From “Cowabunga!” to “Booyakasha!”: My Life in Ninja Turtle Memories

The unexpected emotional mix of finally sitting down to watch some of Nickelodeon’s 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series coupled with warm feelings of post-birthday nostalgia gave birth to this post.  You see, there are a lot of characters I’ve loved through my whole life but few I’ve experienced in as many different iterations as I have the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  So I’m taking a walk down Memory Lane, looking at every incarnation of the Turtles I’ve met and exploring what they meant to me.  To be clear, this is not an exhaustive list of every single version of the Turtles.  There’s plenty of entries, sure, but the Turtles are prolific characters with parts of their mythology I’ve missed/yet to experience.  Still, this is a fairly impressive list if I do say so myself :).  With that being said, onward to an exploration of my life with the heroes in a half shell…TURTLE POWER.

The BIG Question: Which Vehicle/Ship Would You Choose?

Once before, I rolled up my sleeves and tackled one of humanity’s oldest and most enduring questions – which superpowers would you choose, if you could have any?  But that’s far from the only query to vex the human imagination.  As long as we’ve been imagining mystical, powerful, larger-than-life beings in incredible, captivating, exciting stories, we’ve been imagining different ways for them to move around.  Naturally, the next best thing to imagining fictional characters travelling in these incredible vessels is thinking about having a real one for ourselves.  And this brings us to the question at the center of today’s post – if you could choose, which ship or vehicle or transport would you pick to have for your very own?  

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.

A Beautiful Rebirth

With fifty-eight issues and twelve micro/miniseries and counting, it should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the world of comics that IDW’s current reimaging of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is something special.  However, being out of the comic game for over fifteen years, I had no idea what I was getting into when I read the first trade paperback.  I couldn’t’ve been ready for this comic when I picked it up and now I can never imagine putting it down.  Living in an era of reboots and remakes, we’ve come to accept “At least they didn’t destroy it…” as often the best we can hope for.  But IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles defies all odds and transforms a fun childhood favorite into an artistic and emotional masterpiece.  With mutants on the mind this weekend (I’ll probably be seeing the new movie tomorrow), I am feeling the urge to talk Turtles.  So let’s go!