Category: TMNT Musings

All posts relating to the ever-present Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property and all incarnations of that franchise.

A Shellbinding Conversation

I hooked up with an old buddy that I hadn’t seen in years and we had a nice, pleasant conversation over a cup of coffee or two. As we were talking, he mentioned that he started getting back into comics and heard about the IDW-published TMNT comic series that’s currently ongoing, wanting to know if I knew anything about it.

I told him some basic stuff that I knew; it was yet another rebooting of the Turtles, but one built from the building blocks of what came before. I’ve heard good things about the series, but aside from a couple issues here and there, I haven’t been following the series nor do I know anything beyond the bare essentials of the plot. In any event, he said that he would give the series a shot.
A couple weeks go by and I hear from him again via e-mail, mentioning that he got the first trade paperback collecting the first few issues. He seemed impressed by the quality of the stories, but didn’t care for the reincarnation origin that fueled this whole story. He offered to lend me his copy so I could check it out, but I declined, told him how happy I was that he was enjoying the book, and wished him well.
I did get the trade for myself, along with a couple others, and they are presently my bedtime readers. While I’m beyond the point of giving this series the full follow-up, I liked what I read for the most part. This stuff is years old, the series is firm in publication, and apparently doing really well.
Turtles still have some staying power after all this time… and the comic, at least, is in good hands with IDW.

Random Thoughts On… The Original TMNT Comics

How much of the original Mirage TMNT comics have you read?

In all honesty, not a whole lot… but I wouldn’t say I’m completely oblivious to them and I am catching up in some form or another. I’ve read a fair share of Volume 1 stuff (mostly oddball issues and the first and final few of that) and I thought there was some good stuff there when it stuck with continuity and didn’t stray too far from that path. I don’t believe I ever sampled the short-lived color series Volume 2 beyond maybe one or two chance issues. Dwelled a bit into the Image-published Volume 3 and the less said about that, the better. The only Mirage TMNT I followed with any regularity was TMNT Volume 4 and the second series of Tales of the TMNT. And I can honestly tell you that I enjoyed Tales a hell of a lot more than Volume 4. Too each his own, I suppose.

Back during my younger years, I probably only had a handful of Volume 1 comics (including some from the concluding City At War storyline) and only got around to read the earliest comics thanks to some of the recent IDW published collections. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy them, but it was just a matter of money being something of a premium and now it’s the comics themselves that are something of a premium.

Random Thoughts On… Classic TMNT 1987

Here’s a strange and terrifying thought for you folks; in all my adult years, I have not revisited the classic TMNT series from the 80s.

I remember my fondness for the old show back when I was a little youngster and I’d be lying if I said that show didn’t plant the seeds for my appreciation and fondness for the franchise as a whole and in its multiple formats. TMNT is a thing that is evergreen in my interests; I’ve got a few of the video games, I’ve got the old movies, some DVDs from the 2003 revival… I might even have some of the comics laying around somewhere. Hell, I even saw that newest Turtles film and actually got some level of enjoyment out of it.

And yet, for some reason or another, I’ve yet to track down a DVD set of the old cartoon and give it a gander.

I suppose there is a kernel of reasoning behind this; every time I revisit an old cartoon or property that I had a fondness for, it usually turns out to be utter crap and I often question how I could enjoy something that was poorly conceived. I used to dig all those Nintendo cartoons like the various Super Mario cartoons or those Captain N cartoons, but rewatching them these days made me question how I could’ve enjoyed something so bad.

Is there an underlying fear that if I revisit THAT series, I’d find something to hate about it?

Maybe… someday… maybe…

Never Went Back….

You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever said this before, but I’ll say it here.

I never went back to the 1987 animated series since they last aired episodes in the early-90s.
The other day, I went by the HMV store and they had all the TMNT seasons for about ten bucks a season. Compared to how much they used to cost, I thought that was a hell of a deal. And I figured that for about a hundred bucks plus tax, I could own the entire series and revisit some childhood memories. This was the thing that made me a Turtles fan for a time. This was my introduction to that whole franchise and laid the groundwork for my faltering fanhood. It started with this and I had the opportunity to see this show for the first time in years.
And so, I didn’t buy any of the seasons. Not one.
Here’s the thing… whenever I go back to an older show that I used to enjoy, I watch it for the first time in years and it ended up being a lot worse than I remember it being. Nostalgia can color your perception of something and when it came to watching older stuff and realizing how poorly some (or all) of it has aged, it left me a bit shakened.
80s Turtles was goofy, without question. And while I remember enjoying the show to the bitter end, there’s always the possibility that the whole thing is colored and I might not enjoy the show today. Maybe I held off buying the seasons to hold on to those cherished memories… or something to that extent.
It’s not all bad, though. I own the original trilogy of TMNT films on DVD and they still hold up relatively well (well, the first two, at least). The video games are still fun to play. And reading through some of the old TMNT Adventures issues from Archie Comics, those things are still compelling stories told within the framework of the goofier incarnation of turtles.
Maybe some day, I’ll go back to that old series and see if it holds up.
But not today.

So… Turtles.

This one’s been out for a while, but I only got around to seeing this just now and… I am cautiously pessimistic.

Look, I know it’s “cool” to rag on Michael Bay after his Transformers movies and all that, but honestly, this doesn’t look utterly terrible. It doesn’t look good, either; feels a bit generic, almost unashamedly lifting plot elements from that Amazing Spider-Man film that I honestly didn’t care for, the whole thing seems completely cliched, and there seems to be a serious lack of ninjas here outside of those Turtle things… and there might be a few other things in mind… but other than that, I think it’s not half bad and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m holding out false hope here, aren’t I?

Waiting for the Blu-Ray, I guess.

Bought the new TMNT for Wii and Have Homebrew Channel? Read This…

If you bought the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the old Wii, it’ll most likely come with a System Update. Doing some research a bit (or Googling it, as the cool kids call it), I found no information to this supposed update. So here’s some first-hand information for those with homebrewed Wiis.

The update doesn’t do anything. The system version remains at 4.3u.

But I can now play my new video game… and still play my homebrew channel and stuff.

Yippee.