Eastman & Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mirage Studios Volume 1, Issue 1
Story & Art by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird
Read it at NinjaTurtles.com

Pulling a Homer

Being drunk has never paid off so well, and I’m including fell-through-the-sunroof lawsuits in that figure. The origin story as I recall it: two unemployed Frank Miller-wannabe best buds were screwing around at their drawing benches one evening, drinking hard and playing a game of what’s-the-stupidest-idea-I-can- come-up-with, as a way to fight the pull of homoerotic experimentation.

The result was a fat, retarded turtleman with nunchakus strapped to his wrists. Forty minutes of alternated laughter and hard rum-vomiting later, the picture was crumpled and tossed in the trash. In an unfathomable act of reverse morning-after syndrome, this particular beast actually looked better in the morning. Unfathomable because it really was ugly.

But so inspiration strikes and now those two guys are millionaires. I’d bet it’s as much a shock to them as anyone, as this first independent TMNT book they put out, on family-loan and black-market-organ-sale money, reads like they never expected to make another. These are not characters, they’re gag excuses for bloody action scenes and Daredevil homages.

Just for a moment they may have deceived the 1984 indie comics geek into thinking they were setting something up; shades of an overarching conflict for the series can be found when Splinter goes into his lengthy backstory — most of it devoted to the question of why they’re ninjas instead of the somewhat more pressing issue of how there came to be giant humanoid turtles — but by the end of the book, all that decades-spanning revenge history is wrapped right up in a dead Shredder.

There’s no further thrust forward, no moonlit declaration that from this day forth villainy will feel the three-fingered grip of justice. Though this obviously wasn’t a hindrance to continuing on; and realistically, these are giant reptiles with weapons, so further shenanigans are inevitable.

I suppose one advantage of it being unthinkable that your investment will be anything but a loss is that you can skip over some of the details. For example: characterization. The only way to visually distinguish the four Turtles is if one of them is holding a weapon, and personality-wise, there are even fewer clues (save for Raphael, who’s got a hint of Alex de Large to him).

Considering that when one of the title characters speaks it’s a crapshoot which one of them it even is, it’s a bit excessive that they even bothered to give them names. Stranger still is how these four characters who’ve been immortalized in fruit snacks and cracker topper come across in their first appearance as little more than a squad of pygmy assassins. Splinter raised and trained them solely for the purpose of extracting his murderous revenge, and extract they do. Murderously.

Their assassination mission is a resounding success, and thus the authors are committed to coming up with new enemies and situations for each future book; more foresightful storytellers would’ve let the villain live, allowing them the freedom to simply find a new variation on Shredder trying to take over the world each month. Perhaps he could’ve used mutant bees. See, right there I’ve come up with one. Or maybe mutant gophers, in some sort of “digging” plot. Or mutant tanks. Fortunately, this lesson had been learned by the time the cartoon series came about.

Lest it seem like re-reading this book was a cold glass of harsh reality juice for me, none of these criticisms have in any way dulled my irrational love for these freaks (though it’s sure to happen eventually, as this project carries on). If anything, I’m even more endeared to this fucked-up little world of nonsensical monstrosities. It’s got that — and goddamn me for using a bullshit hippie college term — “aura” about it, with its simplicity, blotchy black-and-white art, and general tone of absurd seriousness. Just strange, right from the get-go, is the only way I can think to sum it up. And if that really is the limit of my descriptive capabilities, this page is going to get real stale real soon.