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

Approaches from the Shell, if You Catch my Drift

Let’s recap what we already know.

Leonardo: Leads
Donatello: Does machines
Raphael: Cool but crude
Michaelangelo: A party dude

That’s all fine and good for the kiddies, but we’re adults here. E&L’s books provide a bit more nuance for the beasts.

Leonardo: Unofficially leads
Donatello: Does computer programming and circuit welding
Raphael: Hotheaded but violent
Michaelangelo: A bit daft

Which caters well to the refined indie comics devotee. But look closer. Include all sources and all interpretations across era and medium. You’ll find a hidden subtext to each that’s impossible to deny.

Leonardo: Pledges a cult
Donatello: Does dudes
Raphael: Psychopathic but just fuckin’ psycho
Michaelangelo: A down syndromey dude

It may be pretty clear how this can be said about the other three, and if it ain’t then maybe I’ll get to it another day, but we’re talking about Donatello #1 here, so let’s look at Donatello.

He is gay.

This brings us back to the original question of TMNT sexuality. Can they do it? Do they want to? Who or what would they want to do it with? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, and that makes me feel uncomfortable in declaring Donatello gay, because I don’t really know what him being gay would mean. But he totally, totally is.

I could go on, defend this point with jokes and contorted evidence (“contorted evidence” could itself be one of the jokes). I’ve got a big box of comics across the room; you better believe I could find plenty of frames to grab showing Donatello in compromising positions. Hell, it wouldn’t even have to be Donatello, because they all look the same. The Turtles I mean, not gays.

I’m not gonna indulge in any of that, though. This is the Internet, and there’s ample gay-outing-based humour out there. Which has started bothering me.

Not because I’ve got a problem with gay jokes. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I love ‘em. I like to bust out a gay joke of my own every now and again, when the mood strikes. Gay jokes are great; it’s Internet gay jokes that are wearing thin.

All of that “edgy” humour, really. Gay, racist, sexist, anti-retard. Normally solid gold stuff, but out here it’s everywhere. The age of the blog is what’s done it; people want to be amusing while they obsess over the latest gadgets/video games/Britney Spears vag shots, but new information of these kinds is always coming — these sites have to update many, many times each day, and it’s hard to be legitimately funny with such regularity.

But it’s easy to be crude. Ask anyone who knows me: it’s very, very easy to be crude. It’s also fun to be crude, and it’s fun to read the occasional bit of crudity. Sadly, the fast pace of technology-empowered discourse has rendered crudity anything but occasional.

What is the solution? Have I lost the freedom to cuss and declare Donatello, or whoever, gay, with the expectation that it’ll take me right to the top? I’m afraid I have. Expressions such as “granny felching” or “post-rectal drip” or “cockzilla” won’t lift me above the pack, as they once would’ve. No, nowadays such gutter talk places me firmly and securely within the pack. The extra ingredient now required is to be clever about your lowbrow.

Which is so damn hard. Hell, you might as well find something of substance to say — being clever is just as tough, it takes just as long. But the whole point of writing something on a blog is that it isn’t supposed to be hard. It should be fast, shallow, ephemeral. Coherence should be optional.

We bloggers don’t want to have to work to get our voices heard. If we did, we wouldn’t be bloggers in the first place, we’d be writers. I guess it’s all for the best, though — the cream rises to the top, they say. And the more men involved in the mix, the more cream there will be. Hey, I’d bet there’s a clever bit of dirty humour to be found in that metaphor somewhere, but I’m not really feeling up to it today.

We’re all still juveniles here on the Internet when it comes to our juvenilia, running around snapping bras and farting in each other’s faces. In time some will mature, find the right way to be both crass and smart. And as more of us make it up there, the more familiar and comfortable its stylings will become for the rest, the easier it will be to make. Then we’ll all do it, and it won’t be special anymore. So our betters will create some new height of comic vulgarity we average people will be unable to achieve. Damn this cycle.

On the plus side, no level of wit will ever trump sexy pictures of pretty ladies. There is no elite when it comes to prurience.