Tag Archives: TMNT

September 29, 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Nick Series Episode 1

By Joe

You can’t keep a good turtle down.

When I was younger I don’t think I ever expected the shows and properties I was into at the time to still be popular when I was an adult.  I had a similar conversation with a cousin of mine who happens to be the father of a five-year-old boy.  We were talking about how it was kind of funny you could replace one of our childhood birthday or Christmas gift wish lists with one of his and not notice.  His list was full of Transformers, Spider-Man, Star Wars, and so on.  Some things are expected to stand the test of time, like Spider-Man and Star Wars, but intellectual properties like the Transformers and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Those were kind of unexpected.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have sometimes struggled to stay relevant.  After the bubble burst on the 80’s and early 90’s hysteria they kind of went away.  There was a television show on Fox Kids called The Next Mutation that only last one season and that show was the first attempt at bringing them back.  It was live action and since the budget was so low compared to the popular films it wasn’t received too well by older fans and the younger kids who had missed out didn’t seem to care for it.  After that failure, TMNT co-creator Peter Laird kept the franchise on life support with hopes of bringing the boys into the world of CGI.  I was unable to find anything on the internet, but I recall seeing some rather ugly mock-ups for it on ninjaturtles.com (now owned by Nick) back around 2000 or so.

There’s lots of little 2D visual effects in the show like stars or anime styled throbbing veins and such.

The CG proposal was never picked up, but the Turtles did resurface in 2003 with a new traditionally animated show put out by Fox and 4 Kids Entertainment.  Much like the first film, the new show combined the origins of the comic Turtles with the cartoon series adored by millions to create something that was both respectful to the origins but kept the kids in mind.  I only watched the first season but remember it being a fairly entertaining show.  Certainly if I were a parent I wouldn’t mind sitting thru it with my kid.  It kept the tone some-what serious with comedic breaks to liven the mood, most involving Michelangelo.  From what I could gather from a distance, the show would eventually splinter off away from any of the older versions of the Turtles and establish its own sense of self.  There was even a series titled Flash Forward that took place in the future.  The success of the show, though never approaching the height of Turtle-Mania, probably helped get the 2007 film, TMNT, made.  That’s when the Turtles finally got their CG debut and the results were mixed.  Financially, it did all right but the plot was rather poor and the Turtles looked more like frogs than turtles.  It did have its moments, but no new films in the series (TMNT was a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III) were planned and if a Turtles film is ever produced expect it to be a reboot.

Anyone who has kept up with the Turtles knows by now that a new film was in the works.  Titled Ninja Turtles, it was going to be a Michael Bay production and was likely to be a major reboot for the franchise with the Turtles actually being aliens or something.  Intense negative reactions on the internet and a reportedly terrible script got the project put on indefinite hold.  Alongside it, a new television show and comic book series have been in the works.  The various mediums are not related other than the source material, but it was likely hoped that all of this cross-promotion would really help invigorate the franchise.  The comic has been out for about a year now and is okay, from what I’ve heard, and the television show premiered this morning.

There’s a blockiness, as seen in Leo’s shoulder, to the design of the Turtles that I find off-putting.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Nick Turtles?) is the CG series that never was from the past.  The Turtles have been given a modified look and the show is separate from other incarnation of the Turtles.  One of the larger changes resides in the April O’Neil character who is now a teenaged ally of the Turtles.  For the most part, it’s pretty standard.  We have four teenaged turtles living in the sewer with their sensei, Splinter, who once was a man named Hamato Yoshi.  The Shredder is back as the main villain, and so is Krang who hasn’t been heard from in a long time.  The tone of the show is definitely reminiscent of the old cartoon as this is aimed primarily at kids new to the property.  One actual throwback to the old show for older viewers is the use of voice actor Rob Paulsen who was the original voice of Raphael but will now be handling the Donatello duties.

Visually these turtles look a lot like the ones from the 2003 cartoon.  Each turtle retains his trademarked mask but features brown pads everywhere else.  Their skin tone varies slightly from turtle to turtle and some have freckles while Don even sports a gap in his teeth.  Each one has extra bandages for some reason, I guess to make them look edgier, and retains their standard weapons.  In comparison to the CG film, these turtles are less frog-like but since it’s television the quality is lower.  They’re kind of blocky looking and sometimes they get these weird flat “panels” on their skin that seems inconsistent from shot to shot.  It makes me think of the old 32 bit video games when developers were first getting their feet wet with 3D.  The overall design is fine, but does leave something to be desired.  Splinter has often been portrayed either gray or brown, but in this one he’s multi-colored.  He’s also much taller than the Turtles this time around, which is a departure for the character, and he’s less feeble looking.

The first episode, which was an hour long, serves as the introduction for the Turtles.  Right from the start we’re shown who the dominant turtle is (Raph) and also given a glimpse of their individual personalities.  Nothing surprising here, though each turtle is a little sillier than how they’re usually portrayed, including Mike who’s not only the party dude but also a moron.  Their origin is relayed and it’s fairly close to the one from the old animated series only this time it was Hamato Yoshi carrying the bowl full of turtles and he got into a scuffle with the holders of the ooze, or mutagen, that would come into contact with our protagonists.  The flashback, and others in this episode, are told via hand drawn stills with minimal animation which was kind of a fun break from the CG.  Later in the episode we’re told that Yoshi had a wife and daughter and lost both to the Shredder.  He confirms his wife is dead but uses the word “lost” when speaking of his daughter so expect her to surface at some point (perhaps as Kiara?).

Expect to see more of this guy in future episodes.

The animation is better than I expected.  The Turtles and other inhabitants of the world move well enough and it’s on par with the best CG one can find on television.  There is a bit of a disconnect between the Turtles and their environment that may or may not be apparent to all viewers.  Most of the backgrounds are fairly dark as well to probably make it easier on the artists.  Sometimes this leads to backgrounds that are mostly black which doesn’t look good on TV.  The music is mostly a collection of electronic instruments, the only notable moment for me was the chase sequence about halfway thru.  The new theme song is basically a hip hop remake of the original television theme.  The less said the better.

The tone of the show reminds me more of the ’07 film than the animated series.  It’s light on one-liners but definitely aims to keep things upbeat.  When the fighting starts the Turtles do get serious, to a point, and a visual cue kicks in where their eyes become completely white.  It’s kind of interesting, but also kind of odd.  They’ll still pause during battle though at inappropriate times to make a humorous observation.  At first the Turtles appear to subsist on traditional turtle food, but early on in the episode are introduced to pizza and are hooked instantly.  They’re shown to have a television (and Leonardo appears to model himself after a Captain Kirk like TV character) but appear mostly ignorant to the outside world.  Either they don’t watch much TV or they just don’t pay attention.

The show itself introduces us to the Utroms of this universe.  When I said Krang was coming back I may have spoke too soon as the Utroms are now called Krangs.  They operate in the same way but are depicted as villains.  They kidnap April and her scientist father, which is how the Turtles meet her.  Donatello is instantly smitten with her, so we’ll have to see where that goes, but the Krangs are the primary antagonist for this hour of the show.  Shredder is only shown in a cameo, but we can see he’s still the leader of the Foot (unless they choose to rename it) and it appears his head and face has been severely burnt (probably as a result of his last encounter with Yoshi).

This is definitely a kid’s show and older viewers should not expect this program to elevate itself beyond that.  I kind of wish I had watched it with a kid to see how they would have reacted to the jokes and visual gags, most of which are standard kids show clichés.  For me, none of it was very funny but the plot surprised me in that it kept me interested for an hour.  I expected worse, but it seems like the Turtles have a legitimate chance to recapture the hearts of kids once again.  I’ll probably tune in to a couple more of the episodes just to see what other characters from the past return but it’s not something I plan on sticking with.

Post script:  I would categorize my early impressions of this show as tempered enthusiasm.  I expected it would succeed at hitting its target audience but probably not those who grew up with the original cartoon series.  I may have been wrong.  I watched the first few episodes out of sheer curiosity, but now find myself watching them out of sheer enjoyment.  The show is a lot wittier than I could have ever expected.  Some of the Mikey humor is still a little much for adult tastes, but a lot of it is pretty clever and dialogue driven.  The action pieces have also exceeded expectations.  And the many nods to the old series (such as the ringtone on each turtle’s cell phone) is much appreciated.  A lot of my early criticisms about the show’s visuals still remain and it’s become obvious the show doesn’t have the budget to create a thriving New York (seriously, there’s almost no traffic in the city when the turtles are out and about) but that should be expected given this is television and not a feature film.  In short, this show is genuinely enjoyable and I have yet to view an episode that I did not enjoy on some level.  That may not always be the case, but so far so good.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles airs at 11 AM Saturdays on Nick.

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August 12, 2012

TMNT Classic Collection

By Joe

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics are here!

I’ve been out of the toy collecting game for several years now.  I used to enjoy it as a hobby and it was a nice way to link my childhood to my adult life as I pursued action figures of characters I loved as a kid.  It became a compulsion eventually.  I started off just buying the characters I was particularly fond of like Venom and Iceman, but once it became a full-fledged hobby I was suddenly finding myself scouring department store toy aisles six at a time looking for an obscure Man-Thing or Warbird.  That’s when it became about the hunt.  Tracking down the exclusive Wal-Mart wave of Marvel Legends was especially thrilling.  It seems silly in hindsight, but it was kind of addicting.  Eventually though the quality of the figures declined and I also ran out of room for all of these toys.

I got a little taste of that rush today when I tracked down a set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics.  It was a pretty easy hunt as I found a full set at the first place I went to, but I can’t deny it was a lot of fun.  The wondering, the hoping they’d be there.  I credit my interest in the line to my love for the TMNT as a kid and the new collections put out by IDW Publishing of the old books.  I’m currently onto volume 3, expect a review once I finish it.

The reverse side of the packaging.

I’ve talked about it many times, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but I did love the TMNT as a kid and they still hold a soft spot in my heart.  One of my last toy-related purchases before today was for a set of the turtles puts out by NECA.  I dubbed them my all time favorite as they’re a wonderful representation of the turtles as they appeared in the pages of Mirage Studios brand comic books back in the 80’s.  These collections, plus a new line of comics launched by TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman, have helped to contribute to a renaissance for the turtles that will soon culminate in a new television show aimed at kids on the Nickelodeon network.  To capitalize on this, and the original cartoon’s coming 25th anniversary, Playmates has launched a new line of toys aimed at those who fell in love with the turtles through the toys and cartoon back in 1988.

This new line, appropriately titled TMNT Classics, was first shown last February at the New York Toy Fair and has recently hit shelves in speciality shops and big box stores like Toys R’ Us.  The packaging on these new turtles states that they’re based on the look of the turtles from the old cartoon, but it would be more appropriate to say they’re combination of that look along with the style of the old toys.  Back in the 80’s, kid’s shows were basically extended commercials for toy lines and the turtles were no exception.  The toys were developed alongside the show and since Playmates only had concept art to go off of they ended up having their own look.  Each turtles had his own unique skin-tone and all sported solid, white eyes.  It was basically a hybrid of the comic look and the one the cartoon would go with.  These new toys sport the rounded features of the cartoon along with pupils in their eyes but retain their unique skin-tones, though they’ve been changed some.  Raphael has a darker green complexion while Don isn’t as brown as he used to be.  Donatello and Leonardo also retain their shoulder straps and each turtle, excepting Donatello, has wraps around the handles of their respective weapons featuring their trademark color (Raph’s sais are red, Leo’s katana handles are blue, etc).  It’s an interesting approach though I do kind of find myself wishing that Playmates just went all out in trying to make these turtles television accurate.  We already have comic accurate turtles, and the 2003 toy line paid homage to the original toy line, but we’ve never had cartoon accurate turtles.  Yes there was a wave of Toon Turtles in the 90’s but they were pretty crappy looking.

Group shot! Notice how some of the pupils are oddly placed.

Even though they’re not entirely cartoon accurate, these turtles are pretty nice to look at.  They’re loaded with articulation but their features are more reminiscent of the TMNT movie line of figures than the NECA one.  NECA went through the trouble of trying to hide the articulation but Playmates didn’t see need to, so while a lot of poses are possible, the numerous holes and joints do detract from the look of the figures.  And if the joints aren’t tight, it really hinders the amount of poses one can achieve.  My Raph has pretty loose leg joints which makes standing him a chore.  The hands on all of them are particularly combative as each features articulated fingers and thumb.  The finger piece on the left hand of my Leo figure even fell off in the packaging.  They can never get a good, solid grip on their weapons and the hands on all four definitely feel fragile.  There’s also an abdominal joint in each turtle that’s kind of odd.  The show’s animators definitely did take liberties in how the turtles could bend and move in those shells but I’m not sure the abdominal joint adds much.  Playmates at least had the foresight to only insert the joint in the front and not the rear of the shell, which would have looked horrible.

I’m pretty disappointed with Mike’s face sculpt. It just doesn’t suit the character.

Scultp wise, all four turtles are the same with the exception of a unique head sculpt.  The head sculpts are a call back to the original toy line as each turtle features the same or similar expression he had back in 1988.  This means they all look angry and I kind of wish they had gone with less intense expressions.  Leonardo should probably be grim and serious, but Raph and Mike definitely shouldn’t be.  The figures are tall, around six inches, so they don’t fit in with any other TMNT toy line.  They’re not too stocky looking either, and their proportions do remind me a bit of the movie line for the TMNT film.  They have kind of odd looking forearms and really long arms in relation to their legs.  Overall though, the sculpt is pretty solid for each turtle and they look good side by side though I really do wish Mike had a better face sculpt.

As far as accessories go, these are pretty bare-boned.  While the original toy line came with a bunch of ninja stars and other oddities, these turtles only come with their trademark weapons and Don only comes with one bo staff.  Each turtle also comes with a personalized manhole cover stand and their belts can hold their weapons easily.  Some toon specific items would have been fun like a mouser or turtle-com, but oh well.  The quality of the weapons is pretty standard, though Playmates did go above and beyond with Mike and gave him actual chains on his nunchaku which is a nice addition.  I never want to see another Mike action figure that doesn’t feature this.

NECA Don with TMNT Classics Don.

The paint job for each turtle is solid, though not very demanding.  Playmates opted for colored plastic for most of the parts with the paint only really coming into play with the bandanas, eyes, and teeth.  In the case of the eyes, it leaves something to be desired.  The rounded shape of each turtle’s head makes it difficult to paint on pupils that appear to be focusing on the same spot.  As a result, both my Don and Mike almost look like they have a lazy eye.  This has convinced some collectors to just paint over the pupils on their figures and go with the classic all white look.  From what I’ve seen, this actually looks pretty good but does take away from the cartoon look.  I’m not one to modify my toys anyways.

So did Playmates deliver with their classic TMNT line?  Mostly.  These are the most cartoon accurate turtles to date and they feature a lot of articulation which will allow fans to pose them in almost any position they can dream up, provided the joints are tight enough.  Even though they are the most cartoon accurate figures of the turtles to date, they’re still not the definitive take on the source material and the copious amounts of articulation does take away from the look a bit.  They’re also light on accessories which is hard to take considering these are the most expensive turtle figures I’ve ever bought.  I paid 20 bucks a turtle at a specialty shop, though the MSRP is said to be $18.  That’s still a lot of money for an action figure that’s pretty basic but hardcore fans will probably pay it.  I’ll have a hard time finding display space for these guys, but the nostalgic factor alone makes me mostly happy with my purchase.  They don’t top what NECA did with the turtles a few years ago, but they’re pretty damn good in their own right.  If you’re the sort of fan that’s really in love with the TMNT, then these figures are for you.

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May 27, 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection – Vol. 2

By Joe

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 2

There was a time in my life when I thought I was done with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  They had dominated my childhood, but come the early 90’s I had mostly moved on.  I still had a soft spot for them, but their cartoon had become too predictable, the toy lines too ridiculous, and I was already on to my next obsession.  When the television show moved to CBS’s new Saturday morning block the studio revamped it, giving it a darker look in an attempt to mature the series to better appeal to changing tastes.  It didn’t last long in this new format, and the Turtles began to fade away from the mainstream.  In 1997 Fox and Saban Entertainment brought the four-some back for a new live action show, possibly to try to appeal to fans of the Power Rangers, but the show only lasted one season and 26 episodes before being cancelled.

The Turtles mostly vanished from television after the cancellation of The Next Mutation.  It seemed like they were now destined to become just a memory of a silly era where anthropomorphic characters were all over the place in children’s programming.  Something people in the future would look back on and say, “What were they thinking?”  Then a funny thing happened, and the Turtles were suddenly relevant again.

It all started with Fox and 4Kids Entertainment revitalizing the franchise thru a new cartoon developed in collaboration with Peter Laird’s Mirage Studios (by this point in time, co-creator Kevin Eastman wasn’t involved with the TMNT) that premiered on Fox’s Saturday morning cartoon block in early 2003.  Simply titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this new series adapted the original Mirage comics more faithfully then its predecessors while still keeping the show appropriate for younger viewers.  The Turtles had an edgier appearance with blank eyes and a more lean appearance.  Each one had a personality mirroring the ones from the original comic.  Really, the only holdover from the wildly popular 80’s cartoon was the unique bandana color for each turtle.  At times, the show almost directly paralleled the old books before the creators started to branch out and do their own thing, but the show worked and the Turtles were once again relevant.  This helped get a new movie green-lit that was eventually released in 2007, titled TMNT, and has helped keep the franchise alive to this day.  Now the Turtles are owned by Nickelodeon with IDW handling the new comic book line.  A new show and a bunch of new toys (including these awesome retro themed ones) are slated for release later this year in addition to the ongoing comic run now headed by Eastman.  Along the way, IDW has chosen to give the old fans some new collections to thumb thru, and my old Turtle-fandom is back in full-force!

Michaelangelo’s solo issue, featuring the debut of Klunk the cat.

I already talked about IDW’s first release of collected works, and now I’m ready to talk about Volume 2.  Volume 2 is another high-quality release and contains issues 8-11 of the original run, plus the micro issue one-shots for Michaelangelo, Donatello, and Leonardo.  The cover contains new artwork done by Eastman, though it confusingly includes the Triceratons and Fugitioid who don’t appear in this collection, but looks nice.  The interior has been enhanced to a larger size, like the first volume, and is kept in its original black and white.  Each issue is followed by reflections from both Eastman and Laird.  For this collection, Laird has contributed more thoughts and it looks like he was a more active participant.  It’s particularly interesting to read the comments for the later issues when the two discuss their fraying relationship with each other.  Neither guy takes shots at one another, and both come across as sincere when they express their disappointment for how things turned out.

The issues covered by this collection essentially wrap-up the original run of the books.  After issue #11, more people were brought on board and Eastman and Laird didn’t really work together any longer.  The Turtles were also exploding on television and the first movie was in production for a 1990 release.  The issues bring the Turtles back to earth following their exploits in space, and outside of a couple of issues, the story-lines are more reality based this time around (when one ignores the fact that the protagonists are walking, talking, fighting turtles, of course).

The first few issues have a sort of one-shot feel to them as the plot-lines do not tie in with any of the previous narratives.  Issue #8 was a collaborative with Dave Sims’ Cerebus the Aardvark, a comic at the time Eastman was said to be particularly fond of.  It’s some wacky time-travel thing that sees the Turtles accidentally warped to Cerebus’s medieval setting where the two join forces.  There’s some decent humor here, but for someone who isn’t a fan of Cerebus, the cross-over appeal was lost on me and I was interested in getting back to the New York setting.  Issue #9 is a flash-back of one of the Turtles’ earliest outings that sees Splinter switch bodies with a dying master in Japan.  While still containing a supernatural element, I enjoyed this one more than issue #8 as it felt more like a traditional TMNT adventure and it was fun seeing the younger Turtles do their thing.  Design wise, Eastman and Laird gave the Turtles full bandanas that covered their heads which was kind of a cool look.

He’s back!

The micro series for Mike, Don, and Leo are interwoven throughout the collection.  Mike and Don’s are more of the one-shot variety, while Leo’s directly ties into the next arc for the comic.  In Mike’s, we get to see the youngest of the Turtles foil a robbery on Christmas and make a new friend out of a stray cat he dubs Klunk.  It’s a fun chance to see Mike go off on his own and adds depth to the character.  The issue would eventually be used as inspiration for an episode of the 2003 cartoon titled “The Christmas Aliens.”  Donatello’s one-shot, “Kirby and the Warp Crystal,” would also be adapted for the cartoon as “The King.”  This issue was Eastman and Laird’s tribute to the legendary Jack Kirby.  Initially, the two wanted to rasie money for Kirby who was in a legal battle with Marvel Comics over licensing fees.  In the old days, writers who worked for Marvel worked under a work-for-hire agreement and anything they created was the property of Marvel and Marvel alone, meaning they saw no royalties for other works using the characters they created.  Kirby and his family refused to take Eastman and Laird’s money, but the sentiment was likely still appreciated.  The story is kind of fun, and it’s obvious the two had great affection for Kirby’s work as his influence is all over the series.

The Leonardo one-shot is probably my favorite from this collection as it kicks off the plot that re-introduces The Shredder.  This book and the following ones would be adapted in part for the first film.  In Leo’s book, he gets attacked by the returning Foot clan and eventually overwhelmed (in the film, it’s Raphael in place of Leo).  The encounter spills over into April’s apartment as the issue ends with Leo crashing thru the window and warning his brothers that The Shredder is back.  The full-page illustration is one of my favorites from the series.

From here, the Turtles are attacked by the Foot and the action takes them into April’s antique shop.  When things are looking bad, Casey Jones shows up and aids in their escape but Shredder sees to it that April’s store (and home) is destroyed in the process.  From here, the story takes us to Northampton, Massachusetts where Casey’s grandmother has an old farm house.  Issue #11 is told mostly thru the eyes of April as she writes in her journal about how the Turtles cope with defeat and how she deals with the loss of her father’s antique shop.  I’ve been critical of Eastman and Laird’s writing in the past, but here they do a nice of job of presenting their theme for the story with care and levity, making this issue (and arc) their best yet.  The overall theme of issue #11 ends up being to appreciate what is most important in life, and not to place too much importance in material things.  The issue ends with the Turtles coming together as both April and the gang arrive at that same conclusion simultaneously.

Overall, I think I enjoyed Volume 2 more than I enjoyed Volume 1.  The writing is tighter and more focused, and the micro issues really do a good job of adding depth to the characters.  Eastman and Laird are also able to bring out the individual personalities for each turtle in the other issues as well, and they’ve all finally had their traits firmly established by the end of the collection.  I’m still a bit surprised that the Leo/Raph rivalry hasn’t been hinted at yet, though perhaps I’ve been misled and that is a dynamic that was added to the group by outside sources before Eastman and Laird considered exploring it.  It’s also a lot of fun seeing the stories for the first time that ended up making it into the movie I saw so long ago as a kid.  It makes me appreciate that film even more.  And while most of the books were lifted in a more thematic sense for the film, the scene where Don and Casey work on the old truck even had some of the dialogue lifted word for word.  Only in the comic it’s Raph in place of Don and some of the insults are different.  There is a sense of finality at the end of the collection, especially in the write-ups from Eastman and Laird, but a volume 3 is on the way that will cover issues #12, 14, 15, 17, and 19-21 which contains the “Return to New York” story-line.  Following that arc, Eastman and Laird had little direct involvement with the comics so it figures that volume 3 may be the last for the The Ultimate Collection.  It is possible a fourth volume could be produced covering the massive “City at War” arc that spanned 13 issues and was co-written by the original creators.  Volume 3 is currently due out in July, though don’t be surprised if it gets delayed as both of the previous collections were.  I’ve really enjoyed the fist two volumes, and already have volume 3 pre-ordered!  For longtime fans, I suggest you do the same.

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February 11, 2012

Action Figures!

By Joe

It’s been almost a year since I made my initial entry talking about my affection for collecting things.  In that entry, I mentioned how I used to collect action figures.  I loved action figures as a kid, even more so than video games.  Action figures were my go-to toy when I needed to entertain myself.  I even separate my childhood into phases based on what line of action figures dominated my playtime.  In chronological order, they are:  Ghostbusters, TMNT, and X-Men/Spider-Man.  That basically took me from age four to ten or eleven.  Around that age playing with action figures and acting out climactic battles starts to feel childish, plus puberty kicks in which brings along a whole host of new interests and time-wasters.  Most of those toys are gone now, either sold at yard sales or thrown away.  I have most of my X-Men and Spider-Man ones, and I did save the original TMNT line and movie line, not because they’re worth anything, just because I’m sentimental.

Once I hit my late teens I started working a part-time job and soon found myself with disposable income for the first time in my life.  Most kids my age probably spent their money on booze and drugs, I ended up buying toys.  I’m not saying that makes me better than most of my peers, actually it kind of makes me a dork.  New action figures were way better than anything I ever had and they impressed the Hell out of me.  It didn’t make much sense to me, but I started buying more and more.  At first it was a figure here or there, then it started to become whole lines.  I’d buy what I thought looked cool, and then I’d just buy everything.  It was a compulsion.  This lasted probably from the time I was 16 until 22.  At that point in time I was living on my own, I had no place to really put more toys, and the Marvel Legends line switched from Toy Biz to Hasbro and went down the crapper.  Since then I’ve bought a few toys here and there, but by and large I’m done unless I have a kid who gets action figures.

To break up the monotony of all of these video game posts of late, I thought now would be a good time to go digging through some boxes and come up with my 10 favorite action figures.  And by favorite, I mostly mean favorite looking with some addition of intrinsic value taking hold as well.  If I were to make a list of my favorite and most played with toys it would have been an entirely different list.  These are, for the most part, all modern action figures that I acquired in my teens and twenties.  Most of them are from the world of comics, with some cartoon characters as well.  Before I get to my list, let’s take some time out for one honorable mention:

Turtle Trolls

There are some pretty cool gimmick action figures out there.  Lego versions of popular characters come to mind as well as Lego-type toys like Mini Mates and Kubricks.  The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had many such gimmicks that range from cool to embarrassing.  This one such cross-over falls somewhere in between, though for many it might fall into the embarrassing category.  Treasure Trolls were really popular in the early ’90s.  They didn’t do anything and were cheaply made, but for some reason kids had to have them.  Seeing an opportunity for a cross-over, Playmates and whoever made Treasure Trolls combined the TMNT brand with the trolls and the result was Turtle Trolls.  These things are quite silly, but terribly cute.  They still look mostly like turtles, just with big, colorful hair.  The accessories they came with were mined from existing Turtles figures and really don’t make much sense (Leonardo has the stone katanas that came with Cave Turtle Leo, for instance) but I guess Playmates felt they couldn’t just go with normal weapons.  For whatever reason, I liked this gimmick as a kid and still like it today which is why I still have a set of Turtle Trolls.

Honorable mention out of the way, time for the The Nostalgia Spot’s Top 10 Action Figures!

10. Marvel Legends Green Goblin/Spider-Man Classics Hobgoblin

I couldn’t separate these two, and since they’re so similar, they both get to share spot #10.  Hobgoblin was treated quite well by Toy Biz in the aughts as he received two really sharp figures.  The first Spider-Man Classics Hobgoblin was based on his demonic appearance.  Creatively, the sculpt took some liberties in making him look quite fearsome and the sculpter opted for brown instead of orange for the costume which gave the character a certain gritty-ness not seen in the comics.  As cool as it was, I prefer the more traditional take that came later.  This Hobgoblin is picture perfect when compared with the comic book character.  The colors are vibrant and clean and he wasn’t given some cheesy action feature that could detract from the sculpt.  The pumpkin bomb is permanently affixed to his left hand, but that doesn’t really bother me.  The Green Goblin is every bit as good.  He’s from the Marvel Legends line from the Onslaught wave.  The colors are a bit darker as the Legends line tried to appeal more to adults than the Spider-Man Classics line.  Perhaps a more vibrant paint job would have been more comic accurate, but this works just fine.  It’s not the worst thing in the world to downplay the purple and green color scheme.  Like Hobgoblin, his pumpkin bomb is also permanently attached to his hand.  His glider also has a nice stand for displaying instead of the more cartoonish smoke cloud that Hobgoblin has.  I like the angle the glider’s wings are at too, as it makes the figure much easier to pose.

9.  IF Labs Super Saiyan Vegeta

Dragon Ball Z was a big reason for my renewed interest in action figures.  I got into the series as a teen which made the action figures suddenly appealing.  For awhile, they were terrible as the US distributer, Irwin,  just re-released the old Bandai and AB figures which had long since become outdated.  Eventually, Irwin would start producing its own figures.  There were some growing pains, and the normal five inch line was geared more towards kids than collectors, but they ended up putting out some worthwhile stuff.  Their high grade collector line, IF Labs, had its share of misses but had some hits as well.  IF Labs focused more on the DBZ films, and this version of Vegeta is from the The Return of Cooler OVA.  Articulation wise, the figure leaves something to be desired as its pretty basic, but the sculpt and paint job is bad ass.  Vegeta was one of my favorites from the show, and I was stoked to pick this one up.  He’s around 7″ tall, making him short compared to the rest of the line but still larger than the standard line of action figures.  Irwin/IF never made a better Vegeta than this one, and arguably never produced a better figure than this one.

8. Marvel Legends Apocalypse

Not to be confused with the series 7 Apocalypse action figure, this is the massive build-a-figure Apocalypse from series 12.  At that point, Toy Biz had started releasing each figure in a wave with a piece of a larger figure.  This particular wave of figures came with a piece of the world’s oldest mutant, Apocalypse.  This was a welcomed figure as the series 7 Apocalypse was not well-received.  He was short and fat and a rather poor representation of the figure.  Most figures in the Legends line could trace their appearance to a certain point in time, but that Apocalypse really had no comic counterpart.  This one was true to the likeness of Apocalypse from the ’80s, just huge.  Yeah it would have been nice to have a 6″ scaled Apocalypse as this one is perhaps too big (even though one of Apocalypse’s many mutant powers was the ability to grow in size) but still pretty awesome.  He’s hefty too and one solid figure.  This Apocalypse was the last of the standard waves of figures to feature a build-a-figure of this size.  Future ones were much smaller in scale, which really diminished their coolness (especially for the series 13 Onslaught).  This Apocalypse is a mix of blue and black, though apparently some pieces were colored black where they should have been blue so there are a few more black Apocalypse’s floating around.  The range of motion on his legs is a bit limited, and he’s so top-heavy that he can be hard to stand.  The rest of the figure features typical Marvel Legends articulation.  In the original batch of figures one of his cables was missing and collectors had to go to Toy Biz for a replacement.  As you can see, I went through the effort to have a complete Apocalypse.

7. Unifive Ultimate Saiyan Vegeta

The only character to appear twice on my list, this Vegeta is of a much smaller scale than the previous one and attempts to capture the character in all of his forms from the anime.  It doesn’t quite pull that trick off, but he’s pretty cool nonetheless.  Unifive is a Japanese company and as such this is a Japanese figure that was never released in the US.  He was pretty costly at the time, and has only become more costly since release.  The figure is probably less than 5″ tall though I assume that’s so he can fit in with the other figures from the line (I don’t own any of the other ones).  His coloring is also supposed to resemble the manga more than the anime which basically just means he’s a little darker than usual.  The articulation is rather interesting as it’s mostly cut joints instead of ball joints.  He’s capable of a variety of poses but the cut joints hide the articulation well and make him easy to display.  He comes with a bunch of accessories that I didn’t feel like digging out.  As such, only a couple are displayed in the picture.  He came with four heads:  regular, super saiyan, majin, and oozaru (great ape).  The oozaru head includes damaged saiyan armor like what he wore in his first appearance.  He has a display base that’s just some barren ground with little saibamen heads poking out.  There’s an attachable mountain to cover-up the heads and a little tiny Goku clicks into it so you can display Vegeta in his ape form and he’s actually to scale with Goku!  He also has a removable tail and scouter.  It would have been nice if he had some shoulder pads to more accurately depict him in his Saiyan Saga attire.  There’s also no top to pair with the Majin Vegeta head for an accurate portrayal of that character.  The second set of figures from Unifive (featuring Trunks and Gohan) would do a much better job of accounting for the different looks of the characters.  Short-comings aside, this is my favorite 5″ scale DBZ figure.

6.  Marvel Legends Sentinel

Another build-a-figure, and this one really made use of the format.  This is a more modern take on the Sentinel character from X-Men and he’s pretty bad ass.  Pieces of this figure were distributed in wave 10 which had a very X-Men feel to it.  The coloring is muted and gritty and great care was taken to sculpt the more mechanical parts of the figure making a giant red and purple robot seem almost believable.  Like Apocalypse, there’s a tremendous heft to this figure that’s quite satisfying.  Unlike Apocalypse, his feet are huge making him easy to stand and pose.  He came with a couple of detachable cables (the same that were used for Omega Red from the same series) to coil around various mutants.  Not surprisingly, this one was a real hit with collectors as this was one giant figure that was mostly in scale with the others.  Many would buy multiples of the figures in wave 10 to create their own Sentinel army.  I was satisfied to just have one.

5.  Marvel Select Ultimate Venom

While Toy Biz was releasing highly articulated action figures to toy stores across the globe, Diamond was releasing high grade figures to specialty shops.  Their Marvel Select line had its own scale and focused more on creating a dynamic scene as opposed to making an actual action figure.  Most of the toys featured little articulation but usually came with a display base of some kind.  They also weren’t afraid to tackle some of Marvel’s more obscure characters and embraced the Ultimate Universe that was fairly popular at the time.  I was always a big Venom fan and I always bought the latest action figure to depict him.  Perhaps my standards were set too high considering he was my favorite character, but I often wasn’t completely happy with Venom figures.  This one though is the first I can ever recall being truly satisfied with.  He’s based on his appearance in Ultimate Spider-Man, but Diamond put out two versions of him and this one featured the iconic white spider logo that wasn’t present on the character in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man.  Like most Venom figures, he’s black but with some purple accents.  He’s a solid and heavy figure and has many sculpted pseudopods protruding from his costume.  I especially like the work done on the head and claws.  He also came with a frightened Peter Parker to torment eternally.  This is easily my favorite Venom action figure and there really isn’t a close runner-up.

4. Masterpiece Optimus Prime and Megatron

I’ve never been anything more than a casual fan of Transformers.  The cartoon never grabbed me like the TMNT cartoon, and I just wasn’t that interested in cars that transformed into robots, as cool a concept as that is.  That concept was cool enough for me to acquire a few Transformers here and there.  As a little guy, I had a couple that I only vaguely remember.  When Hasbro released the Generation 2 wave I bought a couple including the Generation 2 Grimlock and Optimus Prime.  When Takara/Hasbro unveiled the Masterpiece Optimus Prime a few years ago the collector in me had to have it.  Here was the perfect Transformer.  Not only does Optimus look like he was pulled from the cartoon, he also transforms into a perfect rendition of his truck form.  No sacrifices had to be made for one form or the other.  The one pictured is the US version which had smaller smoke stacks (apparently we can’t handle longer ones) but he’s still just as cool.  He came with several accessories, and is actually fairly easy to transform.  My favorite touch is the little button on the back of his head that makes his mouth-piece move like he’s talking.  It kind of makes me want to play with him right now.  And after Optimus was released, it was only a matter of time before a Megatron came out as well.  Like Optimus, Megatron is designed to resemble his cartoon form.  Here the designers weren’t as successful which isn’t surprising considering Megatron’s transformation is the most absurd one in the cartoon.  Still, they did a good job with what they had to work with.  His legs did come out skinny making him hard to stand.  Adding the tremendous weight of his arm cannon just makes posing him even more difficult.  When transformed, he makes for a pretty convincing replica of a Walther P38.  Gun enthusiasts won’t be fooled, but others might.  As a result, the US forced Hasbro to put a bright orange cap on the end which is why I got the Japanese version.  Unlike Prime though, transforming Megatron is a total bitch and is something I’ve only done a couple of times.  He has less die-cast than Prime too, making him more fragile.  He’s definitely the lesser of the two, and other Masterpiece figures like Starscream and Grimlock are probably better, but what’s Optimus Prime without his arch nemesis?  I had to include him.

3. Marvel Legends Deadpool

A piece of advice for any toy manufacturers trying to win me over; I love accessories!  When an action figure comes with everything it’s supposed to I get excited.  Marvel Legends Deadpool is a great example of a character coming with just the right amount of accessories.  He’s got a 9mm, two AK’s, two katanas, and a pair of sai.  He even comes with a second, mask-less head that’s totally creepy and an action stand for cool poses.  All of the details are in place including the goofy Deadpool mask-logo on his belt.  This figure reused probably the most popular sculpt Toy Biz would produce, the Daredevil sculpt, and even left Daredevil’s leg pouch on the right leg.  Reusing sculpts kind of sucks, but if it’s done well I can forgive it and this one is.  The only negative I can say about it are that the shoulders are a bit too bulky.  In that case, appearance was sacrificed some for articulation and Deadpool is loaded with articulation.  He can be posed in just about any position one can dream up and I love that all of his accessories have a place they can be stored on his belt.  The paint scheme is very clean and the costume is spot-on.  He is a perfect action figure.  Toy Biz either underestimated the character’s popularity or just plain had distribution issues because he was a bitch to find in stores.  Not long after Marvel Legends Series 6 was released, Deadpool was showing up on eBay for big bucks.  Really, that whole series was botched as Juggernaut and Phoenix were a colossal pain in the ass to find which is a shame because that was one of the better waves of figures Toy Biz ever put out.  Deadpool also came with Doop from X-Force, the slimer wannabe.  I don’t like Doop, so he’s not pictured.

2.  Hot Toys Dark Knight Batman

You may have noticed that some of these toys appeared in my original post about collections.  That’s not a coincidence because most of my favorite toys are still on display in my home, while the rest are sealed away in the basement.  This one was featured in that post and represents one of the last figures I ever bought.  Normally movie themed lines are terrible.  Action figures seem to always come out better when they’re trying to resemble a piece of art and not an actual person.  Action figures can sometimes point out how absurd a character would look in the real world making the figures totally undesirable or just plain ugly.  This is no such toy.  Hot Toys puts out high grade action figures that are more like dolls than what most would consider an action figure.  These things are stupidly expensive, which is why I only bought one from the series, but are extremely nice.  This take on Batman is from the film The Dark Knight and depicts his updated costume in that film.  He comes with a stand and a bunch of little accessories including an assortment of bat-a-rangs, bombs, and even a second head.  I’ve never bothered to switch him to the Bruce Wayne head because why would I ever want to?  His costume is a rubbery material that works really well because it’s how I imagine the costume would actually feel.  All of the little details are present making this probably the most accurate movie-based figure in existence.  He also came with an extra set of hands but good luck getting the factory attached ones off, I never could.  That’s okay though, because he looks cool as is.  He also sports quite a bit of articulation.  I’ve never gone through the trouble to really pose him but there’s plenty of pictures online of people who have.  If you’ve got about $150 burning a hole in your pocket and really want an awesome Batman toy, you can’t go wrong with this one.

1.  NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Maybe I’m cheating again by making my number 1 action figure four figures, but as you can see, it couldn’t be done any other way.  The Ghostbusters got me into action figures, but my obsession exploded with the TMNT and they were really my first love.  These toys are everything I love about action figures.  They look great, move great, are loaded with accessories, and are of characters that I adore.  Each one has just the right amount of personality to separate it form the rest, perhaps even more so than the comics they come from.  And as you can see, these turtles are based on the ones from Mirage Comics.  Each one comes with a base, some knives, their turtle specific weapons, a little turtle, and an extra set of climbing hands.  That’s all well and good, but all I really care about is that each turtle has his weapons.  Mikey stands out in this regard as his nunchaku have real chains, how awesome is that?!  Every incarnation of the character released before that had all plastic nunchaku and never in my wildest dreams did I ever think one would come along with actual chains.  Raph’s sai are just wide enough that he can fit his fingers within the blades which is cool for display purposes (though I’m too scared to do it as I’m afraid the sai will stretch and break after awhile).  I love the expression on Donatello’s face, it just looks exactly how I picture him.  And Leo is Leo, which means he’s awesome.  Somehow, some way, NECA did not sell enough of these figures to warrant future ones.  They did do an April O’Neil figure that was just as ugly as the source material.  I’m guessing that one sold poorly which is why we never got a Mirage Shredder to join these turtles.  One was unveiled at a Toy Fair along with a Foot soldier, but he has never been released which is a shame.  At least we got four comic accurate turtles that kick all kinds of ass.  And if you really want a comic accurate set, NECA released a four-pack of the Turtles that are colored in black and white.  I prefer the colored ones, but it’s pretty cool they went through the effort of putting out a second set.

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January 22, 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

By Joe

Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_(1990_film)_posterHollywood loves to go after us folks who are suckers for nostalgia.  We’re easy targets as it doesn’t take much to lure someone in with a touch of nostalgia.  Especially today.  We live in a world of 24 hour news networks and the internet puts information at our fingertips at all times.  The media’s tactics haven’t changed either, there’s still a lot of doom and gloom coming over the airways, especially in trying economic times.  It’s easy to let nostalgia take over as for most it’s the act of bringing one back to their childhood, which for many, was a happier time.  The sad truth though is that Hollywood usually lets us down when it revitalizes an old product.  Over the years we’ve seen movies based on Transformers and G.I Joe, none of which proved very satisfying.  If you want to indulge in a bit of a nostalgia, your best bet is to seek out an old television show or movie on home video.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great start for anyone looking to recapture that nostalgic magic.  The original film arrived at the height of Turtle-mania when every kid in school was seemingly sporting a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchbox, backpack, or pencil set.  It was inescapable.  Recently I acquired the new compilation of TMNT comics and had a blast looking through them for the first time.  It really got me to thinking about the Turtles from my youth, the animated and the live action.  I thought that after reading the original books that it was a good time to go back and check out the original film.  I always had held the impression that it was pretty faithful to the comics and wanted to confirm that.  Instead I came away thinking it was a success because it combined both the animated series and the comics in a truly harmonious way.

It’s hard to consider Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a comic to film adaptation because it’s quite obvious that without the cartoon, this movie never happens.  The comic may have started this whole thing, but it was the cartoon (and probably the toys) that reached the biggest audience.  And it was that audience comprised mostly young boys that made the Turtles into such a big thing in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Even if the writers wanted to adapt the comic for film, they would have never secured enough funding without targeting the cartoon’s audience.  This put the developers behind the film into a position where they could take from both mediums while adding their own touch.

The similarities between the comic and film are quite apparent.  The Turtles themselves live in a sewer that looks like a sewer, unlike the TV show.  There’s a damp and dank feel to the scenes shot in their sewer home that’s certainly comforting from the couch.  The Turtles’ origin is also mostly intact.  Splinter was now always a rat, like the comic, and Oroku Saki murdered his master Hamato Yoshi.  The only difference is the removal of Saki’s brother, Nagi, who in the comic feuded with Yoshi over the love of a woman.  The removal of Nagi just shortens the story slightly and doesn’t lessen the impact of Saki’s actions against Yoshi.  The writers even decided to make it slightly more personal by having Splinter get some licks in on the would-be Shredder, who responds by slicing his right ear off.

“I bet he never has to look for a can opener!”

The Shredder may actually be the most faithfully adapted character from the comics to film.  It was pretty much a given that the writers were not going to use the bumbling screw-up Shredder that the cartoon possessed, but they also ditched that Shredder’s design.  Not that there was much separating the two Shredders visually, but the film’s Shredder is basically lifted from the pages of Mirage comics.  He sports a red suit and all of the appropriate blades are in place (save for his right hand which is missing the two hand blades for some reason).  They even toss a cape on Shredder for his first big scene, some weird zebra-print thing that they wisely ditch for when Shredder finally confronts the Turtles.  Shredder also gets to show his lack of honor, when he tries to sneak a dagger into Splinter which is reminiscent of him pulling a grenade on the Turtles in the comics.  The writers do give the character a bit more depth.  In the comics we really don’t know much about Shredder’s operation in NYC.  In the film we see it’s a process where kids are brought in at a young age and brainwashed by the Shredder into thinking of their order as a family.  They presumably graduate to pickpockets as they get older until the best show they can handle being full-fledged members of the Foot.  And the foot soldiers themselves are pretty faithful in appearance to the comics.

Don and Mike have a close relationship with one another.

As for the Turtles, they’re pretty much a mash-up of the two mediums.  Leonardo is the most faithful to his comic book counterpart, which makes him pretty faithful to his cartoon persona as well.  No turtle really changes as little as Leo when moving from one medium to the next.  Here he is the unquestioned leader of the Turtles, and serves as an extension to Splinter.  He’s also a bit uptight when compared to his brothers, but not to a fault.  Raphael is definitely more similar to his comic approach.  He’s the hot head and loner of the group, only here that loner quality is amplified for dramatic effect.  Splinter laments how hard he tries to get Raphael to let go of his anger and to let others in.  We get the impression that it’s a constant battle, but Raphael grows and changes in a believable way as the film moves along.  Michelangelo is the turtle who most clearly takes after his cartoon character than the comic book one.  He’s a goof ball and has a hard time being serious about anything.  His lingo isn’t quite so surfer heavy as the cartoon but he’s always expressive and exhuberant.  Donatello, on the other hand, doesn’t really fit the mold of either portrayal.  In the comic book he’s a quiet gear head, a bit introverted though not a loner like Raph.  In the cartoon he’s basically a genius and his genius is practically a super power.  In the film, he’s got more of a goofy side and comes off as kind of a dork.  He struggles to come up with the interjections that Mike is so fond of but other things come much quicker.  He seems pretty intellectual though not showy.  His sense of humor also comes across as a coping mechanism.  He’s arguably the most developed character and that might have to do with his voice actor being the biggest “name” in the film, Corey Feldman.  Either way, this is my favorite take on the Donatello character.  It should also be noted, that the Turtles do bring their strong affection for pizza from the cartoon to the big screen (and Dominoes paid a lot of money to make sure we knew it was their pizza the Turtles preferred).

As for the supporting characters, April (Judith Hoag) is not surprisingly a news reporter instead of a lab assistant.  This just works better and suits the plot.  The writers are able to work her old VW into the story, as well as her antiques store from the comics.  Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) also shows up and his portrayal is pretty spot on.  He plays off of Raph and the other turtles quite well and makes for a good addition to the story.  The romance angle between him and April does feel a bit forced and unnecessary though.  April’s boss Charles and his son Danny (who apparently loves Sid Vicious) serve as a minor subplot to the tale as well, and as far as I know, were created just for the film.

The plot of the movie borrows quite heavily from issues 1, 2, and the Raph micro issue for its plot.  It’s mostly the issue #1 but with the Shredder on the offensive as opposed to the Turtles.  Certainly it’s a lot easier for parents to buy into these characters as appropriate for their kids if they don’t come across as blood thirsty creatures out for revenge.  The writers take what Eastman and Laird already had done, and do a good job of turning it into a different story.  The film, at its heart, is basically a father-son tale with emphasis placed on the Turtles and Splinter as well as Danny and Charles.  There’s certainly an element of brotherly love as well, as the Turtles learn to rely on each other as they’re basically all they have.  It’s a nice approach that I find charming.

Jim Henson has plenty of reasons to smile in this picture.

The visuals are what people remember most about this film.  It was a risk taking the Turtles to live-action as anthropomorphic creatures rarely play well in that form.  New Line Cinema wisely recruited Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to create the turtle costumes and what a great job they did.  The Turtles stylistically combine the comic and cartoon look, keeping the comics understated belts but keeping the cartoon’s color-specific bandanas.  The design of the Turtles is pretty spot-on, they look like turtles!  To achieve the proper look, the masks were outfitted with some sophisticated animatronics for facial expressions and mouth movements.  It’s quite impressive the range of emotions exhibited by the Turtles through-out the film.  I’m not sure if they had to swap out masks for the actors for certain scenes or if each head was capable of sadness, joy, anger, etc.  It is obvious that they had at least one other mask for the fight sequences.  Those masks full of gears were probably pretty heavy and tough to backflip in, so during the fight scenes the Turtles are noticeably sporting slimmer heads with static expressions.  It’s really noticeable if you’re looking for it and not really jarring.  The director does a good job of hiding each turtle’s mouth if they had to speak during one of these sequences.  The most obvious scene is Mikey’s nunchaku duel with a foot solider as his head there is an almost entirely different shape.

I have a home movie where members of my family can be seen watching this scene in the background. Everyone busts up laughing over Don’s “It’s a Kodak moment,” line. The reaction of people laughing at that moment is way funnier than the actual line.

Script-wise, the performance is a mixed bag.  There’s lots of one-liners and puns and plenty of them are groan inducing.  This is the downside of watching a movie geared towards kids.  There are a couple of bright spots though.  I do love Mikey’s line for the pizza guy (“Wise men say, forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for a late pizza.”) and Casey’s misunderstanding of the word claustrophobic is quite amusing as well.  And even though it may be a tad on the cheesy side, Splinter’s “Cowabunga!” is pretty awesome too.  The film’s score is mostly up-beat pop tunes.  It’s nothing special, but the main theme is pretty damn catchy.

When I watch this movie it’s pretty much an experience of pure joy.  I can notice its short-comings but really few of them bother me.  A lot of fans, as the kids of 1990 become the adults of 2012, have gone on to really embrace the original comics and are aching for a true to comic film, but it’s never going to happen.  No studio is interested in making a TMNT movie that alienates the kids in the audience.  And even if one did I really don’t see how the Turtles could better be adapted for the big screen.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is, by no means, a perfect film.  However, it is the perfect Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film and needs no improvement.

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January 16, 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection – Volume 1

By Joe

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1 (IDW Publishing, 2011)

When I was a wee-lad growing up in the 1980’s I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  And I don’t mean I just liked watching them on television or playing with their toys, I was obsessed.  And I was the norm.  It seemed like every boy my age loved the Turtles, and what was there not to love?  They were ninjas, they were young, they kicked ass, ate pizza, and even cracked a few jokes along the way.  Plus, their theme song was totally tubular, dude.

As was the case for most, my interactions with this new era fab four was mostly contained to television, until the movies started coming out.  Sure I knew the Turtles existed in the print form as well, I saw them fairly frequently in the check-out aisle at the grocery store, but always thought the TV show came first.  Those were the turtles I knew best.  Then the first film came along and changed things up a bit, most notably the Raphael character.  He was a hot-head on film and kind of hard to predict.  On TV though he was the wise guy known for breaking the fourth wall.  Even though the television show never adapted the stronger personality of movie Raph, that was the persona that took over the character for me.

Little did I know that was how Raphael was always intended to be.  For as many are now aware the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles actually first found success in the print form through Mirage Studios.  Created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the original story set the stage for all future endeavors and introduced readers to the four turtles we know best:  Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, and their sensei Splinter.  It’s intended as a bit of a parody of early 80’s comics, especially Frank Miller’s Daredevil.  The concept of four anthropomorphic turtles roaming the sewers of New York City is about as far-fetched as it gets.  And Eastman and Laird didn’t stop there, for like the television show with its forays into sci-fi, Eastman and Laird take the Turtles across the galaxy and back.

As a kid, this was all I knew of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Yes, I’ve been well-aware of these Ninja Turtles for quite some time, and have even seen some of the comics long since my obsession faded away.  Never before though have I actually taken the time to read through these early works.  It hit me out of no where sometime last summer, a need to see how my beloved childhood heroes were supposed to be portrayed.  It probably started a little earlier with the 4 Kids Entertainment television movie Turtles Forever, a feature that tried to blend the cartoon from the 80’s with the cartoon from 2003.  It also included the original Mirage Comics turtles and was a really fun production, though nothing stellar.  I found that the old trade paperbacks printed off during the 90’s collecting the old works were quite hard to come by at this point.  I was pretty frustrated with the prices I was seeing on eBay and trips to my own local comic book store proved fruitless as well.  My spirits were elevated though when I came across a new TPB on amazon.com set for release in the coming months.  I pre-ordered it right away and then began to wait, and wait, and wait…

I had pretty much forgotten about that pre-order when I finally received a notification in December that my copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:  The Ultimate Collection – Volume 1 had shipped, more than three months after it was supposed to ship and six months after I had ordered it.  I wasn’t mad about the delay or anything, I just had simply forgotten about the thing and actually thought it might have been cancelled.  I’m glad it wasn’t, as I quite enjoyed my foray into Classic Turtles and I’m going to tell you all about.

First of all, this collection is very well put together.  It’s hard cover and oversized when compared with a normal comic book.  The artwork inside has been enlarged over the originals to accommodate this format and is presented in its original black and white.  The cover features new artwork from Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman and both he and Laird have a brief write-up following the first comic.  Eastman breaks down each issue page by page and offers some nice insight and really does a good job of putting the reader in a frame of mind to look at the Ninja Turtles from his perspective back when this thing all got started.

The company is IDW Publishing who acquired the rights to the printed turtles in early 2011 and wasted no time in getting this out.  Mirage, now controlled by Laird, is actually not involved with this at all.  Laird’s sparse commentaries apparently were taken from his blog (with his permission) and it doesn’t look like he contributed really at all to this release.  Eastman, more or less, abandoned the TMNT in the 90’s so it’s a bit surprising to see him team-up with IDW to put out new TMNT comics.  In addition to working on this collection, he is overseeing a new line of comics that began hitting shelves sometime late last summer.  Perhaps his funds are running low and he needs to turn back to old reliable once again.

Cover for TMNT #4, though most probably know this as the cover for the NES game.

If Eastman was burnt out on the Turtles in the 90’s he no longer is, or hides it well.  As I said, he does a great job of taking the reader back to the infancy of the Turtles and shows great exuberance.  He comes across as someone who loves to talk about the Turtles and is truly excited about this project.  If I have one minor quibble with his commentary it’s that he may be a little too reverential about his own work.  He seems to love everything he and Laird did, and maybe that’s true, but I feel like most artists when looking back on their old works would notice some areas for criticism.  Maybe he just wanted to keep things positive.  Despite that he doesn’t really come across as stuck-up or anything, he just sounds like a super fan.

The actual stories should be familiar to anyone well-versed in Ninja Turtles lore.  Both the animated show and the film borrow heavily from the comics when discussing the origin of the Turtles though neither adapted it completely.  In both the cartoon and film, Hamato Yoshi’s chief rival is Oroku Saki but in the comic book it was Oroku Nagi.  Yoshi kills Nagi while defending his love and it’s Nagi’s younger brother, Saki, who seeks revenge.  From there, it’s basically the same as the film with Yoshi fleeing to New York and Saki eventually following with his own faction of the Foot Clan.  Saki kills Yoshi, but during the scrum Yoshi’s pet ret is able to escape who would go on to become Splinter.

The first comic is both an introduction to the Ninja Turtles and a revenge piece.  After their first taste of live combat, the triumphant Turtles return to their master who finally shares the tale of how they came to be.  This sets the wheels in motion for a showdown with Oroku Saki, now called The Shredder, and Splinter dispatches Raphael to send a message to Shredder to meet the Turtles for a fight to the death.  True to their word, the Turtles do battle Shredder to the death, which closes out the first issue.

The artwork is quite rough.  The style suits the Turtles but the human characters look oddly proportioned.  The scenery is sometimes too busy as well, as the background clouds the action scenes at times.  The writing is also fairly amateurish.  The ideas are there but Eastman and Laird struggle to bring them out from a literary perspective.  I do like the approach of the opening though, with Leonardo serving as narrator, and the layout and pacing of the book is anything but amateurish and easily the book’s strength.  The violence that everyone speaks of when referencing the original books is a bit exaggerated.  Yes there’s more violence here than what was present on TV, but I feel it compares to what was presented in the first film, only with blood and actual death.  There’s no gore really, and while the Turtles aren’t a bunch of wise-cracking butt kickers I wouldn’t call the mood of the book “dark.”  Gritty yes, but not dark.

Short-comings aside, the first issue is actually quite enjoyable.  The action sequences and sheer uniqueness of the characters is what sells it.  Issue 2 brings in April O’Neil and Baxter Stockman.  O’Neil is a lab assistant for Stockman, not a news reporter, and Stockman is busy perfecting his mousers.  The Turtles end up encountering O’Neil in a similar manner to how they have in every other medium and do battle with Stockman and his creations, who hold a more sinister agenda than simple rat extermination.  Stockman is fairly clever and devious, a far cry from the bumble-head shown on television, and proves a formidable foe though he too is ultimately dispatched.  Not before, however, apparently claiming the life of Master Splinter leaving the Turtles devastated and without a home.

The rest of the comics carry forward the narrative as the Turtles search for answers regarding Splinter’s disappearance.  Their story takes them into space, of all places, where they meet the benevolent Fugitoid and the nefarious Triceratons.  The more sci-fi stories are less interesting for me, but it’s enjoyable to watch Eastman and Laird’s abilities improve for each issue.  The artwork improves, and though it never rivals a Frank Miller or Allen Moore, the writing does improve as well.  Their imaginations should certainly be commended, if nothing else.

The Raphael solo issue.

The collection includes the first 7 issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and also includes the Raphael one-shot “micro” issue.  Each turtle received his own issue at one point and this collection includes Raph’s which introduces the character Casey Jones.  Jones is designed to hold up a mirror to Raphael and show him what he’d become if he gave into his rage wholly.  Jones shows no mercy when dealing with common street punks and Raph basically has to save the criminals from him.  They duke it out in a pretty brutal contest before eventually becoming pals.  Their relationship in the first film was pretty faithful to how it’s presented here.

If these issues have one major short-coming for me it’s with the actual characters of Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael.  Leonardo is given the most attention and he’s clearly the most mature and the one that takes after Splinter the most.  He’s not given the title of leader, he takes it.  Raphael is shown as a bit of a loose cannon, but not to the degree he was in the film.  He really isn’t shown to have much of a rivalry with Leo, which is something that surprised me.  Donatello is shown to be more studious than the others and does get a few chances to show off his tech-savy abilities, but nothing to the degree that the television show would adopt.  Michaelangelo ends up being the least developed character and has no real personality to call his own.  He’s shown to be a pretty talented fighter in a sparring match with Raph, and some of his care free persona shows through but only slightly.  And if anyone who’s never seen the stories is curious, no, there’s no pizza or surfer talk.  In one panel Raph actually asks April to fetch him a beer.

All in all, this compendium did meet my expectations.  I always assumed the self-professed hardcore TMNT fans oversold the original works in terms of its violence and tone and found that to be mostly the case.  While I was surprised by some developments, this was mostly how I envisioned the Turtles came across in print.  IDW exceeded my expectations with the quality of this release, and I suppose they should have since the MSRP is $50!  Amazon sells it for much cheaper for those interested and I’d say any TMNT fans looking for a collection should check this one out.  I don’t know how many of these Eastman and IDW are preparing but I have Volume 2 already pre-ordered which is currently slated for release at the end of March.  It will include the next 4 issues plus the rest of the micro books which I hope will add more depth to the individual turtle personalities.  I look forward to getting my hands on it in the coming months.

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