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Tonight I dine on Turtle Soup…Issue 1.

01cover.jpg picture by Jesterangelo

Man, I’m punny.

Hello all Jester here. It’s been a while since I’ve done any thing for GGM, and I apologize. But I’m back to talk about the 4 issue Turtle Soup series. Featuring a 4 part Mike Dooney story as well as other short one shots by various artists and writers, Turtle Soup is a fun read for the ADHD suffer in all of us. The stories are at most six pages long and loaded with action and humor like you’d expect from the Turtles. It is however very, and I mean VERY non-canonical. So with that exposition out of the way, on to issue one!

The first short story is a “continuation” I guess of the TMNT movie parody comic Green-Grey Sponge-Suit Sushi Turtles, which I haven’t read…sue me. This short stars Toyoduh (Like the car company…I’d guess…HELP ME!!) and is called Naked City. In the short comic, Toyoduh is singing in the shower when the Sponge-Suit Sushi Turtles archenemy…um…a giant kazoo…offers to clean his glasses only to give him x-ray specks and hilarity ensues as he sees everyone as to quote Mikey from TMNT 3, “bare butt naked!” and he is arrested for being naked himself…I don’t get it. tOkKa…I need your help!

TurtleSoup2.jpg picture by Jesterangelo

TurtleSoup3.jpg picture by Jesterangelo

Next is the Dooney segment. (Hooray!! I love Dooney’s art style.) The Turtles are out and about, looking for food. Dooney even puts in an old toon jab by having Leo chide Mikey for suggesting pizza in favor of “real food.” Take that Fred Wolf! Meanwhile in an alternate time line and dimension…I’ll refrain from Dimension X reference…wait…CRAP!!!…we meet a nerdy alien named Henry who is working on a time travel wrist gauntlet when he is interrupted by a random date by the name of Betti Clane. In an attempt to impress her, Henry shows her the gauntlet and she presses a button and they accidentally travel to “our” dimension and they encounter the Turtles. When Betti freaks out about the green “monsters” Henry activates the gauntlet to return home and instead causes dinosaurs to be pulled into the quiet streets of Florence, Massachusetts. TO BE CONTINUED…

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Next is a story about Leonardo and Splinter that takes place…close to midnight…and something evil’s lurking in the dark…er…um…sorry. This story and the last in this anthology are the reasons I wanted to review these books. It also proves that these stories aren’t canon. You see as I’ve mentioned before the Turtles in the old toon weren’t called brothers or sons much but students and friends. Here, Splinter calls Leo a friend, but goes one further that kills me. He calls him “Leo.” I know…small potatoes, but it’s weird to me (and I’m sure you don’t like this, do you Amy?) Leo does call the others his brothers though. Oh, and he and Splinter talk about the purpose of fear…

TurtleSoup6.jpg picture by Jesterangelo The next story is called The Ring and it’s a Donatello solo story that has him hiking in the woods, falling down a cliff and chipping his shell. Uninjured he continues his meditation and is met by a large turtle…it think…he may have imagined it…I can’t be sure. Rick McCollum’s art is awesome though.

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Next is a Rick Arthur short about Raphael and a girl named Lucindra who get together to spar. Simple as that. Raph’s name is abbreviated Raff which bugs me as a Raphael fan, but now I’m just picking nits.

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And now for my favorite story, TURTLE POWER!! By Rich Gehhen and Tom McWeeney. Why is it my favorite? Because it has Krang in it. Krang…in Mirage comics. Again, so not canon, but I don’t care. It’s Krang. The story has our heroes flying the Turtle Blimp in an attempt to stop Krang’s evil schemes and his wolf mutant. Rahzar is that you? In the end out heroes rule the day and we find out, in St. Elsewere fashion, that it’s all a little boy named Bart playing, and rather roughly at that, in his living room with his Turtle action figures. I hear this story was based loosely on Stephan’s real life…true story!

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So there’s Turtle Soup issue 1. Stay tuned Turtle Fans, for the other servings of Turtle Soup.

Master Splinter: Shades of Fatherhood

Well, in honor of Father’s Day, I (also) decided to do a little blurb about Splinter’s role as father in the various universes. Hopefully I don’t upstage Jester’s great posting… :S

Peter Griffin, Al Bundy, Ben Cartwright (for you older readers), Fred Flintstone, Homer Simpson… heck, Brak’s Dad, anyone?

These are just a few of the TV Fathers that we’ve grown to love (or loathe) over the years. And today, I decided it was time to shine a light on the TMNT’s beloved furry father. There’s a number of universes to look at, so I may break this up into sections: Movies, Comics, Cartoons.

Movies: The Original movie has always been one of my favorite examples of Splinter as their ‘Dad’. Ask anyone what their favorite scene was in the first movie, and 9 times out of ten, it was the one-on-one talk that Splinter has with Raphael concerning his anger issues. I still get misty-eyed when I watch this scene…

The first movie really portrayed Splinter as an elderly, but fiercely protective father. Making sure they mind the rules about the surface, hiding them from those what would hurt them, even taking incredible amounts of abuse to disguise their location. And who can forget the amazing campfire scene? The first movie was just Full of Father/son references, whether it was Splinter and the turtles, or Mr. Pennington and Danny.

The Second and third movies had their moments, though not quite as memorable. In the second film, Splinter’s character had changed little from the first movie, still very much against the boys being out on the surface. We have some gems, however, when the boys learn from the Professor regarding the origins of the ooze. Splinter reassures his sons of their self worth: What had happened in the past was past. What mattered was what the boys had grown into from that point. It doesn’t matter what you were given in life. It was what you’ve DONE with those gifts that shows your worth. How many people these days could benefit from that kind of lesson?

And seriously… who doesn’t love the last scene of the movie when Splinter catches the boys’ front page picture on the daily newspaper?

The Third movie’s always been an abundance of corny humor, Splinter included. Splinter changed from the wise sage into the type of father that you kinda cover your eyes and groan at… Or pretend that you don’t know who the senile guy is in the middle of the supermarket. And yet, who else could pull off dancing in a lampshade with such class?

The most recent movie had an interesting mix. Splinter was a stricter, more hands-off parent in my view. The breakfast scene (and resulting lecture) made me chuckle, and the private moments with the boys were nice. Welcoming Leonardo back home was one I particularly liked, but any sort of father/son moments with the other boys is rare-to-nonexistent, a little saddening to the respective fans. But it still gives you hope for the DTV and the new movie that’s coming up in a few years.

Cartoons: Old Toon Splinter was a totally different creature from other universes. The fact that he WAS Hamato Yoshi being a major one. Another important factor being that the turtles mutated automatically into teenagers was another. He saw the boys more as Students, Friends, those green guys that live in my flat. While this version of Splinter was always my favorite as a child (Reneday did a wonderful voice), I had always wished that he’d looked at them more as his sons. Thus, I slowly found my way into the realm of Fan-Fiction…

Master Splinter of the New Toon (Pre-BttS), was a much more significant presence, and far more of a father figure to the turtles. Whether it’s teaching young tots the dangers of the surface, doing post-movie analysis over ice cream, or protecting them from The Shredder or The Ninja Tribunal – Splinter kicked butt and took names. Holy Hell, he was awesome. One nice aspect in this that we don’t see in other places is the role Hamato Yoshi had in Splinter’s life – almost a father figure himself. And then Yoshi had the Ancient one. So you actually get to see the family dynamic over generations. New Toon Splinter is by far my favorite version of Splinter. And lemme tell you, you can get some strange looks when you’re cheering at a cartoon in a dorm lounge in the early morning…

While his BttS counterpart tended to be more of a background character that loafed around watching soap operas, he did have his own moments of good fathering. Just don’t ask me for examples… :\

Comics:

Archies Splinter: Originally based on the old toon, Splinter was less of a father and more of a ‘friend’. But just as the universe blossomed and developed into it’s own wonderful realm, so did the characters. While Splinter’s character was still Yoshi-turned-rat, his human experiences provided the boys more worldly knowledge, and gave Splinter so much more than his one-dimensional old-toon counterpoint.

Image Splinter was disturbing to me, especially when he turned into a rabid bat creature. My inner Splinter fan tries to think of it as nothing more than a bad dream from too much partying after the boys’ birthday in the first issue.

Mirage Splinter: While I have not read All of the Mirage issues, there have been several issues that I’ve read regarding Splinter’s character. The River, Soul’s Winter, Hall of Legends… many issues. And Splinter’s character is Widely varied. There’s the distant philosophical Splinter in City at War, The father willing to toy with higher beings to help his son in Michael Zulli’s portrayal, and even the very bizarre alternate realities of Splinter as a James Bond type or a Paddle-wielding “Fannywhacker”. The many facets of Splinter, good bad and strange, all work to create a more tangible character that you can (try to) relate to.

One of the most important pieces of this portrayal of Splinter being his Death. No other universe has done such a task, and yet it makes Splinter something more than just a character – he becomes almost real. It was a hard pill for many fans – it was like losing a family member of our own. When I asked Peter Laird if he ever regretted killing the character off, he explained, “It seemed like the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it. I do think it helped move the Turtles into interesting directions, helping them to grow up in different ways.”

And I have to agree. That piece of mortality really evolved the universe into more than just a beat ‘um up kind of story. It’s a memoir about life. When Splinter died, there was no fanfare… no huge explosions… he passed away like a regular being. There was mourning, acceptance, and growth from the experience.

Sure, Splinter was not initially designed to be the father figure that he’s known as today. He’s not perfect, and he might shed all over the furniture. Watch too may soap operas and horde cake in the freezer. But he’s an integral part of how the turtles came to be the characters we love today. And one final piece of mush, cuz that’s just how I am. 😛

Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads!

Happy Father's Day, Splinter…er….Yoshi…er…you!

So today is Father’s Day, and as such I felt I should write a blog for this occasion, talking about a a certain paternal anthropomorphic rat. I know it’s been done before, but I’m gonna take a stab at it too. To be fair, I know next to nothing about the original Mirage Comics source material, so it will not appear in this article. I will be looking at the Father/Son dynamics in the original toon, the 4 movies and the new animated series.

In a paragraph that’s sure to basically be me beating a dead horse, in the original 90’s TMNT animated show, Splinter was more a mentor than a father. Seldom did the call the Turtles “my sons.” The only time I can actually point to specifically is in Enter the Shredder where he says, “Head upward, my sons. Find a way around all this.” In fact the Turtles and Splinter are more like a group of buddies than a family in the old series, referring to each other as friends or turtles collectively and using the full names (Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo) when referring to each other. Though the OT, as it’s called in fan circles, may be them most well known it is the least familial of the TMNT incarnations. To be fair, my favorite incarnation, the Archie Comics, based on the original toon’s universe did revive the Turtles family dynamic in it’s run.

The movies take the family aspects and kick it up a notch, at least the first live action film and the recent CG film. Splinter as a father is played up quite a bit and is used as a counter for not only the Shredder and Tatsu’s relationship with their Foot “children” but Charles Pennington and his son Danny. Splinter lectures his son, in one of the most poignant scenes in all of TMNT, feels true pain from being separated from his sons, and in the end is joyously reunited with them. The second and third movies still have the family aspect, but toned down in favor of the story, though in Ninja Turtles (90) the family aspect was part of the story. Again in 2007 the Turtles were on the big screen and the family aspect took center stage, this time as a foil to Max Winters and his Stone Generals. This time however the family relationships, in my opinion, were tacked on and felt hollow.

When it comes to the Turtles as a family probably no element of the franchise has made it the corner stone (aside from maybe the original Mirage source material.) than the 2003 TMNT reboot series. There is not just the father/son dynamic of the Turtles and Splinter, but Splinter and Yoshi and Yoshi and the Ancient One. Splinter feels like a real father here, disciplining the Turtles when necessary, and experiencing joyous occasions with them as well. To a lesser extent, Yoshi and the Ancient One play roles as father figures not just to Splinter, but to the Turtles as well. If you want to see the Turtles and Splinter as a real family, demonstrating a strong familial bond, look no further than the new series.

So there it is, not quite what I had in mind when I first decided to pen this article, but t’will serve I guess. Though the original retro Turtle toon has a nostalgic feel to it, the family element just isn’t there as much as it is in the movies and new TV series…and don’t even get me started with the live action vomit that is Next Mutation. “We’re not brothers. We’re pet shop turtles born and bred on a turtle farm, so are you.” Give me a break. What a lame excuse for the turtles to try to, pardon the pun, get some tail.

"Peter Laird answered my questions!" A Testimonial

So since our illustrious boss asked Peter a question, I figured I would too. (tOkKa, that’s your cue to re-post you’re questions and response too…;)) So here it is:

Peter,

It’s never too late. You could try something new artistically. It’s not like you don’t have the talent. Why should Mirage only have one major property. Create something great that has nothing to do with the Turtles. Just make sure it’s not like Howard the Duck. (If that came out unclear, here’s the reasoning: Lucas produced the film Howard the Duck…and Stephan referenced Lucas earlier…you know what…you’re adults you can read.)

My question is if you had it all to do over again, is there anything you would have changed? Would you have kept the Turtle toon grittier earlier? Would you have ever given the “green light” to Coming out of their Shells, Turtle Tunes/We Wish You A Turtles Christmas, and NT:TNM? Would you have pushed for movies more inline with Barron’s 1990 film?

If you’ve answered these before then…PASS!! 😀

And as quick as I posted it (I seriously only posted this this morning,) Mr. Laird responded:

My question is if you had it all to do over again, is there anything you would have changed?

Absolutely.

“Would you have kept the Turtle toon grittier earlier?”

I think so.

“Would you have ever given the “green light” to Coming out of their Shells,”

Yes — I actually liked that music!

” Turtle Tunes/We Wish You A Turtles Christmas,”

Maybe not… to be honest, I don’t remember what those were like!

” and NT:TNM?”

No.

” Would you have pushed for movies more inline with Barron’s 1990 film?”

Yes.

As the old saying goes, “Hindsight is 20/20.” What is important to keep in mind is that when the crazy licensing boom began, Kevin and I had ZERO experience in any of this stuff. We were artists, not businesspeople. The business stuff we learned (or tried to learn) as we went. If we HAD been more savvy about it, perhaps the deals we made could have been structured better, allowing us to retain the character of the comics in the licensed material.

However…

… it could be argued that doing so might not have resulted in the huge success that the TMNT had starting in 1987 in the world of animation, toys and related merchandising. Maybe a grittier TMNT which hewed more closely to its comic book roots wouldn’t have touched the nerve that the goofier, more kid-friendly version did. Who knows? It’s one of those imponderables.

Another VERY important point to consider is that back in 1986, when we made the deal with Playmates, they might very well have balked if we had demanded that they do it exactly the way we wanted it done. After all, they were the ones sinking millions of dollars into this effort, and the were the ones with the knowledge of the toy business. And the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. That iteration of the TMNT was a gigantic success.

Would it have been as successful if it had been done “our way”? That’s something we will never know. — PL

And to be honest, I agree with the man. I mean, it would have been a cool “what if?” is Peter and Kevin could have kept the Turtles all hard-core and Mirage style, but I for one know I came to the Ninja Turtles through the “goofy kids stuff.” If it weren’t for the original animated series, the Playmates toys, and the Archie comics, I think I wouldn’t be a fan today. So thank you Pete, for creating a franchise that could appeal to the many stages of my development. You the man!

On TMNT and Irony

So, I was watching the movie Marihuana as part of my recent MCubed theme of 1930’s anti-drug films, and it made me think of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, and also the extreme irony of it.

You see, in the bonus features to the new season 7 DVD set, David Wise put one of my TMNT conspiracy theories to rest: Michelangelo’s voice is loosely based on Jeff Spicoli from the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, played by Sean Penn who was an obvious recreational user of marijuana. So what? (If you don’t see the obvious, then read on.)

Mikey-Spicoli.jpg picture by Jesterangelo

When Cartoon All-stars was released, they picked characters from all the major cartoons of the day, including the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And which Turtle did they pick? Why Mikey, of course. The one Turtle who’s voice in the toon was inspired by a character from a movie who used drugs. Talk about irony!

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