IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Hits A Milestone…and I Get Nostalgic

Congratulations IDW!!!  You did it!!!  With the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issue #73 last week, IDW’s TMNT series became the longest running Turtles comic of all time.  Yay!!!  Archie Comics’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures held the record at seventy-two issues running from August of 1988 to October of 1995 and, for comparison’s sake, the Turtles’ original Mirage series ran for sixty-two issues, ending in August of 1993.  In honor of this momentous occasion, I wanted to talk about why IDW’s Turtles series has captured my heart and mind as well as how growing up with the Turtles for nearly thirty years has allowed my appreciation of their story to evolve.

Humanity’s GREATEST Literary Work

With slight modifications for genre, the sentiments legendary anchorman Ron Burgundy once applied to the band Survivor applies with as much truth to Tom Waltz and Erik Burnham’s 2014 IDW miniseries masterpiece Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters – “I’ve often said that the [comic book Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters] is the best that ever was.  In my opinion, they put [classic literature] to bed.  Everyone else is an imitator.  That’s right, you heard me [Shakespeare], [Rumi], [J.K. Rowling], [John Grisham], you guys suck…dong.”  But to be as honest as possible, I must take my praise a step further, slightly modifying Ron Burgundy once again, “This [comic book] is quite simply the greatest composition in human history.  If you disagree, I will fight you.”