TMNT: Saturday Morning Adventures timeline and reading order

[ToTheNines]

I know we don’t have many readers here, but what the heck? My FW timeline will be in the spoiler tags (omitting seasons 8-10, of course). Let me know if you have any notes!

Spoiler:

Season 1 is June 1990.

Season 2 is June 1990. Miniseries #2 takes place during this season.

Season 3 starts around July 1990. “Michelangelo’s Birthday” takes place on Monday August 13 1990. “Attack of Big MACC” also places season 3 in 1990.

Season 4 starts in late 1990. Easter happens towards the end of the season, which was March 31st in 1991.

Seasons 5 is summer 1991. The turtles turn 16 this season.

Season 6 is Fall 1991 into 1992. Super Irma is Halloween.

Season 7 is 1992. The turtles turn 17 this season.

1992:

Miniseries #1

[Miniseries #2 takes place during Season 2]

Miniseries #3

Miniseries #4

#1-2 The Turtle King

#3 Voyage to... Turtlantis

#4-5 Swapping Pads

Halloween Special (October)

#6 Shiny and Chrome (November election)

#7 Shreddercon! (December)

1993:

“What About Tomorrow?”

#8 A Far-out Encounter of the Ogg Kind

#9-11 Sword of Eddiku trilogy

April Special (April 1993)

#12-14 The Ogglympics

Usagi Special

The Turtles turn 18

#15-16 Enter the Pantheon

#17-18 Mystery at the Museum

#19 Bullion for You

#20 Genie in a Bauble

#21 Crime Wave

#22 A Strike Most Foul (October - World Series)

#23 Agent of D.U.D.E.

#24 Three Nasty Turtles…

#25-26 Lotus Blossom return

#27-29 Pantheon faceoffs

#30-31 Revenge of the Mutagen Man?!?

#32 Christmas with Casey (December 24th)


1994:

#33-35 Perils of the Pantheon (February: sweeps weeks for network television)

#36 And Now for Something Completely Different

#37 Panda Khan

#38 Here There Be (Purple) Dragons (Late May/Early Summer)

The turtles turn 19

#39 A Wyrm and The Muck

#40 A Mondo Metal Time (late Summer)

#41 It’s Fowl Over

Spoiler:

2034: Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael go missing in a time portal

2041: Michelangelo is brought to the Battle Nexus by Savanti Romero

2044: Renet takes Michelangelo and Fugitoid to find the missing turtles after getting a lead

[oldmanwinters]

I never understood "hypertime" as a plot device in DC Comics, but I assume something similar works with the TMNT cartoons & tie-in comics.

[ToTheNines]

Yeah, in reality most comics and cartoons operate on “Peanuts time”. I’m just a weirdo and get obsessed with small details so I can make timelines and see how the characters age.

So hopefully the reading order is useful to people, the timeline stuff is just there for my own amusement. Hopefully it’s not too bothersome. I’m definitely willing to remove the year stuff if people aren’t interested.

I’m also looking for ideas if any of the other miniseries issues could take place somewhere else, or is #2 the lone oddball? Also any other opinions on “What About Tomorrow?”. I just threw it in there close to it’s release date.

[neatoman]

For a moment there I thought you meant the old Archie mini that preceded the ongoing... Which I guess you could include here considering it's a direct adaptation of TV episodes.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by ToTheNines

Yeah, in reality most comics and cartoons operate on “Peanuts time”. I’m just a weirdo and get obsessed with small details so I can make timelines and see how the characters age.

So hopefully the reading order is useful to people, the timeline stuff is just there for my own amusement. Hopefully it’s not too bothersome. I’m definitely willing to remove the year stuff if people aren’t interested.

I’m also looking for ideas if any of the other miniseries issues could take place somewhere else, or is #2 the lone oddball? Also any other opinions on “What About Tomorrow?”. I just threw it in there close to it’s release date.

The only continuity note I have for "What About Tomorrow?" is that it is not during the month of September, thanks to the "see you next fall" joke (and I can reasonably assume no other autumn month). So it works where I have it being some time after #7/Christmas of the previous year.

[ToTheNines]

I think I realized this once and forgot, but Miniseries #4 is definitely post-season 7 since it references miniseries #1.

Does anyone have anything from #3/Super Casey that might help place it? April instantly recognizes Casey’s voice, but I can’t remember them ever interacting outside of his Red Sky episode.

[Heyowakka]

April and Casey first worked together (and probably officially met) in Night of the Rogues.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by Heyowakka

April and Casey first worked together (and probably officially met) in Night of the Rogues.

Did she have his number in that one? Or was that “Cyber-Turtles”?

[Heyowakka]

Well, it’s been a while so I had to check, but April apparently contacted both Casey and Zach off screen, so she must have gotten Casey’s contact at some earlier point that wasn’t shown.

[ToTheNines]

That’s a wrap on this one for now. I put the future portions of #41 in spoilers and have a few things to say on it below:

Spoiler:

If it wasn’t obvious enough already, this issue firmly proves that SMA is a different continuity than the FW show. In the show, we know they’re all geezed up and useless in the old folks home by 2036.

Burnham’s script notes say the future stuff is roughly 50 years in the future and he even gives a time frame of 2040-2045. I’m going with an even 50 and calling it 2044.

So then if the Time Machine accident was 10 years prior, that’s 2034. Notice the guys are all still in great shape and nowhere near retiring. So that’s that. Good night!