'80s: the rise of the Turtles.
As famous for the 1987 toyetic cartoon as they've always became, they weren't created in the animated cartoon format. They were instead born in an independent comic book created and published in 1984 (the same year my parents married) by cartoonists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Everything began out of nowhere in an afternoon when both were searching for good ideas. Eastman drew a turtle wearing a bandana and playing with nunchaku. They both found it really funny, because the slow stamina of a turtle and the badass ninjitsu skills obviously detracted from each other. It was so unusual that they decided to develop that idea, and, consequently, created a quartet of turtles, each one specialized in a certain Asian weapon.
Thanks to Kevin's uncle's financial support, the duo published 3000 copies of the first issue of the original series in the magazine format, black-and-white and newspaper. It wasn't a over-serious story, it was just a funny parody of the likes of Marvel's New Mutants and Daredevil which were on vogue at that time. The plot of the first issue was simple, yet magnificent: due to a car crash which caused an radioactive substance spill, the same substance seriously affected four normal turtle pets which were carried by a boy. Shocked by the accident, the boy drops the polluted turtles in a sewer. Meanwhile, a formidable ninja master Hamato Yoshi leaves Japan to live in USA after a love triangle killed his best friend Oruku Nagi. Yoshi has a pet rat called Splinter who also became a formidable ninja master by copying his human master's skills while training. Nagi's evil brother called Saki the Shredder, nevertheless, tracks down Yoshi in his despair for vengeance and kills him in the pursuit, An unscathed Splinter runs away to the sewers where he befriends the four turtle pets still bathing in the radioactive shit. All five animals are simultaneously affected, acquiring anthropomorphism and speech abilities.
Splinter decided to train the turtles as his pupils to revenge on the Shredder, the ruler of New York's crime-filled neighborhoods with the help of his Foot Clan subordinates. He named the Turtles after four Renaissance artists Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo, and specializes them in their respective weapons katana, sai, bo and nunchaku, so they could perfect their skills as a team.
Eastman and Laird took their then-created story to a New Hamsphire comic-con where the print has quickly run, making the Turtles an instant success, leading the duo to establish their own comic studio and publisher Mirage Studios to write, draw and publish the regular series which would still be black-and-white. The new series introduced April O'Neil and mercenary Casey Jones, the Turtles' best human friends, mad scientist Baxter Stockman and an alien race Utrom. The turtles had already killed the Shredder, only for him to be revived by a mystical rite and remain the Turtles' pain in their assholes until issue #11 where he was beheaded by Leonardo. At that point, the Turtles were already a phenomenon, with lots of merchandise gallore, and to increase the workload their creators relied on "guest artists" to write and draw the stories, leading to a more episodic continuity. It wasn't until issue #50 that the continuity was once again defined when the original creators supervised the bulk of work and wrote and drew a new saga which lasted until the classic series' final issue #62 in 1993. Two months later, a new series, this time in color, was published as Volume 2 which only lasted 13 issues due to the crash of comic books. In 1996, Erik Larsen took over the series, launching what would be known as Volume 3 through Image Comics, again black-and-white. The jumping-the-shark additions to the characters (such as Leonardo losing one hand, Donatello turned into a robot and Raphael becoming the Shredder, for example) pissed the fans and killed the series in 1999 after 23 issues. Voulme 3 is not canon in the Turtles' chronology.
The show that was the face of the franchise in the late '80s and early '90s.
On the other hand, as the classic series was striking the hot iron, Eastman and Laird partnered with Murakami-Wolf-Swenson to turn the comics into cartoon format. Premiering on December 1987, the TMNT cartoon was so successful that many people thought the cartoon came first. However, the cartoon distanced from the comics, as it was more kid-friendly alongside the story differences. For example, Splinter and Hamato Yoshi became the same character: a human who, after being betrayed by his teammate Oruku Saki and expelled from the Foot Clan, moves out from Japan to USA where he lives in the NY sewers where he adopts four turtle pets who were abandoned by their former owners. One day, a strange liquid befalls all five, turning the turtle pets into talking anthropomorphized animals and Splinter into an anthropomorphic rat. Another difference is that Shredder is a standard supervillain instead of the organized crime lord, who happens to act as a subordinate to Kraang, an alien who wants to take over the world with his superadvanced technology and lives in his Technodrome. The Foot Soldiers are merely reduced to Shredder's robotic minions built by Kraang. But the most famous change is that the cartoon gave the turtles' bandanas more distinct colors (Leonardo's became blue, Raphael's is red, Donatello's got purple and Michelangelo's would become orange) while in the original source material all of them wore red masks. The cartoon also added Shredder's two bumbling lackeys Bebop and Rocksteady (an warthog and a rhino, respectively), and April's friends, news reporters Irma and Vernon.
The cartoon was able to last 10 seasons until 1996 with 193 episodes (a feat successfully matched by Spongebob Squarepants from Nickelodeon, whose parent Viacom would later acquire the TMNT property, which I'll talk about further). Despite this, the cartoon was not officially canon on Mirage's eyes as Eastman and Laird had yet to utilize the cartoon-only characters in their works. Despite this, most of the TMNT merchandise utilized the cartoon's aesthetic approach and, conversely, the animation fans only view the show as official, ignoring the comics. As a result of fan demand, Archie Comics published a comic series whose stories and visuals were based on those from the 1987 cartoon.
The turtles' first foray into Hollywood
The cartoon's popularity also led to production of a trilogy of live-action movies produced by HK-based major Golden Harvest and released by New Line Cinema. The first one came in 1990, featuring the revolutionary animatronic costumed puppets designed and built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop (the same guys who created the Muppets, the cast of Sesame Street, the Sinclair family from Dinosaurs and the title cartoon character Sid the Science Kid). The movie's story was more faithful to the comics, specifically the classic series. The first sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze from 1991 was closely faithful to the cartoon as it was more comedic and light-hearted due to the original film's criticisms launched by parents who found it more violent. In this sequel, only Donatello used his bo while his brothers used other on-set props. While based on the show, Eastman and Laird couldn't find a good room for Bebop and Rocksteady, so they decided to create Tokka and Rahzar (an evil mutant turtle and a big bad wolf, respectively) instead. The third and final movie premiered in 1993, focusing on the Turtles turning back to feudal Japan to rescue April who got stranded there by accident. Because they were busy The Flintstones, Babe and Dinosaurs, the Henson Creature Shop couldn't get a job in this movie. As a result, the Turtles and Splinter were created by All Creature Effects with less-than-stellar results.
A well-known stop-motion animation/animatronic/puppet firm Chiodo Brothers worked on Saban/Fox Kids' tokustatsu series Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation which premiered in 1997. The new show was set after the events of the third movie and introduced the turtles' sister Venus de Milo. As the show struggled to find an audience, the show got plugged after only one season. Before the cancelation, the Turtles had a crossover with the Power Rangers in a story arc from Power Rangers in Space.
In 2001, Peter Laird decided to revive the Turtles on his own accord, first as a new comic series known as Volume 4, again through Mirage Studios. This new bi-monthly series is set 15 years after the events of Volume 2, dismissing Volume 3. Three years later, a new comic series Tales of the TMNT was launched as an interquel between Volumes 2 and 4, being essentially the true Volume 3. This series was named after a seven-issue miniseries published in 1987.
The millenium Turtles
The new comics' popularity led Mirage Studios to co-produce a new cartoon for Fox with 4Kids Entertainment in 2003. The new show would be more faithful to the comics, complete with a more mature tone, despite still kid-friendly. The 2003 cartoon was adapted into a seven-issue comic miniseries published by Dreamweave and lasted until 2009 when Viacom acquired the TMNT brand. Because of the changes on the Turtles' personalities, Shredder's origins (in this show, he was an utrom) and Bebop and Rocksteady only appearing in the 2003 cartoon's series finale, the TV movie crossover Turtles Forever, the original show's fans didn't respond to the new one as well as the comic book fans who viewed the old one as kid-friendly. All the TMNT merchandise at the time was based on the 2003 show. A 2007 CGI animated feature film was produced by Mirage Studios and also HK-based Imagi Animation and released by Warner Bros. Pictures and the Weinstein Company, featuring the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) as April, Mako (in his final role before his death) as Splinter, Chris Evans (Captain America) as Casey Jones, Patrick Stewart as Max Winters/Yaotl and Laurence Fishburne as the narrator. In the new movie, the Turtles, having grown apart after their final victory on Shredder, must reunite to save New York from ancient monsters.
Not just cartoons... we're Nicktoons!
In 2009, Viacom acquired the TMNT brand. As part of the merger, Kevin Eastman would resume writing and drawing new TMNT stories to be published by IDW. The new comics were launched in 2011 and feature characters from all TMNT incarnations from the past and the present, most notably Bebop and Rocksteady, and the Mighty Mutanimals, in addition to new characters such as Old Hob, a mutant stray cat, and Alopex, a mutant polar fox. Also, a new storyline introduced Splinter and the Turtles as reincarnations of the late Hamato Yoshi and his sons.
In 2012, Nickelodeon produced a new CGI cartoon blending characters, concepts and plot devices from every single TMNT continuity. Two years later, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies released the Michael Bay-produced the live-action remake starring Megan Fox as April, Will Arnett as Vernon and the Turtles as performance-captured animated characters by Industrial Light & Magic. A sequel premiered this year, introducing Baxter Stockman, Kraang, Bebop and Rocksteady in the new movies.
To close this post, here's a fun fact: the original 1987 cartoon was renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in Europe, as censorship didn't want certain violent words to be used in a children's product such as "ninja". However, as the European censorship was increasingly toned down, all future media released on European territories retain the original title.
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