike thinks about while in lockup. And Leo and Don meet up with Kid Terra and his men, who are interested in helping them.)

Meanwhile, on Earth, #59-60 are the “Blindsight” storyline. The evil reporter McIntyre who’s been trying to present the turtles as a menace since Sarnath landed gets April to appear on his talk show so he can twist her words. Fortunately, she’s no fool, so she has Oyuki seduce the AV Tech and put a video of the turtles rescuing Mike on live broadcast: It includes footage of the evil government scientist torturing Mike, but then Mike rescuing that scientist anyway when he almost drowns. The crowd interprets this as the turtles being heroes and McIntyre is thwarted. (From the art changes, it appears that Oyuki has aged from “kid” to “mid-teens” since we saw her last.) As the space team pilots an alien fighter back to Earth, they’re forced to land at Area 51 by strange government fighters. They escape with the help of a captive alien, but end up in a standoff between the rescue party and the reinforcements outside, so the alien agrees to return to captivity to let them go free. Don swears to come back for him. (But he probably won’t, because remember that Amaggon steals the alien’s bones to power the time-slip generator in the future.)

#61 opens with a funeral for Slash (and Lawson art, thankfully for the last time). The two Raphaels have another heart-to-heart, and the Future versions of Leo and Mike arrive with a human woman named Nobuko, who reveals herself to be April’s great-granddaughter. They contemplate the changes in history: In the original version, Maligna’s invasion sped along the greenhouse effect and she killed Slash and the Mutanimals; in this version they still died and man apparently wrecks the Earth’s climate all on our own. Kid Terra’s friend Sleeping Owl (who Splinter can apparently communicate with telepathically, because that’s just something meditating lets you do) tells a creation myth about the World Turtle.

Issues #62-66 are a story called “Dreamland” headlined by the Cyber Samurai Mutant Ninja Turtles (aka, the future turtles, but in mecha-armor that I vaguely recall being a new toyline at the time). And the opening panel finally gives a time to our future period: 2094. Continuing to bring home the “this comic isn’t for 8-year-olds any more” theme, Future-Raph has a nightmare and wakes up next to a naked foxwoman. (Mezcaal, presumably a descendent of Ninjara.) Verminator-X has built cyber-zombies and is out committing crimes, and seriously injures Mike.

Don fiddles with Armaggon’s souped-up time-slip generator (which he doesn’t know Hitler’s brain is attached to) and activates it enough that the brain can open portals to 1945. The turtles then go back to 1945, stop the Hilter’s brain-in-a-robot-body, punch Hitler himself in the face, and lose another time-slip remote before the automatic system retrieves them. Verminator-X, now working with the alien Crainiac to steal a bunch of important human brains before a rogue comet destroys Earth, lures the turtles into a pair of traps, where they fight both zombies and evil brains. Verminator-X breaks off his alliance when Crainiac wants to kill the turtles to take their brains, so Crainiac flees Earth alone. Raph shoots Verminator-X, in what plays like a serious “I did what had to be done” moment, but then Don rebuilds him into Manx again and they work together to shoot down the comet before Earth is destroyed.

The backup stories “The Angel of Times Square” involve April and decidedly adult-looking Oyuki investigating what seems to be a grifter selling tickets to see an angel. (The second issue reveals it’s a flash-forward to New Years Eve 1999.) April rescues woman being held captive, who may actually be an angel, and who encourages April to think about the beauty of the world as she flies away.

Issues #67-70 are the “Moon Eyes Saga”. The turtles and Ninjara travel with April to Alaska in pursuit of a story just as tensions start to flare between Raph and Ninjara about their relationship. They meet a werewolf named Mokoshan, who is smitten with Ninjara and nicknames her “Moon-Eyes.” There’s some hubbub with toxic waste creating mutant polar bears; but the thrust of this story is Ninjara falling out of love with Raphael and his bad attitude and pursuing something new.

And that’s where my collection of the main series ends. According to TMNTPedia, #71-72 were a flashback storyline called “The Early Years” that told how the turtles chose their weapons. The final story was supposed by a five-part epic called “The Forever War” uniting both eras of turtles and lots of guest stars. It was supposed to be finally published in 2009…and then as a fan-sponsored project in 2019…and the last updates I can find were that Chris Allen was drawing the fifth issue following Covid delays. So it might be dead again or it might actually appear online; but it doesn’t exist yet. Presumably it would tie together a bunch of loose ends, including the time-slip remote Don loses in 1945; Null’s escape and his hand in rewriting the history of Maligna’s invasion; and whatever happened to Shredder after he was properly returned to the timeline.

Upon reflection, though the series was excellent at presenting recaps and flashbacks in case you missed a few issues, this was insanely continuity-heavy for a comic aimed at kids in the late 80s/early 90s; and clearly by 1992 the higher-ups at Archie weren’t paying any attention to what they were publishing. At the time, I thought that bringing back the eyes of Sarnath plotline four years later was brilliance; but I was a comic-collector child and re-read my old books constantly. I have to wonder how many kids had either picked up the series later or just had forgotten they’d ever read the older stories. Four years for the adult Spider-Man audience is nothing, but four years when it’s a third of your life so far?

There were a lot of clever ideas in the series, and they did a lot more with the “buy more toys” character than I remember the TV show managing. The attempts to add cultural depth were clunky (I’m pretty sure the portrayals of Japan, Tibet, Israel, native American cultures, etc wouldn’t fly today), but it was a pre-internet era and they get credit for trying. The arc resolutions were very hit-or-miss; Clarrain was great at leaving every issue on a cliffhanger but had some real issues with pacing his climaxes and denouement. I remember this series fondly and the parts that stuck out to me as a kid seem to hold up.

I have a few issues of the Mighty Mutanimals comics, a bunch of the standalone miniseries, and a fair number of specials released in 1993/1994; I may or may not detail those.

 

[Beowulf]

Okay, one more entry: Let’s take a quick look at the big bag of miniseries and tie-in books.

TMNT Present Mighty Mutanimals (#1-3), reprinted as the single-volume Mighty Mutanimals: Invasion From Space, picks up from TMNTA #19, when Null has revealed his evil plan. Queen Maligna leads her first assault on the Earth, and the Mutanimals from Stump Asteroid come to Earth and meet up with the Earth-based ones in Brazil, where we learn of how Maligna attacks: Her larva eat all the vegetation and turn it into greenhouse gasses that wreck the ecosystem. Fortunately, the turtles and the Mutanimals stop the invasion with their usual flair. Contrast with the Terracide version of the fight against the larva (where the turtles explicitly slaughter them), the Mutanimals knock them out and Cudley ferries them to a “safe” area of Dimension X. Oh, and this makes it clearer that Kid Terra (who assists the turtles during the “Blindsight” arc) was originally a minion for Null who saw the error in his ways.

The following year, TMNT Present Mighty Mutanimals started as an ongoing series that lasted for 9 issues. Unfortunately, I only have #2 (where we learn more of Wingnut and Screwloose’s backstory) and #9 (where the Mutanimals rescue Slash from human captivity, learn that he was from a planet called “Palmtopia” that was destroyed by a warlord who cut down all the trees, and earn his eternal gratitude by setting him up on a palm tree covered nature preserve island.) #9 was published in June of 1993; the Megadeath backup story started in September of the same year. Given comic book lead times, Clarrain must have started planning to kill the Mutanimals before their own book had even finished its run.

TMNT Presents April O’Neil (#1-3) pick up after the events of TMNTA #33, when April, Oyuki and the Warrior Dragon return to the US. April gets fired and gets entangled in a Chinatown gang war, that turns out to be Chein Kahn’s doing: He had been a New York gangster until his rivals sealed him into a container ship, and he made a deal with a demon for survival (which turned him into a dog-man). After the demon was defeated, he was free to return to the states and seek revenge against his rivals and former master. Unfortunately for him, April tricks him into calling upon demon powers that attract the attention of the demon lord he failed…and he’s drawn into the underworld, never to be seen again. The ending sets up April’s new career as a freelance journalist with Oyuki as her camerawoman; and sets up an ongoing romance with Chu Hsi (the Warrior Dragon’s human host) that doesn’t seem to show up again.

TMNT Presents April O’Neil: The May East Saga (#1-3) follows immediately after in the publication schedule and isn’t the slightest bit related. In a story by Stanley Wiater with art by Bob Fingerman, we learn that April is descended from an ancient sorceress named Maiest (or “May East”) who is awakened on a forgotten island. Over the course of three issues April turns into a giant robot, demonstrates incredible ninja skill, shrinks into Splinter’s brain, and learns to trust the villain who cryptically vanishes. It's a particularly crazy story that thankfully ends up having no impact on the wider continuity, only noteworthy to me in that the second issue has a guest inker: My dad’s old partner-in-crime Stephen DeStefano.

TMNT Presents Donatello and Leatherhead (#1-3) – Donny and Leatherhead are working on random tech projects together when a mysterious UFO spirits them away to the Hollow Earth. There, they discover that time run differently and they run a gauntlet of people and animals from various eras of history and mythology. Dinosaurs! Giant turtles and alligators! Swamp witches! Amazons on flying horses! Atlantean aliens! This is another Stanley Wiater piece, but the Garret Ho / Marc Schirmeister art gives it a sense of whimsy. It’s random and ultimately comes to nothing, but it works as a cartoon-esque romp that you don’t expect anything from.

TMNT Presents Merdude (#1-3) – Entertainingly, this is another mini that actually connects into continuity in important ways. (It takes place after Future Shark but before the end of Megadeath.) The first issue features Merdude and Michaelangelo, who have to deal with Naughtikus, an ancient kracken-monster that awakens and threatens Earth…which is caused by Armaggon being picked up in the far future by aliens who he quickly conquers. The second issue is Merdude and Mondo Gecko, which ties into Megadeath as Future-Don helps build the new Mutanimals HQ, and involves Mondo and Candy getting back together. The third issue in nominally about Merdude and Ray Fillet, but it mostly revolves around Bloho (a parody of Lobo with Mister Mind’s powerset) taking brief control of Ray; and Armaggon getting a working time-slip generator which he uses to come back and enact revenge…but that eventually malfunctions and strands him somewhere in time and space. Bloho ends up on the neck of the comatose Naughtikus. Will that ever pay off? Not in any books I own!

Another interesting bit of lore this miniseries produced: Merdude is 5,000 years old; he was a Polynesian fisherman exposed to alien mutagen that merged him with a coelacanth. He theorizes that all mutagen-based lifeforms have the potential to live that long…which is extra tragic given that he’s telling this to Ray Fillet, who dies a few months later. (It’s actually probably something unique to Merdude or the mutagen that he was exposed to, given that Splinter canonically dies of old age somewhere between 1995 and 2092. Coelacanths only live about 60 years, so this isn’t like the turtles’ longevity coming from their inheritor species.)

TMNT Adventures Special (#3-11) – A quarterly book by an assortment of guest authors and artists; the closest it comes to the main continuity is that Stanley Wiater’s character Bookwurm appears a few times. Honestly, I think these are more what the higher-ups at Archie and the comic-buying parents expected from a TMNT comic book. The stories are all stand-alone and the ones that reference preexisting characters (such as Man Ray and Cudley) give you everything you need to know about them.

And that’s pretty much everything. If anyone has any of the books I was missing or has insight into how any of these did or didn’t tie into the Mirage continuity.

And if anyone else wants to read this, IDW actually reprinted the majority of the main series (skipping issues #32-36, which means that all the problematic Tibet and middle east material gets cut out) and including the original Mighty Mutanimals miniseries and Mighty Mutanimals #7, which apparently ties in to Future Shark.

Thanks for joining me, folks!

 

[Johnny Unusual]

This is a good cover but there's something unsettling about it for what is supposedly a kids comic.

 

[JBear]

Coming here from the TMNT thread; thanks for bringing this to my attention! I loved the Archie TMNT comics and owned most of them (they're long gone now; I forget what I did with them). Number 14 was my first issue: I remember buying it at the grocery store with my mother. After that, I visited the local comic shop as often as I could to try and make sure I didn't miss any.

Amusingly, you yadda-yadda'd over what I recall being my favourite issues in the series-- the fight against the 4 Horseman. I remember it was a crossover event with the Mutanimals and that I was able to put the covers together to make a collage. I found a pic online:

(L-to-R: Famine, War, and Pestilence.)

Of course, the Four Horsemen is well-trodden ground, but as a concept they were brand new to me at the time (I was raised religious, but I don't think I knew much about Revelations yet at that age), and they made a big impression.

 

[Beowulf]

Coming here from the TMNT thread; thanks for bringing this to my attention! I loved the Archie TMNT comics and owned most of them (they're long gone now; I forget what I did with them). Number 14 was my first issue: I remember buying it at the grocery store with my mother. After that, I visited the local comic shop as often as I could to try and make sure I didn't miss any.

Amusingly, you yadda-yadda'd over what I recall being my favourite issues in the series-- the fight against the 4 Horseman. I remember it was a crossover event with the Mutanimals and that I was able to put the covers together to make a collage. I found a pic online:

I'm sorry I missed them--as I noted, I never got those issues or read that storyline! Now I'm tempted to see if the pdf "reprints" include that crossover.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Oh shit, I didn't realize this was basically a TMNT Adventures thread -- I'm going to have to read up and catch up, as that's one of, if not my all-time favorite version!

 

[Beowulf]

...I kinda hijacked it.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

It was for a good cause.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Now I have read this thread too!

Wee Octo was kind of freaked out by the whole Mutanimals definitely being murdered, and then seeing their screaming souls in hell.

Wee Octo also had some opinions about Candy Fine and that Twi'lek girl

 

[Rascally Badger]

This is certainly a better use for this thread than me reading forgotten nonsense on DCUniverse Unlimited, like this very cynical Eclipso series from the early 90's.

 

[Beowulf]

This is certainly a better use for this thread than me reading forgotten nonsense on DCUniverse Unlimited, like this very cynical Eclipso series from the early 90's.

I, for one, would love to hear your thoughts about Eclipso. It's the series that ran after the big The Darkness Within annuals crossover, I'm guessing?

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Okay, I FINALLY read all the TMNT stuff, and I was going to add a few comments... but I feel like I should go more in-depth than that, hopefully later today (I don't have time right now).

I will just say that I never understood why people championed Lawson's art. With maybe a few exceptions (like that Terracide cover), whatever he might have been bringing to Mirage, I don't think he was bringing here.

Chris Allan was a pure delight, though (just don't let him do Sonic!).

 

[JBear]

I mean, I guess it's probably too late at this point, but I hope all ya'll Archie TMNT fans voted in the next Top 50 thread, so that I won't be the only one!

 

[Lokii]

It’s not too late!!!

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

The what, now?

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

*cracks knuckles*

Okay, going to go through the above, and lend my own thoughts and memories to one of my favorite comic book series of all time.

Mind, I'm going purely off of memory here, because as much as I'd love to, I just don't have time to re-read the entire series right now (but get me a Time Stopper, a big bottle of Coke, and some snacks, and I'll get started right away).

The Ninja Turtles started life as comic book characters, in a parody of dark and gritty superhero comics of the time. (Particularly Daredevil—in certain canons, the ooze that mutated the turtles is the same that blinded Murdock. And there’s the master named Stick/Splinter and the fight against the Hand/Foot. But I digress.) But they rose to popularity as cartoon characters and were established to be a property aimed entirely at children. So Archie Comics got the license to chronicle their further comic-book adventures.

Shortly after learning about the TMNT in Nintendo Power and diving into the cartoon and toys and such, it came to my attention that the Turtles originated in comic books. "Hey, I like comic books," I thought to myself. "I read Transformers every month, and check out Archie digests on occasion." So I got my mom to take me to a local convenience store that happened to have a comic rack, and to my luck, I found the TMNT comic right there!

"#3? Huh... guess they just started recently?"

Yeah, it was a bit confusing at first, until I found out that this wasn't the comic they'd spawned from.

Issues #1-4 directly adapted from the cartoon, taking the stories “The Return of Shredder” and “The Incredible Shrinking Turtles” in two issues each. Dave Garcia handles both the art and the adaptation of a script originally by Christy Marx and David Wise. Garcia doesn’t quite have a handle on good comic pacing and doesn’t really believe in backgrounds, but the art is decent and captures a lot of the action of the cartoon, if in a slightly slowed-down way. The second story ends with Shredder and Baxter Stockman escaping with the 1st Eye of Sarnath (an alien gem with mysterious powers). In the cartoon, this was the first of a four-part collection of episodes where each of the different eyes does something weird and eventually Shredder gets all three, attaches them to his helmet, and makes terrible use of matter-transforming powers until he’s defeated. In this series, the plot is dropped.

As I recall, #3 came out just before the episode it was based on aired on TV... and the second part the month after. So, uh, spoilers? I guess someone quickly realized this was no way to run a comic, as all the stories would already be aired long before the books ever went to print.

Incidentally, this was #3 of the ongoing series -- there had been a 3-issue mini series prior to this that had much more efficiently adapted the five-part first season of the cartoon.

And so in Issue #5 we meet Man Ray

Who I staunchly refuse to call "Ray Fillet."

It also introduces Stump and Sling

I absolutely did not get this reference when I was a kid.

Ace Duck

While I like the character in general here, I have to admit, he got screwed BIG TIME when it came to cross-media portrayals. Instead of a mutated pilot, here he's an alien duck... which is better than his cartoon portrayal, which was almost NOTHING, save for a cameo on TV as some sort of cartoon character, I think?

Which is weird, because Ace Duck always struck me as one of the more popular guys in the toy line.

You know, I can't remember if I ever reread this story after getting into wrestling. I'm almost afraid to, because it seems like no one who ever featured wrestling in stuff like this back in the day actually understood it.

Issues #8 introduces Wingnut and Screwloose, and is done by alternate art team Ken Mitchroney and Dan Berger, who are significantly more capable. (I feel like a decent number of the “Mutanimals” acquired different origins in the comics versus the cartoon. They’re more commonly aliens than former humans in the comics.)

In Wingnut and Screwloose's case, they were always aliens back then, as I recall. Really hated how they were portrayed as villains in the cartoon, even though that's apparently how they got their start in some comic strip. Well, Wingnut, at least. It was also a slightly bitter note in Shredder's Revenge, where he was a boss, but since it was following the cartoon...

To this day, I still have mixed feelings about that ship, the Skullbuzzer, being a converted Technodrome. Particularly given its relatively diminutive size.

A trip to the rainforest in Brazil introduces Jagwar and Dreadmon

A shame we never got figures of them back then. At least that's been/being rectified more recently. Shame it's at a price where I can't really afford to indulge in them. =(

We also get some nice strong environmentalist themes going, as the turtles raise concerns about destruction of rainforests, water pollution and bad fishing practices.

Always weird when I see people complain about this (not saying you are, it just reminds me). Like, the story is literally about animals and people that have been mutated by toxic ooze, environmental messages are kind of baked into the very core of this entire franchise, what did you expect?

the Warrior Dragon (aka Hot Head)

Who I will only ever refer to as Hot Head either as trivia (laced with disdain), or the 2012 version, who is so entirely different as to not even be the same character in anything but "name".

He DID get a figure, and while I kinda want it, I wish it was more comic-accurate. Given how much the cartoon and comics were pushed to sell toys, it always boggles me how the designs can vary so wildly between versions.

Sadly, he never got a cartoon appearance.

the Donny who exists for the rest of the series is a computer clone of the original, who died in cyberspace.

Yikes. I don't think that ever occurred to me.

...I'm just going to assume that if there was such a problem, Splinter would have noticed through, I dunno, meditation or something.

#23 picks up with Krang on Morbius, the Dump-world, where he meets Slash, an alien turtle inexplicably searching for a palm tree. They team up with Bellybomb, hijack a ship, and go retrieve Bebop and Rocksteady. Then they catch up with the Turtles and Shredder, and #24 ends with Krang placing himself over Shredder’s head and taking over his body.

Much as I love some of the earlier stuff, for me, this is where the comic really starts hitting on all cylinders... almost. They switched from Allan to Lawson for art in the middle of #24, didn't they?

That aside, when I would go back and re-read the series, unless I really wanted to revisit something in particular earlier, I think this was my general starting point.

Why take Shredder specifically when there are much stronger (and dumber) mutants around?

Schadenfreude? I dunno, Krang and Shredder never really seemed to hit the "old married couple" relationship here their on-screen counterparts did, and I'm not sure I ever really got the vibe that they even liked each other. Krang probably did it for shits and giggles because he doesn't like Shredder, and probably felt he was responsible for what happened somehow.

Or maybe the dumb ones have their own utility as henchmen, while Shredder and Krang were only ever going to butt heads, and it is still a good body... eliminate the competition while leveling yourself up? Why not?

I have almost the rest of the series (my last issue is #69; the series ended with #72) and a number of the tie-ins. By the time the series ended in 1995 I was in middle school and reading pretty much DC’s entire product line (including some Vertigo stuff I probably shouldn’t have been), so it occupies my brain differently. I’ll do some more write-ups soon.

Heh, I was in high school when the series ended. To be honest, it felt perfectly synced with me and how I was growing up -- I was the right age for the cartoon and this when they came around, but this felt like it kinda grew up with me, and offered me a more mature take on the Turtles that wasn't quite so heavy as the Mirage stuff -- at least, not initially.

You know, this is probably going to take longer than I initially thought (shocker). I think I'm going to break these down by post, too... especially since lunch is almost ready.

 

[Lokii]

You should definitely submit a list!

There are now 25 entries left to submit. You have my support - TMNT Nom Thread!

Top 50 TMNT Stuff AND MORE! A very merry cowabunga to all you teenage mutants and hero ninjas. We’re here to talk some turts! Those turtle boys ain't been cutting no slack for thirty years now and, despite being a property so much of it’s late-80s/early-90s era, it’s managed to stay vibrant...

talking-time.net

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

I think it's too late now?

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I think it's too late now?

A
@LBD_Nytetrayn The host just told you ya got some time. As the host of many of these lists, the deadline can often be soft, since tabulation takes time.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Oh, okay. Sorry, guess I missed that part. I'll try to get something in soon.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

After the big wrap-up in #25, Dean Clarrain takes a break from scripting duties and Doug Brammer steps in for two issues. In #26 Master Splinter is telepathically contacted by a Tibetan yeti named T’Pau with dire warnings, and he and the turtles are teleported to Tibet and then abducted by the alien Boss Salvage. Salvage isn’t a villain, though, he’s just trying to save rare species from dying worlds, and fears human pollution will destroy Earth.

In #27, April gets stranded in Innsmouth, MA where a trio of animals mutated by toxic waste are getting revenge by feeding the waste to the townspeople and turning them into zombies.

These two kinda had me worried at the time, because I was digging the vibe they were putting down just prior to this. Knowing that things returned to that, these are pretty good. Also, #27 had a character that seems to be the inspiration behind Scratch, one of the rarest figures from the original TMNT toy line! (He also appeared in TMNT3: Radical Rescue on the Game Boy, presumably as a result of having a toy, and that's on the Cowabunga Collection, of course.)

These two issues also continue the April/Splinter backup stories, which lead directly into the Midnight Sun trilogy in #28-30. (This is also the point where Chris Allen becomes the main artist on the series, and he is notably better than any of the teams before him.) The Turtles, along with April and Splinter, travel to Japan to rescue the Warrior Dragon, who they learn was kidnapped by Chien Khan and his sidekick Ninjara. Chein Kahn’s plan is to use magic to control the Warrior Dragon, have him attack a nuclear plant and cause a meltdown, and use the energy from that to create a gateway to the wold of demons. As the battle rages, Splinter meditates and summons the creators Izanagi and Izanami, who seal away the demon. In the aftermath, Kahn escapes, but Ninjara has a change of heart and decides to accompany the turtles. An interesting side part of this story is that it reveals that Splinter was born in 1930, and in 1945 he and his great-uncle witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima. So in 1991, he’s old for a man and ancient for a rat.

Over the next few issues, the turtles travel across Japan and then continue across Asia. In issue #33 the human characters fly back to the US (including Oyuki, who becomes April’s ward/sidekick in the background of the rest of the series), and Splinter, Ninjara and the turtles begin a wider pilgrimage, first across China to Tibet. #33 also introduces the four-armed tiger Katmandu, and then #34 the great spiritual leader (and former mentor to Splinter) the Charlie Llama. In #35 they continue to the middle east, where we learn the story of The Black Stone of Mecca. (And the lost White Stone.) Which includes a comic page that could be published in 1992 but boy oh boy...not ten years later. Or today.

Just this whole long arc, from their going to Japan to coming back home, was probably one of my favorite extended stories in the whole book.

Ninjara would be a long-term favorite of mine, going on to partially inspire a character of my own years later.

And I gotta say, I really liked this version of April at the time. The outfit, the long hair, her ability to actually fight... she was probably my favorite at the time, and still a favorite to this day.

Those later issues there were apparently not reprinted by IDW for their collections, which... to be honest, I kinda hate, especially as I'm not sure my original copies survived (let's just say that... stuff... happened). I really wonder if they couldn't have edited that page, or done something with it. Seems like a waste to cut an entire chunk out of the ongoing story like that...

Then we hit a gap in my collection: I’m missing issues #36-40. TMNTPedia tells me that in #37 Cudley takes the turtles for a round of wrestling at Stump Asteroid; in #38-39 the turtes team up with the Mighty Mutanimals to fight the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Null in Brazil; and in #40 a spirit takes Donatello to 1492 to try to defend the natives against Christopher Columbus, but he fails.

I missed some of these when I was a kid. I really don't know what was going on with some of these places where I'd get my comics at the time.

#42-44 are the best-named set of comics: The Future Shark Trilogy. It features a shark-mutant named Armaggon, who’s working to control the future with Shredder and Verminator-X, who had been sent back to retrieve the Black Stone of Mecca for their plans. Donatello and Raphael appear in a time portal and bring the present-day turtles, Ninjara, and Splinter into that future: A flooded New York City that Cudley had first revealed to them way back in #7. In the intervening decades, Splinter died of old age, the Greenhouse effect melted the ice caps, Donatello made a fortune inventing rat traps (and earned the ire of the Rat King), and his partner Manx became the evil cyborg Verminator-X. And then Donny invented time travel, digging out the crystal locator and finding the Second Eye of Sarnath (remember that dropped plot from #3-4?) to use as a power source. Armaggon and Verminator-X stole the time-slip generator (and the Eye, and kidnapped the other two turtles and Merdude), then plucked Shredder and the first Eye out of the timeline. The villains have been making limited jumps to the past to retrieve power sources for the generator, including nuclear fuel from Null’s schemes, the bones of the Roswell alien, Hitler’s brain, and the White Stone of Mecca. The turtles jump in before the villains can complete their plan, but an accident with the time-slip generator traps half of them with Armaggon in a strange fairy-filled realm called Thanatia. In issue #44, half the group fights the Rat King (come for revenge) and we answer a bit of turtles lore: Can the Rat King control Splinter? (Answer: Yes!). The other half defeats Armaggon and strands him in Thanatia, which the stinger reveals is a farther-future Earth. Then Future-Don retrieves the generator and sends everybody home, with seemingly only Verminator-X escaping.

I friggin' loved this story, but sadly missed out on the third part.

One thing I loved was how they picked up on the hanging Eye of Sarnath thread.

And I think Rat King has always been able to control Splinter? That's kind of his deal when it comes to the Turtles.

Also, Armaggon was a great addition, and I love seeing him turn up in stuff like Tournament Fighters on SNES and the 2012 series.

Shredder’s personal timeline becomes an ungodly mess, though: Armaggon picks him up from issue #4, taking the Eye of Sarnath and leaving Baxter behind. That Shredder appears in Saudi Arabia in #35 and steals the two Stones of Mecca (but loses the Black one). Then he loses to the turtles in #44 and presumably is sent back to #4, where he returns to plotting with Krang, gets sent to prison by Cherubae, escapes and copies Donny and Vid Vicious, gets Krang put on his head, and gets freed by the turtles. But then...how would he know in #36 that he “owes” the turtles (from #25) if, from his perspective, it hadn’t happened yet? (TMNTPedia claims they erased Shredder’s memory before sending him back; there’s nothing in the actual comic to support that. And it wouldn’t solve the problem.)

He seemed kind of confused about it at the time, then he remembered. I figure maybe it's like the timeline trying to reconcile itself, maybe.

Didn't know about the mindwipe, or even that they sent him back!

#45 is a one-shot with Mitchroney art that retells the Turtle’s origin, in case you’re a new reader or have forgotten it after all this time.

#46 is another one-shot starring Raph and Ninjara. We learn that Ninjara’s birth name is Umeko, and meet her brother Naga. They travel to the secret enclave of fox-people who Ninjara was estranged from and rescue her grandmother, with a side-trip through Yomi, the Underworld. But also, a giant robot shouting “Sarnath” appears in Central Park, so in #47 the rest of the team go and meet the giant robot whose eyes we’d been wondering about since issue #3. Seems the alien who showed up in #3 was a Mergia, creators of the Triasts (which Sarnath is one of). The robotic Triasts were kept as slaves, but revolted, seeking equal rights as sentient beings. When the Mergia lost, Sarnath’s master stole his eyes and fled. Sarnath eventually made it to Earth and found one of his eyes near the alien’s buried body in Central Park. Sarnath assimilates a news camera because he needs his other eyes to see, otherwise. (And the turtles have to break the bad news that Sarnath’s other two eyes are one hundred years in the future—which is not strictly accurate, as only one made the time-jump and the other stayed buried until future-Donny found it, but is good enough when you’re trying to prevent a paradox.) The turtles rescue Sarnath’s alien dog Qark, but are briefly caught on live-broadcast news cameras in the process. But that’s a problem for another day, because they pick up Raph and Ninjara and head for Dimension X in Sarnath’s ship.

#48-50 are the Black Hole Trilogy. They arrive in Dimension X to discover a new black hole has appeared, and they’re attacked by the Imperial Aerwyl Fleet who mistake them for “Nova Squadron.” The battle damages the ship, and it and Sarnath fall into the black hole while the turtles are rescued by Nova Posse—deserters from the Imperial fleet’s Nova Squadron. They convene with a bunch of guest stars at Stump Asteroid where an armada is massing; but then Don is abducted by the Sons of Silence.

Donny wakes up in a white void where the Sons appear to be worshiping the Turnstone, which Cherubae wished out of existence back in #13. Sarnath and a crashed Imperial fighter both appear, and we learn that the void is the inside of the black hole. And the Turnstone, somehow sapient and running the show, starts speaking to Donny. Meanwhile, the rest of the coalition goes to defeat Emperor Mazool of Aerwyl, who’s trying to use the chaos of the expanding black hole to conquer the remains of Dimension X. (Joke for adults that went over my head in 1993: The ship the turtles use is the Imperial Starship P’ntaang.)

I think I missed several of these, too, thinking back on it. I think I started finding issues again during the Black Hole Trilogy? Or maybe right after.

I think I got some back issues later, but not all of them, which unfortunately just makes things a little more confusing.

A side story: I didn’t read #50 in 1993. It had a shiny variant cover and the local comics shop didn’t order enough for the demand from collectors, so I didn’t know how the story ended for years. Then in 1999, I was at a high school party and struck up a conversation with a cute goth girl, and we ended up talking comic books. I mentioned that TMNT Adventures #50 was a white whale in my collection, and a month later she produced a copy for me for a birthday present. (The flirting never went anywhere and I lost touch with her not long after, but I’ll always be grateful that she went bin-diving for me.)

Nice!

In #51, the Chameleon returns, having significantly upgraded his shapeshifting abilities. He hunts down the turtles to see if they know how he might become human again...but they don’t, so oh well. In #52 we discover that Scumbug and Wyrm have been living in some sort of weird symbiosis in the sewer, but a new alien villain named Toxzeem freezes them into “crystal death” and they’re shattered. (During both issues, April’s reporter colleagues bumble their way through trying to get more footage of the turtles or other mutants and mostly fail.)

#53-54 are the two-part The Animus War storyline. An alien creature called Animus steals “The Scroll of the War of the Children of Light and Children of Darkness” from the Dead Sea Scroll collection in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Which, just starting off, um. UM. Then, continuing to remind us that it’s pre-9/11 America, April gets the turtles into Israel by packing them in her luggage. They arrive to a special news report about riots being lead by Al’falqa and Katmandu, who are clearly under mind control. Ariella Yahuda, the Israeli soldier who’s been keeping tabs on April reveals herself to be Golani, a blue-skinned Twi’lek-like being with magical superpowers. Animus has been called forth by the children of darkness he calls the Hashasheem (I’m guessing a misspelling of hashashim, the Islamic sect we get the word “assassins” from), in a ruin called Nimrod’s Fortress. They discover they can hurt Animus with light, but Mike is blinded during the battle. Eventually they hurt down Animus’ lair, steal back the dead sea scroll, causing him to weaken and shrink, so they seal him in a snow globe.

Hm, my ability to get each issues as they came out was really spotty around this time. I think I had 51, I definitely had 52, and to my great dismay, I think I missed the last two parts of the Animus War.

I kinda hated Mikey being blinded at the time, since back then, he was my favorite.

While all of this is going on, a 7-part backup story called “Megadeath” is also running in issues #48-54. (Just in case you wanted reassurance that the Moral Guardians still weren’t looking.) Future Don and Raph come back to try to change history, but by the end of it, all of the Mighty Mutanimals are dead anyway. This also features the return of Jim Lawson’s painfully terrible art. This leads directly into the Terracide trilogy, which I’ll pick up with next time.

I think I came back in right after this, as I opened it up and the Mutanimals were just frickin' dead. That was jarring AF.

I guess I didn't have as much to say here, since collecting was really spotty for a bit there, but I think the next part is around the time I was able to get them as they came out again.

I really should get those collections and get caught up...