Eastman & Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mirage Studios Volume 1, Issue 10
Story & Art by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird
Read it at NinjaTurtles.com

65% Original Material

I’m guessing Leonardo #1 is where they got a lot of the ideas for the first movie. In 1990’s nine-time Academy-Award-winner, a rooftop-prowling Raphael gets mucked up by the Foot and winds up tossed, barely alive, into April’s apartment. Here it’s Leonardo. And in the film, the only film on IMDB to have a perfect 10.0 rating (that’s with over 400,000 votes), Raphael’s embitchening is followed by a wicked, multi-floor ninja battle. So, the tragedy of not having that particular issue is lessened by my knowing basically what happened.

But the tragedy is then un-lessened by how god damned awesome this issue is. This is the big one, the one we’ve been waiting for. If Leonardo #1 was anywhere near this good, then I’m really missing out. And that’s a pain I’m just not equipped to handle.

I must live vicariously through this book. Like in the movie (which made over a hundred best-of lists that year, by the way), things in #10 escalate. A minor ninja skirmish becomes a full-fledged ninja broohaha. The apartment fight moves downstairs, to April’s antiques shop.

But by now, everyone’s feeling a wee pooped from doling out ninja death. The boys would rather take a nap than continue the slaughter. Things look dark.

Just then, a guardian angel comes to the rescue, in the traditional angelic method, by crushing skulls with his baseball bats. Casey Jones steps in, good people. Just like in the third-highest-grossing movie off all time.

Though the sequence isn’t completely the same as that film, which has become something of a holiday classic in the 18 years since its release, in that in the book it marks the big return (for all but Leonardo, I guess) of the Shredder. This dramatic moment was not possible in the motion picture with the all-time record number of consecutive weeks at number 1, as the Shredder had not yet been introduced to the leads, and thus could not return.

So this moment is more akin to the scene in the second film (which holds no records and won no awards), where the Turtles learn that Oroku Saki’s ninja skills allowed him to survive having his head crushed by a garbage truck. (That’s a plot issue that I might just have to address in the future.)

What else happened here that also happened in filmdom’s highest international grosser? Let’s run it down:

• The floor of April’s apartment / ceiling of April’s antiques shop collapses.
• The building catches fire.
• They escape through a hidden door.
• They flee to the midwest.

But before you start questioning the originality of the only film to win the Nobel Peace Prize, let me just remind you that it wasn’t entirely taken from the comic book. There’s the above item in regards to the Shredder, there’s the fact that Splinter was present and not missing for the fight in the comics, there’s the Christmastime setting of E&L’s book. And then there’s the whole thing where in the movie, everyone’s all moving around and stuff.