TMNT Adventures (Archie) marathon run begins now...

[Andrew NDB]

Actually a few days ago, but that's not important. I'm beginning with #5 (and not, say, #1, or with the 3 issue mini-series that preceded the core series), which is where the original TMNTA storyline really began.

TMNTA #5 **1/2 -- Ah, you can always go home. This was not my first issue of TMNTA as a kid, but it was definitely the first issue I purchased from the back issue bins at Wonderworld Comics in Burien, WA (which became my regular haunt for monthly TMNTA and RoboCop comics, later Aliens, Predator, and Batman). Most will remember this as "the Man Ray issue." To me now, it seems like it Steve "Dean Clarrain" Murphy was struggling a little bit to find the right tone and voice(s) in this, which might be because this is a transitional issue in a lot of ways -- first off, it's a standalone issue that is the first completely original storyline in the series (for most intents and purposes, TMNTA #5 is TMNTA #1), and secondly with #1-4 before it before being literally direct adaptions of actual Fred Wolf cartoon episodes... that the TMNT's dialogue seems a little too "Hey dude" and Shredder seems a little overly whimsical could probably be attributed to this. All in all it's a sound issue, and you can see the seeds beginning of Steve steering the TMNTA ship towards the environmentalism that come more front and center later on. Man Ray is a likable enough character but the plot suffers from (and this gets back to what I was talking about earlier with residual Fred Wolf cartoon influence) a lot of left field nonsense. Example: Shredder wants to blow up the Statue of Liberty with no explanation or reasoning behind this is offered beyond his wish to "make this a Fourth of July New Yorkers will never forget!"

TMNTA #6 *** -- Now this was my first issue of TMNTA. Mary Bones, Leatherhead, Turnstone at all. About the whole mystique of Steve Murphy going under the pen name of "Dean Clarrain" in these, reading these now with a more careful eye I'm wondering why more of us weren't hip to this a lot sooner... examples being, look at the copyright print here. Dean Clarrain is the only credited writer here, this is the first appearance anywhere of the Turnstone, and yet in the fine print, "Turnstone is (c) 1989 Stephen Murphy." Dubious. To me then and to me now, this is where TMNTA really noticeably begins to pick up steam and find its own voice. What I can really appreciate now is how this issue acts like a mirror universe version of Mirage's Tales of the TMNT Vol. 1, #6. Where that issue told of a very different Leatherhead, the outcomes were hauntingly similar: both issues end in a showdown in the sewer on a long bridge (Leatherhead running from a hunter in the case of Mirage, and Leatherhead fighting a personal battle within himself in this issue of TMNTA between the Turtles and Bebop and Rocksteady) in which Leatherhead ultimately whacks it enough times with his tail that it collapses. In the Tales issue he escapes with the TMNT and makes good, but here... he falls into the darkness and we actually end on more of a down note than the Mirage story (which is surprising). The Turtles' voices and such still seem a little rough to me, and Shredder and Saki's relationship/arrangement is still a little suspect, but it's a nice issue that's a definite TMNTA classic. Ken Mitchroney's art isn't for everybody but it's a lot of fun to look at.

TMNTA #7 *** -- Intergalactic wrestling, Cudley Cowlick... and Jim Lawson! It's a lot of fun. I think the idea here is to somewhat mirror (in a way) Mirage TMNT Vol. 1, #6's space odyssey where they ended up doing gladitorial battle on the Triceraton planetoids for sport/the entertainment of the people. It's a much more light-hearted version of events here, of course, with a lot of fun touches. It all takes place on "Stump Arena" (the play on names isn't subtle), run by Stump and his "financial partner" Sling. Basically, it seems like as things go well and ratings go up, Sling grows a lot of dollar bills in his head which Stump is continuously picking and sticking inside his trunk (they're tree people, like the Ents from Lord of the Rings but on crack)... and together they employ Cudley Cowlick, a "transdimensional cowlick." Ever since reading these comics as a kid I've always had a soft spot for Cudley and one of the most exciting things about one of the last issues of Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2 was when word hit that Cudley would appear in it... which amounted to nothing at all, basically. Too bad. In the story we get more of Krang prodding Saki about the Turnstone, and very early on we see Leatherhead is alive and well and recruited into this intergalactic wrestling business... which is all well and good to me, but so fresh from #6 almost immediately invalidates the impact of the self-sacrifice there. The way Cudley just happens to hack up the Turtles' weapons accidentally at a key moment is a little "too neat" to allow the Turtles to get the upper hand, but it's a sound conclusion. When Cudley attempts to take the Turtles home, we get another foreshadowing of Murphy's cautionary environmentalism when the Cowlick accidentally takes the Turtles a century into their future... where they find New York massively flooded as "a result of an out-of-control greenhouse effect." One of those things that haunted me as a kid... I guess Murphy's intent worked. It's particularly topical with what's going on in the south right now.

TMNTA #8 *** -- I remember trading a kid my lunch money in like second grade for this issue. Good times. Basically the Turtles get back to their time and home and right away are accosted by the (apparently) villainous Wingnut and Screwloose. Eventually we learn they're not so villainous, that their world is actually one of many that was annihilated by Krang in Dimension X. I don't remember (and I don't particularly care to rewatch) how much of the bad-ass the Fred Wolf cartoon ever pretended to make Krang out to be, but here the seeds are planted to build him up as a villain that's actually got a bit of cred. It's a pretty straight forward issue.

TMNTA #9 ** -- The Chameleon strikes! Sort of. Jim Lawson and Ken Mitchroney seem to continue their musical chairs on art chores. I'll admit, as a kid, going to buy an issue of TMNTA, walking up to the rack with my mom always felt like a painful roll of the dice. "Is this issue going to be drawn by the Good Artist, or will it be drawn by the Bad Artist?" I'm sad to say back then Lawson was the latter, but now I enjoy and appreciate the hell out of his art more than ever. Honestly, this issue felt like filler then and it feels like filler now. A man code-named "Chameleon" is apparently some kind of double-agent (or so we're told) is being hunted by Bebop and Rocksteady (he knows about some kind of weapon "more profound than an ICBM" that's never really revealed) then, in a somewhat similar fashion to the Leatherhead climax ends up falling between the TMNT and Bebop and Rocksteady in a fight. It's funny when Leonardo slices a robot Foot Soldier in half and says, "See? There's no blood at all!" and looks surprised. I mean, who is he talking to? (answer: the readers, specifically their parents) I get this has splintered into its own universe, but if those first few episodes of the Fred Wolf cartoon are grandfathered in (which they kind of have to be, given #1-4 plus the original mini)... they hacked up lots of robot Foot Soldiers in them and it wasn't like they found any humans in their ranks so there'd ever be any worry about, "Uh oh, maybe you cut up one of them and it ends up it's a human." Just an oddity. Another oddity is when Chameleon is mutated into a Chameleon, he seems to grow bigger, big enough to Bruce Banner-rip through his clothing... and then the next time we see him he looks half his size as he's crawling on the wall. At the end Chameleon seems to have a change of heart and we find out that he turned over his super secret cool weapons plans to the U.N.. It's a sound character arc, I just have no idea why he had this... just the shock of his mutation gave him the heart of gold now? It's not clear and the issue just seems like an excuse for a random mutant encounter.

[DrSpengler]

Issues 5-13 of TMNT Adventures are a favorite arc of mine, predating Stephen Murphy's soapbox and featuring alternate, more well-written takes on the Fred Wolf villains (and yeah, I did love seeing all the Playmates toys getting spotlight issues).

I suppose those issues are "cruder" than the later ones in the series, and the toy-shilling nature might be a little intrusive, but once I started getting into the "Captain Planet" era of the book, I found myself pining for these early days.

[Andrew NDB]

TMNTA #10 ** 1/2 -- Mutant Cockroach Man vs. Mutant Worm Man! I really dug this issue as a kid but I'm a little bit meh on it today. Joining Mitchroney on art this time out is Dan Berger on inks, which is fun to see/pick up on now. The Turtles, troubled by what Wingnut/Screwloose told them of Krang's crimes, go out at Splinter's suggestion to track down leads to finding Krang. Things pause for a bit of camp as Shredder hires an exterminator to come to his super secret villain lair... before the guy quickly becomes exposed to cockroaches and ooze (you see where this is going). The Turtles don't get far before they again find themselves in the middle of mutant mayhem... Wyrm (whose mutation is a little bit shady... he's a flatworm that touches a rat and then mutates into a humanoid worm that can speak perfect English? I'm not entirely clear, but I think the idea here was to do sort of a tamer riff on "Bloodsucker" from Rick Veitch's "The River" arc over in the Mirage books) challenges Scumbug (we assume that's his name from the copyright but it's not stated in-issue anywhere) because is "taste is strong." The two (apparently, you know how these things go) kill each other by some live wires near some leaky natural gas as the Turtles suddenly wonder why there's so many rats.

TMNTA #11 *** -- No surprise to any TMNT fan where the end of the last one was going... straight to the Rat King. Only here we meet a very different Rat King. An almost perfect marriage between the Rat King of the Mirage comics and the Fred Wolf cartoon, more favoring the former. When you look at it in the context of the story it's kind of disposable, however... he just sort of shows up and there's a multiple page interaction about, "Don't trespass!" "We didn't mean to trespass!" ending with, "OK we cool, go thattaway." It was a nice opportunity to allow Leo to show his honorable leader side (the way he shows Rat King a large degree of humility) but it didn't really add much to the story. They go and have a scuffle with a beefy Foot Soldier that ends up just kind of falling into the river and self-terminating, the Turtles go up into the HQ of Shredder to be frozen by the "Sons of Silence" (think the traditional "Gray" aliens of pop culture), who are quickly revealed to be in cahoots with Krang and Shredder. Mary Bones turns into Cherubae and transports away to Dimension X and whisks the Turtles away from the clutches of Krang as well. The end reads particularly confusing... Krang tells Shredder and company that he's converted the Technodrome into a spaceship above Earth... while the next page he finishes his sentence and it looks like they're already aboard said ship heading away from the Earth? I would have gone with a different design for the ship as well... the Technodrome is a massive thing, and this ship looks smaller than one of its tracks. This issue works, though largely as a prelude to the larger "Final Conflict" payoff coming up.

[Jester]

But Spengs, once you get past some of the extreme eco-preachyness, the stories get better. Heck, Murphy even gets to a point where he approached it with a little more subtlety...well for him anyway.

[DrSpengler]

Oh yeah, by the Future Shark Trilogy things got better. Still "the Earth is doomed" laden stuff, but he married his environmental agenda with quality storytelling a lot better by then.

But I still love those early issues because there was no ulterior motive to the writing aside from shilling action figures and it still managed to do that while telling entertaining stories, too.

[oldmanwinters]

Eh, I'll admit it, eco-preaching or not, I love just about all the Archie issues! It was definitely the most sophisticated comic I read as a kid... which, admittedly, isn't saying a lot.

Originally Posted by DrSpengler

Oh yeah, by the Future Shark Trilogy things got better. Still "the Earth is doomed" laden stuff, but he married his environmental agenda with quality storytelling a lot better by then.

But I still love those early issues because there was no ulterior motive to the writing aside from shilling action figures and it still managed to do that while telling entertaining stories, too.

For me, there were two high water marks that really transformed the series. The first was the "Midnight Sun" arc; in retrospect, it doesn't quite hold up to my nostalgia but it felt like the most epic adventure of the series to date, and of course I loved the Warrior Dragon... even if he was making out with April on his downtime. Ewww. That Japanese adventure led to the World Tour arc that introduced Ninjara, Tatoo, the return of Shredder, Verminator X, more Stump Asteroid, and culminated with the "United We Stand, Divided We Fall" crossover. It also established April and Splinter as genuine warriors who weren't gonna be used as Turtle Bait.

The second high water mark was the Future Shark Trilogy. I think that arc solidified my love for the series. Every month, I waited anxiously until the next issue. And once that plot got resolved it led to Terracide, Blindsight, and the Cyber-Samauri Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had some serious emotional investment in the series by that point, and I was actually afraid that some of the major characters might actually get killed off eventually. I always figured Ninjara or the Future Turtles would be the most likely candidates to bite the dust.

[PizzaPower]

have not read them, would deff love too.

[Eiko]

Love the Archie series. Future Shark Trilogy will always be my fav.

[Andrew NDB]

TMNTA #12 ***1/2 -- There's nothing quite like seeing a storyline this long pay dividends. The previous issues with Leatherhead, with Wingnut & Screwloose, with Stump Arena, with Krang's machinations and the "Final Conflict" prophecised by Mary Bones/Cherubae back at the beginning (of course, isn't it kind of a suspense killer when Mary Bones told the Turtles directly that they were going to win the Final Conflict?). Not too much to say about this one, which is all about putting the players on the board and setting the battlefield for the final act (the next issue)... you can almost hear the epic music building up at the end of this, it's palpable. We also catch our first glimpse of the evil insectoid empress, Maligna, who seems poised to take Krang's role as head bad guy soon to come.

TMNTA #13 **** -- The Final Conflict itself. It's so rare you ever read a story like this at this epic level with such a satisfying beginning, middle and end. As a kid it was like the bad-assiest conclusion to what then made previous issues into quite the journey, the story arc finisher from which all other story arc finishers must be judged. Now I read it and it's still pretty damn good -- probably the high point so far of the TMNTA line -- but now the holes are jumping out at me. For instance, the Turtles are getting pummeled by Krang in his "Skullbuzzer" ship that was built from the Technodrome and things look grim but then Cherubae just picks up the Turnstone and makes everything better, banishing away Krang, Shredder, and Bebop and Rocksteady. This begs the obvious question... if she could do this with the Turnstone, why didn't she just do it at the beginning of the last issue? Or even as Mary Bones on Earth? She had the Turnstone until she lost it mid-issue last issue... why the need to bring the Turtles to some random planet to fight Krang's peeps mano-e-mano for no reason? Leo's Bruce Wayne-like admonishment of Trap about "No guns! Guns are not honorable" and the later "Think about what I said!" are kind of groanworthy, too, but probably necessary in an Archie book.

[CyberCubed]

I think Murphy was a bit too quick to abandon Shredder/Krang/Bebop/Rocksteady in the series, besides their brief return in that #22-25 story arc.

Obviously they didn't need to be the main villains, but having them appear every so often would have been fine.

[discordiatookie]

Issue 11 was the turning point for me, when I first read these. It went from being an okay comic, getting better but still just okay, to one that I was like, wow - this is pretty awesome actually! Then I started to really dig on the series afterwards.

[darthsmozers]

Andrew, this is fun to "reread" the issues through your summaries and critiques, which are fun and not too serious. Looking forward to more!

[Andrew NDB]

TMNTA #14 **** -- To me this issue represented a huge turning point for the book, where the ecological issues really came to the forefront. Things did this, and yet the issue still manages to tell a pretty decent story. What we have going on here is the Turtles being dropped off -- APPARENTLY randomly (we find out later it wasn't quite so random... Cudley's got more foresight than he lets on, it seems) -- in a Brazilian rainforest by Cudley Cowlick. Almost immediately they run into Jagwar, a humanoid, um, jaguar, and it becomes clear that April O'Neil had wandered into the rainforest to be abducted by local mercs. In the core of the story we see illustrated what might now be considered a very Avatar-like symbiotic relationship between man and nature, or the whole Lion King circle of life thing -- "they watched as the fly was eaten by the tarantula and he tarantula by the coati, whose corpse was always seeded by the eggs of insects and flies as the drama began anew"... jesus. In any case, what might have just been a throwaway issue with Turtles vs. random Brazilian mercs becomes rather thought-provoking. A moment with a Brazilian brandishing a chainsaw evokes Scarface memories, and as it's over April is freed and we get our first Null cameo. Kind of an unusual artist on this one, a Don Simpson. I appreciate his style more now, but I remember his "scaled" look to the TMNT really bothered me back as a kid. I wanted to smack him.

TMNTA #15 ***1/2 -- Ken Mitchroney returns as the story becomes a bit of a "Lost World"-esque foray, complete with dinosaurs. Soon we are introduced to Dreadmon, an apparent mutant wolf that has access to DC Comics' Speed Force, who makes his debut by scooping up and eating "a pate of marinaded monkey bladder" before scurrying off into the night. In the end everyone bands up, becomes friends, and frees a lot of slaves working in some kind of a mine. Another "gun are bads, kids, swear to god!" moment, though this time with the caveat of actually one of the Turtles actually handing one to April to use. Donatello is given a new bo by the village elder in a particularly moving scene and we get another Null cameo/foreshadowing. I vaguely remember being pissed this issue because I sent a letter and/or a picture to these guys around this time and I never saw it in print. Ah well.

Also a random memory... as a kid -- #14 and #15 couldn't have been out more than a month or two -- I was camped out in our massive backyard in a tent as was the fun thing to do in the summer time with a friend or two re-reading these two issues under flashlight... my dad decided to go to the window and shine a flashlight of his own at the tent in a particularly scary manner at ungodly hours, terrifying all of us. We were sh**ing bricks all night/morning, and seriously had no idea what he was doing until the next day when he told us to laughter (without that knowledge, of course, we were left to assume it was some intruder/trespasser/burglar/child rapist on the prowl for fresh meat). Fun stuff, though.

[Jester]

I never did warm up to Simpsons art. Thankfully he only does this issue and a side story in on of the Adventure Specials.

[darthsmozers]

Ahh can't wait to reread mine someday - they're packed away at the moment. If I remember, Shredder makes his return soon. Things are starting to get good!

[CyberCubed]

I wish Shredder showed up a bit more. After his appearance in one of the future issues, we never see him again until Year of the Turtle where he continues his quest of immortality.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I wish Shredder showed up a bit more. After his appearance in one of the future issues, we never see him again until Year of the Turtle where he continues his quest of immortality.

I wish we'd have been able to see him and anyone else Murph would have put into the Forever War.

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by Jester

I wish we'd have been able to see him and anyone else Murph would have put into the Forever War.

If/when Forever War gets released we should, but the story won't be the same as it was back in the 90's.

Year of the Turtle wrapped up Shredder's character perfectly for me, he tries to become immortal, almost destroys the Turtles, and then loses his mind.

In the story Splinter tells Michaelangelo, "This is the last Turtles story, after this one you'll have heard them all."

It brought a tear to my eye just reading that, since I knew it signaled the close of the Archie series.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

If/when Forever War gets released we should, but the story won't be the same as it was back in the 90's.

Year of the Turtle wrapped up Shredder's character perfectly for me, he tries to become immortal, almost destroys the Turtles, and then loses his mind.

In the story Splinter tells Michaelangelo, "This is the last Turtles story, after this one you'll have heard them all."

It brought a tear to my eye just reading that, since I knew it signaled the close of the Archie series.

It wasn't intended to be, though. It was intended to be a fresh start... but sales didn't support that.

Fun fact: Steve Murphy has never read Year of the Turtle.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

It wasn't intended to be, though. It was intended to be a fresh start... but sales didn't support that.

Fun fact: Steve Murphy has never read Year of the Turtle.

I was going to ask...I thought it was a reboot.