Richard Rosenbaum - Raise Some Shell: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

My soul is wrought to sing of forms
transformed to bodies new and strange!

Ovid, Metamorphoses

the pop classic series

#1 It Doesnt Suck.
Showgirls

#2 Raise Some Shell.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Richard Rosenbaum is a fiction editor at Broken Pencil (Canadas magazine of the underground arts and independent culture) and a regular contributor to OverthinkingIt.com. He has a Masters degree in communication and culture, and this is what hes doing with it. He lives in Toronto, Ontario. His favourite Turtle is Donatello.

raise

some shell.

teenage

mutant

ninja turtles

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rosenbaum

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NOTES

The quote from Ovids Metamorphoses is from the translation by Brookes More (Boston: Cornhill Publishing, 1922 ).

The information on crime statistics in New York comes from Uniform Crime Reports and Index of Crime in New York in the State of New York enforced by New York City from 1985 to 2005 (http://www.disastercenter.com/newyork/crime/ 9004 .htm).

Marvels argument that mutants are not humans for import tax purposes is from Toy Biz v. United States (United States Court of International Trade January , 2003 ).

The quoted passage by Roger Ebert comes from his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze in I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2000 ).

The Hollywood Reporter press release on the sale of TMNT to Nickelodeon is by Georg Szalai. (Ninja Turtles snapped up by Nickelodeon. Reuters. Web. October , 2009 . http://www.reuters.com/article/ 2009 ///us-ninja-idUSTREL 01520091022 ).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to The One-Above-All; and, of course, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and everyone from Mirage Studios, who have inspired and enriched generations. Turtles Forever!

INTRODUCTION: TMNT & ME

Depending on how you look at it, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began life either in a puddle of phosphorescent sludge under the mean streets of New York (back when those streets really were mean, before Giulianis reign) or in a cramped apartment that dreamed of being an artists studio in Dover, New Hampshire. In the following years, TMNT evolved into the most successful independent comic book ever, the worlds most fearsome fighting team, a global phenomenon, the best new reason to order a pizza and learn self-defense, and a precedent-setting transmedia franchise never before seen in the annals of pop culture history.

Ninja Turtles inspired countless imitators, numerous detractors, and fanatical devotion from people of all ages and backgrounds. They fought against street gangs in filthy alleys, hid underground by day, and ran and jumped across the rooftops by night, shouting catchphrases and jokes. They drove without a license, traveled through time and across dimensions, drank underage in extraterrestrial dive bars, and saved humanity from the forces of evil hundreds upon hundreds of times.

In their own world (or should that be worlds?), they kept to the shadows as proper ninjas are wont to do, their good deeds perpetually unsung. But in our world gosh, we loved them, didnt we? I, for one, still do. Theres a good chance that you do too. After years (and counting) of the Turtles, not only are we not bored of them, but new generations of fans are even today discovering Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael for the first time.

Ninja Turtles clearly touches something deep and important in our culture. But why? Why the massive success, and why the tireless longevity? Why do we still remember and still care about the Turtles? What is it about them, and about us, that makes these stories resonate so strongly?

I was in fourth grade when I discovered the Turtles; I was nine or ten, and it must have been 1989 . Fraggle Rock had been over for two years; He-Man for four. To a little kid, these expired obsessions were by then like vivid dreams from a previous life. Id moved on to building Proton Packs out of paper-towel rolls and ghost traps from Kleenex boxes and flying through the future and past with my cardboard-and-magic-marker DeLorean.

It was in art class, I think, that some kid brought out one of his action figures I dont remember exactly which one it was, but lets say it was Donatello because he is clearly and objectively the best. I didnt recognize it, this weird, muscly, anthropomorphic reptile wearing a bandana and a toothy scowl, so I asked the kid what it was from. He said, Ninja Turtles.

My follow-up question: When is it on?

Now I dont have a clear memory of first watching the show, but I do know it made an immediate and unmistakable impression on me, because the following fall when I caught chicken pox and had to stay home from school for two weeks of unavailing, pustular torment, and my mom kindly asked what she could do to make me feel better, I said, Buy me a Ninja Turtles comic.

Which she did. It was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #. I didnt know it at the time, but this wasnt the comic series that had kicked off the whole Turtle craze. It was from the series published by Archie Comics, which retold stories from the cartoon for its first four issues but then veered off into its own new parallel dimension of original content. What I did know was this wasnt the TMNT from my Saturday morning and weekday afternoon pilgrimages to the altar of television. They were the same four Turtles, sure though Raphael was, for some unexplained reason, wearing a full-body black suit like the one Spider-Man had been sporting the last few years but Id been dropped into a whole different universe. The Turtles were stranded on an alien planet called Hirobyl, apparently carried there inside the mouth of a bus-sized disembodied cows head by the name of Cudley the Cowlick, battling an army of insect-men they referred to as Malignas Children while winged video cameras circled, broadcasting the fight on an extragalactic television channel owned and operated by a pair of talking trees named Stump and Sling. Shredder and Krang, and their lackeys Rocksteady and Bebop, were around, as was the alligator mutant Leatherhead, but there was also some buffed-up, cigar-chomping human called Trap; a giant talking fruitbat and his wisecracking mosquito sidekick, Wingnut and Screwloose (respectively); and a purple-skinned witch named Cherubae, who was being held captive by a group of gray-skinned, pie-eyed aliens she called the Sons of Silence.

I had no idea what was going on.

And it was awesome.

Superheroes were not strangers to me. The guts of comic books, covers torn off and lost from rereading after rereading, lived in my drawers: Green Lantern and Superboy; Spider-Man and Power Pack. That stuff could get pretty weird. But this this whole Turtle thing was different. It was full of humor but also sincerity. It was brain-meltingly bizarre but still came down, ultimately, to a relatable story: a family sticking together when the odds were against them and important things were at stake. It was something special something that snapped its sharp jaws down hard on my brain and told me in no uncertain terms that it was refusing to ever let go again.

Nostalgia is big these days. You might have noticed. Everything old is new again, as they say, and anything that made money in the 1980 s is currently being recycled, rereleased, repurposed, and rerun for the benefit of the grown-up(ish) versions of the kids who were into the stuff back in the day and now have money to throw away on Build Your Own Optimus Prime Lego sets and faux-faded t-shirts silk-screened with images of Snarf being an idiot. A cynic could easily dismiss the Turtles resurgence as just another symptom of the profligate hipsteria of our age and leave it at that. But while nostalgia is a part of whats happening, it isnt the whole story. Not only does that explanation not go far enough with respect to the Turtles perpetual success, but it ignores the ways in which the nostalgia factor is being used in TMNTs contemporary incarnations differently and better than its fellow properties use it.