Cipher
04-19-2010, 01:11 AM
So I'm in this 200 hundred level English class right now, which is a requirement for my major but honestly, beneath what I should be doing right now. I affectionately refer to it as "Bullsh** 101."
Our first essay was supposed to be a justification piece on one thing you cared passionately about. A sport, a piece of art, etc. I chose the Ninja Turtles comic. The essay is super pretentious, but that's what the assignment called for. I just thought someone here might find it interesting. Or not. I think most of the formatting carried over, barring some italics and whatnot.
Also, I had to divide this into two posts due to length.
Why I Love the Ninja Turtles
There are two boxes sitting in my parents’ house. One lays dust-covered and neglected in the rafters of our garage. The other sits open and cared for atop a desk in my room. One is filled to its plastic capacity; the other, half-empty and cardboard, is being filled all the time. Their contents are incredibly similar and endlessly different. I keep two boxes in my parents house, and each is filled with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The forlorn box in my garage is full of action figures, mutants with spring-loaded hands and tiny, single-colored accessories. I haven’t pulled them out in years, except to flirt with the idea of finding all their tiny pieces and pawning them off to collectors. The box in my room is filled, and I know exactly how nerdy this sounds, with comic books spanning the last twenty years, and that is what I refer to when I say I love the Ninja Turtles, present tense. Yet in order to understand what I love about the comics now, a familiarity with my own introduction to the franchise is necessary, as is the history of the franchise itself. I love the comics now because they have an anything-goes, underground, creator-driven sensibility. I love them equally as much, however, for their difference from the action-figure focused Turtles I knew during my childhood. I love them for being a mature version of an immature concept from my earlier years, even if they were created first. I love them because when I read them, I get not only the pleasure of reading something alternately fun and poignant, but also a sense that I have grown up, in whatever negligible way.
For anyone looking for a refresher course, every iteration of the Turtles operates on a few key concepts. Four humanoid Turtles are mutated by a mysterious canister of ooze. The titular characters, consisting of the laid-back Michelangelo, leader Leonardo, brainiac Donatello, and the hot-headed Raphael are trained in the ways of the ninja by their Master Splinter, a humanoid rat. At some point they do battle with the evil Shredder and his band of ninja criminals known as the Foot Clan. Beyond that, the differences between interpretations are enormous, and with such an absurd premise, the sky is truly the limit.
As stated earlier, my favored interpretation now is the original comics, which have run, entirely creator-controlled, from 1984 to 2010. The series’ origin lies in two struggling Massachusetts artists, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, who managed to self publish a small run of a single-issue comic known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The initial issue was intended as an homage and parody to the vast number of overtly dark teenager, ninja, and mutant-focused comics dominating the field. It took the industry by storm, prompting the creation of several more issues, guest artists, and a toy-and-cartoon empire which would vastly eclipse the adult-oriented comic in the public eye. All the while, new issues continued to be published in an underground setting.
To understand my love of the comics, understanding my history with the child-oriented toy and cartoon series of the early ‘90s is essential. Those interpretations provided my first link to the Turtles, and provide a comparison to the material I now enjoy. It isn’t difficult to figure out what interested me as a three-year-old boy. The “cowabunga”-ing, pizza-eating, craziness of the cartoon, which was designed as an advertisement for the equally colorful and enticing toy line, was impossible to avoid between 1989 and 1993. It was equally, I’d argue, impossible not to like. The characters were bizarre and creative, the plots self-aware and humorous, and the merchandise fun and self-perpetuating. I can’t attribute my creative interests wholly to sitting down in front of Ninja Turtles, but forming my own half-hour adventures with a massive collection of action figures may have played a role. I remember being so enthralled by the world of these characters that I once kicked a costumed “Ninja Turtle” in the shins at a friend’s birthday party, in ’94 as far as I can guess. Hey, ninjas are supposed to fight, aren’t they?
So, yes, I loved the cartoon and toy line with every other kid my age. But those aren’t my Turtles now. It’s not my version. My version begins in 1984 with a self-published parody so far in tone from the cartoon it becomes difficult to place them in the same franchise. It begins with a single, self-aware issue in which four mutant reptiles duel a ninja assassin to avenge their rat sensei’s former owner, and it revels in all its over-the-top, brooding glory. It marks the start of a series twenty-five years in the making, funded separately from cartoon so that it always treaded water as an underground production. It’s a series which throughout the years has experimented wildly with tone, art, genre and subject matter. From ninjas to aliens, humor to noir, experimental art and occasionally poignant writing unexpected from its jokey premise, the comic presents itself with gleeful abandon. But I’ll get to all that in a bit.
By freshman year of high school, I had forgotten the Turtles. My interest didn’t return until, sorting through a cabinet full of old school papers bound for the trash, I came across the first four issues of the series, purchased years earlier by my father during the fad. I had always been aware of the comic books and their adult demographic, and had even flipped through them once as a kid, but they simply never clicked. I read through them again, so many years later, and found myself enjoying their simple fun, their ‘80s-styled grittiness in artwork and content, their self-aware elements of parody. It wasn’t enough to hook me, but it was nostalgia enough to get me to search out and purchase a few more issues. And that, for me, was the beginning. Well, the second beginning.
Imagine you’re fifteen years old. You’re feeling ironic, at least enough to laud a childhood pastime on occasion. Now imagine you’re a budding English major too, and that your favorite thing to do is write fluffy papers on short fiction at three in the morning, or at least it seems to be. Finally, imagine someone handing you everything you loved about childhood genre, all that action-packed fluff, and saying, “Here, analyze this.” And you find, to your surprise, that you can. That was the rediscovery of the Ninja Turtles comic for me. Here were the characters from my childhood, but somehow more sophisticated. The more I read, the more I discovered its bizarre art from a collection of underground talent. I saw its clever parody. I found a series which, while being wonderfully reckless and silly, followed its titular characters throughout their life and aging, and dealt with those issues in a down-to-earth manner. One issue had the Turtles go on an intentionally over-the-top romp with pastiche superheroes. The very next ended with Raphael coldly contemplating that they were the last of their kind. It’s difficult to describe, but I know what aspects drew me back in. It was fun, it was poignant, and sometimes both at once. It was all those things multiplied double by the nostalgia-glasses I wore while reading it.
I enjoy the series most when it’s being poignant, at least as poignant as Ninja Turtles can be, and that’s perhaps its most relevant tone when discussing the difference between it and the cartoon from my childhood. A thirteen-issue storyline titled “City at War” remains one of my favorite pieces of genre fiction, contrast to literary, to this day. It sees the Turtles and their supporting cast deal with a criminal power vacuum of their own, accidental making, and brings their act of vengeance from the beginning of the series into perspective. At the same time, their human friends April and Casey seek new lives in different parts of the country, drifting in and out of jobs and relationships only to return to New York. Just when it all sounds like fantastic melodrama, it’s not. One panel into the Turtles playing a melancholy game of cards and mulling over the state of their lives through pithy dialogue, avoiding issues and speaking like four honest, confused teenagers, it’s clear that it’s not. When I first read it some six years ago, I was looking at characters from my childhood, being enthralled by them, and somehow, feeling adult.
Our first essay was supposed to be a justification piece on one thing you cared passionately about. A sport, a piece of art, etc. I chose the Ninja Turtles comic. The essay is super pretentious, but that's what the assignment called for. I just thought someone here might find it interesting. Or not. I think most of the formatting carried over, barring some italics and whatnot.
Also, I had to divide this into two posts due to length.
Why I Love the Ninja Turtles
There are two boxes sitting in my parents’ house. One lays dust-covered and neglected in the rafters of our garage. The other sits open and cared for atop a desk in my room. One is filled to its plastic capacity; the other, half-empty and cardboard, is being filled all the time. Their contents are incredibly similar and endlessly different. I keep two boxes in my parents house, and each is filled with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The forlorn box in my garage is full of action figures, mutants with spring-loaded hands and tiny, single-colored accessories. I haven’t pulled them out in years, except to flirt with the idea of finding all their tiny pieces and pawning them off to collectors. The box in my room is filled, and I know exactly how nerdy this sounds, with comic books spanning the last twenty years, and that is what I refer to when I say I love the Ninja Turtles, present tense. Yet in order to understand what I love about the comics now, a familiarity with my own introduction to the franchise is necessary, as is the history of the franchise itself. I love the comics now because they have an anything-goes, underground, creator-driven sensibility. I love them equally as much, however, for their difference from the action-figure focused Turtles I knew during my childhood. I love them for being a mature version of an immature concept from my earlier years, even if they were created first. I love them because when I read them, I get not only the pleasure of reading something alternately fun and poignant, but also a sense that I have grown up, in whatever negligible way.
For anyone looking for a refresher course, every iteration of the Turtles operates on a few key concepts. Four humanoid Turtles are mutated by a mysterious canister of ooze. The titular characters, consisting of the laid-back Michelangelo, leader Leonardo, brainiac Donatello, and the hot-headed Raphael are trained in the ways of the ninja by their Master Splinter, a humanoid rat. At some point they do battle with the evil Shredder and his band of ninja criminals known as the Foot Clan. Beyond that, the differences between interpretations are enormous, and with such an absurd premise, the sky is truly the limit.
As stated earlier, my favored interpretation now is the original comics, which have run, entirely creator-controlled, from 1984 to 2010. The series’ origin lies in two struggling Massachusetts artists, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, who managed to self publish a small run of a single-issue comic known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The initial issue was intended as an homage and parody to the vast number of overtly dark teenager, ninja, and mutant-focused comics dominating the field. It took the industry by storm, prompting the creation of several more issues, guest artists, and a toy-and-cartoon empire which would vastly eclipse the adult-oriented comic in the public eye. All the while, new issues continued to be published in an underground setting.
To understand my love of the comics, understanding my history with the child-oriented toy and cartoon series of the early ‘90s is essential. Those interpretations provided my first link to the Turtles, and provide a comparison to the material I now enjoy. It isn’t difficult to figure out what interested me as a three-year-old boy. The “cowabunga”-ing, pizza-eating, craziness of the cartoon, which was designed as an advertisement for the equally colorful and enticing toy line, was impossible to avoid between 1989 and 1993. It was equally, I’d argue, impossible not to like. The characters were bizarre and creative, the plots self-aware and humorous, and the merchandise fun and self-perpetuating. I can’t attribute my creative interests wholly to sitting down in front of Ninja Turtles, but forming my own half-hour adventures with a massive collection of action figures may have played a role. I remember being so enthralled by the world of these characters that I once kicked a costumed “Ninja Turtle” in the shins at a friend’s birthday party, in ’94 as far as I can guess. Hey, ninjas are supposed to fight, aren’t they?
So, yes, I loved the cartoon and toy line with every other kid my age. But those aren’t my Turtles now. It’s not my version. My version begins in 1984 with a self-published parody so far in tone from the cartoon it becomes difficult to place them in the same franchise. It begins with a single, self-aware issue in which four mutant reptiles duel a ninja assassin to avenge their rat sensei’s former owner, and it revels in all its over-the-top, brooding glory. It marks the start of a series twenty-five years in the making, funded separately from cartoon so that it always treaded water as an underground production. It’s a series which throughout the years has experimented wildly with tone, art, genre and subject matter. From ninjas to aliens, humor to noir, experimental art and occasionally poignant writing unexpected from its jokey premise, the comic presents itself with gleeful abandon. But I’ll get to all that in a bit.
By freshman year of high school, I had forgotten the Turtles. My interest didn’t return until, sorting through a cabinet full of old school papers bound for the trash, I came across the first four issues of the series, purchased years earlier by my father during the fad. I had always been aware of the comic books and their adult demographic, and had even flipped through them once as a kid, but they simply never clicked. I read through them again, so many years later, and found myself enjoying their simple fun, their ‘80s-styled grittiness in artwork and content, their self-aware elements of parody. It wasn’t enough to hook me, but it was nostalgia enough to get me to search out and purchase a few more issues. And that, for me, was the beginning. Well, the second beginning.
Imagine you’re fifteen years old. You’re feeling ironic, at least enough to laud a childhood pastime on occasion. Now imagine you’re a budding English major too, and that your favorite thing to do is write fluffy papers on short fiction at three in the morning, or at least it seems to be. Finally, imagine someone handing you everything you loved about childhood genre, all that action-packed fluff, and saying, “Here, analyze this.” And you find, to your surprise, that you can. That was the rediscovery of the Ninja Turtles comic for me. Here were the characters from my childhood, but somehow more sophisticated. The more I read, the more I discovered its bizarre art from a collection of underground talent. I saw its clever parody. I found a series which, while being wonderfully reckless and silly, followed its titular characters throughout their life and aging, and dealt with those issues in a down-to-earth manner. One issue had the Turtles go on an intentionally over-the-top romp with pastiche superheroes. The very next ended with Raphael coldly contemplating that they were the last of their kind. It’s difficult to describe, but I know what aspects drew me back in. It was fun, it was poignant, and sometimes both at once. It was all those things multiplied double by the nostalgia-glasses I wore while reading it.
I enjoy the series most when it’s being poignant, at least as poignant as Ninja Turtles can be, and that’s perhaps its most relevant tone when discussing the difference between it and the cartoon from my childhood. A thirteen-issue storyline titled “City at War” remains one of my favorite pieces of genre fiction, contrast to literary, to this day. It sees the Turtles and their supporting cast deal with a criminal power vacuum of their own, accidental making, and brings their act of vengeance from the beginning of the series into perspective. At the same time, their human friends April and Casey seek new lives in different parts of the country, drifting in and out of jobs and relationships only to return to New York. Just when it all sounds like fantastic melodrama, it’s not. One panel into the Turtles playing a melancholy game of cards and mulling over the state of their lives through pithy dialogue, avoiding issues and speaking like four honest, confused teenagers, it’s clear that it’s not. When I first read it some six years ago, I was looking at characters from my childhood, being enthralled by them, and somehow, feeling adult.