If there is one franchise I never get tired of, it’s the Ninja Turtles. My clan tag on Call of Duty is the FOOT clan and I still have all of my original figures from growing up with the Turtles. My fondest memories of the NES and daycare come from playing the Ninja Turtles video game and I secretly hated the third movie. Why?Because I was a kid that couldn’t admit to himself that there was such a thing as a bad Ninja Turtles movie. Needless to say, I love the Turtles to this day. There wasn’t another person more excited about their return to comics than me and the reviews back it up. But after last week’s snafu with issues 5 and 6 of the new series and seeing how so many fans have those fanboy blinders up, I said fuck it… I’m going to re-read and review a random ass TMNT book from my collection. Now my TMNT collection is pretty large, but I don’t have all of the book by any means. After all I was in the first and second grade when the cartoon came out. But I did get to read the original series in the fifth grade in art class (Thanks teacher's aid who's name I don't remember).
Today I bring you one of my favorite series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures#5.Adventures used to be code for “cartoon adaption” and really that’s what this was. It introduced new characters either before or after the show aired and sometimes the characters never made it into an episode.They still made it into a figure that’s for sure.
I love this issue partially because of the cover. Man Ray is fucking huge. Like proportionally too fucking big compared to everyone else on the cover. So much so that he looks like he could tackle Lady Liberty. He’s also got a spear gun and although that technically should go against everything he’s fighting against, it’s pretty bad ass for him to have it all the same.
This issue is basically Man Ray’s origin story, which was often the case with the series. The Turtles are in Jersey visiting the aquarium and checking out the Devil Ray when the curator gives them more details than they could ever forget. He kicks them out soon enough and heads out to do some research about illegal dumping in the ocean. The Turtles just so happen to take the long way home to New York by taking the shore line and wouldn’t you know it, the Shredder and his goons Bebop and Rocksteady are in a submarine off the coast.
Our aquarium worker ends up getting more than he bargained for as he’s sucked out to the ocean with ooze covering his hand… the same had that touched the Devil Ray before! Soon enough he’s Man Ray and he’s looking to shut down the Shredder’s plans to ruin the Fourth of July by blowing up the Statue of Liberty.
I’m sure as a kid I found this book to be made for me as I’m actually born on the Fourth of July. How dare the Shredder try to ruin my day or some such shit right? This issue is old and it’s probably the second Turtles comic I ever bought, but it’s still good. I was actually surprised about how good it still is since it was written for children over two decades ago. Just goes to show you that if you don’t write down to your audience you’ll produce a product that withstands the tests of time.
I have no idea where you can get these books anymore and that seems tragic. You’d think that IDW or MTV would be smart enough to start collecting these bad boys and selling them; at the very least start dumping them into a digital storefront. Oh well though, their loss as I would love to have re-mastered editions or single digital issues of this series in particular. You can expect more of these in the future, probably after each new release of the IDW series; so until then… Cowabunga Dudes.