Eastman & Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mirage Studios Volume 1, Issue 9
Story by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird
Art by Michael Dooney
Read it at NinjaTurtles.com

Damn This Nostalgia-for-Its-Own-Sake

I’m baffled by this one.

It’s not the whole astral plane, ancient-ninja-body-swapping plot. It’s not the disillusioned corporate son with prophetic dreams of ancient battles who, it turns out, is the chosen one. It’s not even the giant talking rat and turtles.

It’s the title. For this issue only, they renamed it “Eastman & Laird’s Pre-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

I didn’t even notice this change until my second glance-through, and I didn’t notice anything odd the first go ’round. There’s no reason at all this story needs to be a prequel. Having it take place after the Cerebrus ado would work just fine, so it’s not a continuity thing. And it’s not a character thing, because these guys are still the same collections of basic traits they’d always been. Really, the only difference is in the wardrobe department. They’re wearing full head scarves instead of bandanas, and their elbow pads are different.

It’s amazing how our tastes change as we get older.

The plot of this one is indeed some trippy bullshit. A dying Japanese sage gives Splinter a ring via international direct-dial meditation. Seems his grandson is the only living successor to his family line of powerful, magic ninjas, but he’s at risk of falling off the path, into an evil life of wealth and success and in the corporate world. Why this wealth and success is evil, they never really explain.

Grandpa’s too frail to get out of bed, so he and Splinter do a little Like Father Like Son mind swap. Of course, if the old man kicks before they’ve swapped back, it’s Splinter that’s gonna move on to that big astral plane in the sky. Thus, we have a countdown to add tension to the story, and countdowns really work well in comic books.

I’ve noticed some similarities between the astral plane and this here Internet, in terms of how people meet up. The old bushido man basically random-friends Splinter, the two chat for a while, trade some info, flirt a bit. Until finally the old guy says what’s on his mind (“I want to be inside you”), which makes things a bit awkward. In a lot of cases, the decision Splinter made to accept would be a bad call — he doesn’t know this guy, has no idea if he’s being honest.

What I’m saying is it was really trusting of Splinter to go along with this guy’s plans, because he could’ve just refused to switch back. “Oh, you want your healthy, virile rat body back? Hmm. No, I think I’ll keep it and you can hang out in that decrepit old sack of meat until it croaks. Yeah, sure, go ahead and tell someone. Tell someone you’ve mind-swapped with me, and that you should really be a four-foot talking rat living in the New York sewer system. I totally bet they’ll help you.”

But the old guy’s the good kind of Craigs List hookup. They swap back in good time, so things work out for Splinter. And the Turtles fight off some ninja assassins, so things work out for the reader.

Incidentally, the whole “when they were younger” prequel-type episode thing is something that is usually reserved for later on in a series’ run, once the idea well starts to run dry. Once again, TMNT has played one of the desperate cards a tad early. Maybe it’s storytelling incompetence, but here’s a new theory: what if this is all completely intentional? What if E&L are doing it so early on just to get it out of the way?

Coming up in issue #10: the Turtles and April sit around the sewer lair and reminisce about past adventures, like when they fought the Shredder, when they teleported to deep space and met the Fugutoid, and when they helped the mind-swapped Splinter show a disillusioned corporate son with prophetic dreams of ancient battles that he, it turns out, is the chosen one.