Written by Chris Snellgrove | Published
We now think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a film and television franchise, but long before that, they were born in comic books. These comics grew in popularity with the advent of movies and cartoons, and kids who were TMNT fans would seek them out and read any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-related content they could get their hands on. Not all of them were as child-friendly as the movies or TV shows.
As all 80s kids remember, there were two different types of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics back in the day: the original black-and-white Mirage comics and the full-color Archie’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics. For young fans and their parents alike, this has led to the assumption that there is a clear division between the Mirage comics being intended for adults, and the Archie comics (which were based on the 1980s cartoon) being made to be suitable for children.
This assumption was very wrong. I recently re-read all 72 issues of the “kid-friendly” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic and discovered bizarre Technodrome-type crap that effectively warped an entire generation of young fans without their parents realizing what was going on.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Disembodied Minds and Genocide
Perhaps the most famous example of this is the revelation that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles caused Hitler’s death. This was during a story in which the Turtles of the future and their present selves met and engaged in some misadventures back in time with villains who had embedded Hitler’s brain with a robotic body. When they met the intact Hitler of the past, future Raphael punched him, and future Leonardo claimed that they were demons here for the Führer’s brain, prompting him to commit suicide.
While this is the most famous Example of TAdventures of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Being a hilariously weird comedy and definitely not kid-friendly, it’s not the latter. For example, the comic establishes early on that Krang (the series’ most famous mind in a robot body) isn’t just an ineffective leader of Dimension X. He’s actually a genocidal warlord responsible for wiping out entire planets.
The walking cannibal eyeballs and the devil’s harem are not suitable for children
Revealing that the goofy comic villain was actually a mass murderer truly Guy threw me for a loop, as did a later plot point where Krang starts working with a wandering cannibal eyeball and eventually attaches himself to Shredder’s head so he can use the evil ninja as a puppet.
The comic introduced other strange evil people, including Knoll, a man who claimed to be Satan and attempted to create a Bible-themed apocalypse on Earth. Oh, and he threatens to force one of the powerful interloper matriarchs into part of his “harem,” which means we can add the “Demon Rapist” to the list of villains in this “kid-friendly” comic.
Both prostitution and Christianity are a big part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles world
Speaking of the Mighty Mutanimals, they had a short-lived spinoff series before they were killed off… brutally shot by some third-rate villains. Via the time-traveling future Turtles, the comic explains that these heroes were killed due to villains interfering with the timeline. However, they are never brought back to life, but we are treated to a vision from Null of these literally dead heroes Burn in hell.
Probably my favorite example Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Being Totally Crazy is a multi-issue back-up story in which April O’Neil discovers a real-life angel who has been kidnapped and forced into commercial slavery by a real-life pimp. She uses her newfound ninja training to free Angel, but not before one of the thugs offers to put the reporter in an R-rated movie (an adult film star named April O’Neil… who can imagine that?). The angel then returns to heaven like Neo at the end of the film MatrixThe comic seems to have confirmed that Christian theology is absolutely true.
I’m kidding that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures It ruined my childhood, but even as a kid, I appreciated these comics despite (and often because of) their innate weirdness. They took major creative swings that didn’t always land, but any given version of the comics was much better than the 1987 TMNT cartoon it was nominally based on. All this delicious weirdness has been a personal mutagen for me, transforming me from someone who expects simple stories to someone who can appreciate even the strangest types of content.
As a sign of gratitude, I can only say those three little words first popularized by 20th century pop icon Vanilla Ice: “Go, ninja, go.”