Ep 747 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1, by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird

Summary

Overdue Ep 747 — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1
Hosted by: Andrew and Craig
Released: March 23, 2026
Book Discussed: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Andrew and Craig dive into the origins of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) by reviewing The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1—a compendium of the first seven issues and the Raphael one-shot from the original black-and-white independent comic run. The hosts explore the comic's inception, how its tone diverges from later adaptations, and the wild, inventive places the series quickly goes—space dinosaurs included. Along the way, they contextualize the TMNT as a product of '80s comic trends and chart the rise of the franchise from stoner parody to global multimedia juggernaut.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Comic vs. Cartoons: Tone and Origins (03:27–10:23)

• Craig begins by laying out the comic’s contents: “This covers the direct first seven comics, including… the Raphael one shot.” (04:30)
• Andrew and Craig reminisce on growing up with the '80s/'90s cartoon, stressing its tonal distance from the original comics. Andrew notes:
  “Which was totally tonally much different from the comics…” (08:55)
• The cartoon was designed to sell toys; the comic, by contrast, began as a tongue-in-cheek indie project lampooning trends like Daredevil and X-Men.

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2. The Creation and Evolution of TMNT (11:20–27:51)

• Andrew offers intertwined biographies of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, noting their indie roots and the surprise success of the first issue—a self-published, uncle-funded run of about 3,000 copies.
• Direct quote on the "Mirage Studios" name origin:
  “There wasn’t an actual studio. Only kitchen tables and couches with lap boards.” – Eastman (12:57)
• Playmates Toys deal (1987) rocketed TMNT into toy stardom, moving over $1.1 billion in merchandise from 1988 to 1992. (18:45)
• The TV show (developed by David Wise) and toy line informed each other, solidifying the colored masks and pizza-fueled antics now synonymous with the Turtles.
• The original comic remained black-and-white, with all turtles initially wearing red bandanas; the distinct personalities of the four only later crystallized in media spinoffs.

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3. Franchise Legacy and Legal/Economic Maneuvers (21:03–27:51)

• The hosts trace the sequential hand-off of TMNT rights: Eastman sells to Laird (2000/2008), Laird sells to Viacom/Nickelodeon (2009), new comics launch with IDW (2011).
• Both Eastman and Laird used their wealth to attempt philanthropic and indie publishing efforts (Tundra Publishing for Eastman, Xeric grants for Laird), echoing their initial DIY ethos.
• “Every few years, you got new new turtles, new show, new movie. Just every, every micro generation of children will have their own Ninja Turtles.” – Craig (10:43)

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4. Volume 1 Comic Plot Breakdown & Comparison (36:35–74:27)

A. The Original "Arc": Issues & Narrative Surprises

• Issues included: #1–7 and Raphael one-shot, May 1984–May 1986 (36:35)
• First Issue: The Turtles, trained by Splinter, are tasked to avenge his master by taking down Shredder and the Foot Clan.
• TMNT’s original tone is darker—fights are gritty, violence real, and there’s no pizza, party-dude humor, or lighthearted villain banter.
• “There’s no pizza here. There’s no pizza in any of these comics.” – Craig (48:13)

B. Issue Highlights

• Shredder’s Fate: Instead of becoming a recurring nemesis, Shredder is seemingly dispatched in issue #1.
  “They published one comic, and then they thought, ‘Oh, I guess we should make more.’” – Craig (58:51)
• Baxter Stockman & the Mousers: Introduction of the villainous inventor, his killer robots, and April O’Neil (here a scientist, not a reporter).
• Raphael’s Anger: Raphael’s iconic hothead personality is established, especially in the one-shot where he meets Casey Jones, a violent vigilante, serving as Raph’s cautionary foil.

C. Weird Escalations

• By issues 4–7, the Turtles are teleported to an alien planet, battling the Triceratons (dinosaur aliens) and aiding “Fugitoid” (robot) Dr. Honeycutt, referencing Star Wars and ‘80s comic excess.
  • “What are we doing here, folks?” – Craig, on comics' wild narrative leaps. (26:16)
  • “They did not care to iterate on the ninja idea. [They thought] ‘What if we went to space?’” – Craig (74:16)
• The hosts compare the book’s plot escalation to TV shows’ “formula” (e.g., Inspector Gadget) but note the comic’s disinterest in repetition.

D. The Turtles’ Personalities

• Weapon specialties are there from the start, but overt distinctions (Michelangelo as “party dude,” etc.) are not as pronounced.
• “Mikey here is like… he’s in the fights… but no, he’s just… he’s certainly one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” – Craig (48:09)
• Donatello does, indeed, “do machines,” if less flamboyantly.

E. April O’Neil and Other Supporting Cast

• April’s role is that of a techie ally, not a love interest.
  • “She’s mother to them… There’s never any… she’s taking care of them. They’ve lost their sensei.” – Craig (62:00)
• “Crang” originates with the cartoon, but the comic contains “Utroms,” brain-like aliens who likely inspired him.

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5. Notable Quotes & Fun Moments

| Timestamp | Quotation | |:----------|:----------| | 12:57 | “There wasn’t an actual studio. Only kitchen tables and couches with lap boards.” – Kevin Eastman (on Mirage Studios) | | 14:21 | “I doodled a sketch of a turtle standing upright with a mask on and nunchucks strapped to his forearms. I dubbed it a Ninja Turtle, and we had a good laugh…” – Eastman origin story | | 15:15 | “Kids still do that so random humor. They prize randomness above actual funniness every single time.” – Andrew | | 56:12 | “So Splinter… Is he an actual Japanese man turned into a rat? Or is he a regular rat who got big and sentient?” – Andrew, trying to clarify TMNT lore | | 70:08 | “Bar scene, Star Wars cantina and everything we could get away with just short of a lawsuit. Ninja Turtles, drinking, shooting lasers, even killing guys. What the hell were we doing? Pretty much having a blast.” – Eastman/Laird annotation | | 73:07 | “But yeah, it’s weird, man. Nobody ate pizza. I was a little disappointed.” – Craig | | 74:12 | “This is like Fast Nine, Fast Ten. You’ve passed your peak already when you’re doing this stuff.” – Andrew, on the early leap to space dinosaurs |

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6. Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:27 – Overview of what’s in the “Ultimate Collection” and initial TMNT media context
• 08:46 – Comparison: Cartoons vs. comic tone, the Playmates toy influence
• 11:20–14:52 – Eastman/Laird origin stories and early publishing history
• 18:45 – Explosive toy sales and TV show pitch
• 21:03–25:36 – Rights succession, Mirage shutdown, and ongoing legal quirks
• 36:35–37:44 – Issue breakdown starts, comic’s initial arc “vs Shredder”
• 47:55–48:07 – Turtles’ personalities, weapons, and lack of cartoonish traits
• 56:26–56:40 – TMNT vs. cartoon: who gets mutated and how
• 66:13–67:33 – Teleportation, robot fugitive “Honeycutt,” Triceraton mayhem
• 70:08 – Annotated author insights on the comic’s wild tone

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Conclusion and Takeaways

The hosts’ readthrough of TMNT Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1 reveals just how quickly Eastman and Laird’s “stoner parody” comic exploded beyond its original joke—first becoming a pulpy indie action romp, then launching a continent-spanning cultural phenomenon. Contrary to the party-dude, pizza-scarfing image popularized by cartoons and toys, the original Turtles were a gritty, tongue-in-cheek sendup of superhero norms—yet also unafraid to embrace the cosmic and absurd.

Listeners are left with a new appreciation for the comic’s unique place in pop history, a sense of its anarchic energy, and several hearty reminders:

• The lore was largely built in the first issue; later, zany escalation happened fast.
• Many beloved TMNT elements (colored masks, pizza obsession, cartoonish villains) emerged later, by corporate and media adaptation.
• Underneath the brand, TMNT’s birth was a story of punkish creative joy and wild, what-the-heck experimentation.

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Verdict:
For fans, this episode is a nostalgia trip anchored by sharp context and affectionate irreverence. For the uninitiated, it’s a fun, information-packed primer on how a parody comic written by two guys at a kitchen table mutated into one of the defining franchises of the late 20th century.

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Next Episode Tease: Andrew reads MAS*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker, inspiration for both the film and TV phenomenon.

Notable final sign-off:
Craig: “I’m glad that you are the Donatello to my… Sort of… one of the other ones.” (76:52)
Andrew: “Until we hit you with our nunchucks next time, please try to be happy. Cowabunga.” (79:14)

Transcript

[Craig]

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[Katie Duke]

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[Andrew]

This is a headgum podcast.

[Craig]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy

[Andrew]

away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Time to make our silly podcast. Time to make our silly podcast. Time to make our silly podcast. Overdue podcast from Andrew and Craig. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. I, of course, do machines.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

I feel like I've got that one wrapped up pretty, pretty well. Craig. I don't know what. I don't know which one you would be or if we all need. We both need to, like, claim two, because there is only two of us instead of four of us.

[Craig]

Okay, interesting. Interesting.

[Andrew]

Let's look up the lyrics to Chuck Lorre's original theme for the Teenage Mutant Ninja.

[Craig]

Okay, so welcome to our book podcast where Andrew looks us up, where each week, one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. I have read for this episode something I've never read before, a recurring theme on this here podcast where I'm interested in things derived from comics, but I never read a lot of comics growing up. So I have read the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Ultimate Collection, Volume one, which was. I'm trying to remember when this collection was actually published, but I'm also curious

[Andrew]

to hear, like, what slice of the. Of the original realm this actually covers.

[Craig]

This covers the direct first seven comics, including. Or actually eight, which includes seven volumes and a Raphael one shot. Okay. These are the first eight Ninja Turtle volumes that they printed and made, which is kind of neat that. That it has, like, a discreet little arc. It's by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. We'll talk about all of it.

[Andrew]

And yeah, it's. It's interesting because not. Not long after that, I think they, like, easily Men and Laird, like, this comic series took off really, like, precipitously.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

It's wild and surprisingly. And as they sort of had to. Had to scale up and bring other people in. Like, I think starting around issue 11, a lot of it is coming from other people. Like, people who they're employing at Mirage Studios, the. The studio that's responsible for Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles for. From 1984 to, like, 2011. I think I have it in my notes somewhere.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then in, like, issue 50, I think when they have to bring a bunch of weird continuity stuff back.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

To bear.

[Craig]

Whatever.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And get it all back on one timeline again. Then Eastman and Laird are like, okay, we're coming back. Yeah.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Like, these two. These two guys have drifted in and out of this series a bunch of times over the course of many decades.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

So, okay, okay. Collectively, and I think we. I think we. I think we can both lay claim to these. We're the world's most fearsome fighting team.

[Craig]

Correct.

[Andrew]

If you sub in podcasting for fighting. Yes.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

We're heroes in a half shell. And we're green, so we're not like green, but we are the color that we are.

[Craig]

That's true.

[Andrew]

And we do that really well.

[Craig]

I'm spiritually in a half shell all the time.

[Andrew]

When the evil Shredder attacks Turtle boys, don't cut them no slack. I would not cut. I would not cut Shredder no slack.

[Craig]

If Shredder were on this podcast, I would ask, like, if he attacked, I would chotner Shredder on this podcast.

[Andrew]

Yeah. That's a wild sentence.

[Craig]

Tell me about the Technodrome. Oh, you say. And he'd be like, look, look, look, look, look, Craig.

[Andrew]

Okay, so Leonardo leads that one. That's contentious. Not sure which one of us leads. Donatello does machines, which is me. Raphael's cool but crude. Even the Turtlepedia I know see in parentheses before cool but crude. Because there's so much debate over whether it's cool but crude or cool but rude.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I like the. The alliteration of cool but crude.

[Craig]

Uh huh.

[Andrew]

So I choose to believe it's that. And then Michelangelo is a party dude.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yep.

[Andrew]

So I do machines.

[Craig]

You do machines.

[Andrew]

I guess you could pick one of the other three.

[Craig]

I, as a kid, always picked Leonardo when I was given the opportunity.

[Andrew]

Because he's the leader.

[Craig]

Not just because he's the leader. I like the color blue.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And I like the dual katanas.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

I just. I don't know. I just. That's where I defaulted. I don't think I identified as the angsty, angry Raphael. Mm. I have ever been a party dude, but that. I don't think I was always a party dude.

[Andrew]

I have seen you be a party dude.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That's a mode that you can operate in, but I don't know that it's intrinsic to your.

[Craig]

No, your.

[Andrew]

Your being.

[Craig]

You know, not in that way. There's a little Michelangelo in all of us. And sometimes, you know, he change. Sometimes he's more of you, but sometimes

[Andrew]

he's more of you. Sometimes they put an A in his name. So he's Michael. Michael.

[Craig]

Yeah. They didn't fix that for a long time.

[Andrew]

Instead of Michelange.

[Craig]

But no, this is a seminal IP from the 80s. You know, it starts as an underground comic we'll go through the history in a little bit. But I was really intrigued. I know that I had not seen the. The most recent film, Mutant Mayhem, I think it's called that I don't have

[Andrew]

a lot received the films or the modern like animated. I know the franchise is still like still kick in very. In many, in many forms.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

My experience with it was definitely the. Not the comics, but the. The 80s and 90s TV show.

[Craig]

Yep. Which was.

[Andrew]

Which was totally tonally much different from the comics.

[Craig]

Very different.

[Andrew]

It's goofier. It's interesting because the cartoon show is written, developed by this guy, David Wise, who. He got his start in TV writing an episode of Star Trek the Animated Series.

[Craig]

Huh.

[Andrew]

Which was a very strange show that like for a long time wasn't canon, but then they've like slowly been picking and choosing little bits of it to

[Craig]

make canon, as they always do.

[Andrew]

As they, as they often do. But you know, he's also worked on. He worked on Chip and Dale, Rescue Rangers. He were. He did a few episodes of Batman the Animated Series. He wrote on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon for nine out of its 10 seasons. I didn't know this show ran for 10 seasons. Apparently seasons eight, nine and 10, I think were like went back to being darker in tone because the show was just like, we gotta modernize.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Stay with the zeitgeist.

[Craig]

Sure, sure.

[Andrew]

But yeah, definitely our, our era of it was like these early seasons. Seasons one to four is like the most like productive episode wise for the series. And then the first and first season is technically like a five episode miniseries.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Um, but yeah, that's the, that's the one with the theme song. That's the like when you see the. The like that logo generator.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Meme that's using that version of the logo.

[Craig]

That is that. I think for a lot of folks

[Andrew]

out there, that's the way you're supposed to read it. Yeah.

[Craig]

Yes. I think for a lot of folks our age, those are the turtles. I know that there are kids today who love the turtles.

[Andrew]

They don't. I don't know if they know those turtles.

[Craig]

I don't know that they do know those turtles. You know, the turtles have. Especially since Viacom Nickelodeon bought them in. What was that? 20.

[Andrew]

2011.

[Craig]

2011. Was it that late? Yes, oh yes. Because the sale from Eastman to Laird was 2003. Yeah. They've just been. Every few years you got new new turtles, new show, new movie. Just every, every micro generation of children will have their own Ninja Turtles. And so it's interesting to go back to the source and read these comics which are basically stoners making fun of Daredevil until it becomes its own thing.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So it was. So Kevin Eastman's born in 1962. Peter Laird's born in 1954. My bio of both these guys is going to like, intertwine a lot because this is the main thing that they both deal with.

[Craig]

Did. Correct.

[Andrew]

And then any. Any other stuff that they did is all being done.

[Craig]

Like, oh, it's the Ninja Turtles guys.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Like in. In response to this or in like relation to this.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

So Eastman is born in Portland, Maine. To paraphrase an old succession bit. He was interested in comics from a very young age.

[Craig]

Oh, geez.

[Andrew]

He begins collaborating with Laird on Things in 1983, and that leads to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1984. Or Laird in the run up to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is mostly doing illustrations for like, zines and for a New Hampshire local newspaper. Like, these were jobs that used to exist.

[Craig]

They were. We used to have culture.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And they. This was like the. The first issue was as you said, a sort of a. It was. It was not intended to be a thing. It was a. It was like a parody of than current superhero comics trends.

[Craig]

Can I.

[Andrew]

Can I do.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I'm just wanting to say they publish 3,000. Some. Some sources say just around 3,000, some say 3,250. But they self publish the first run of the first issue. It's funded by a loan from Eastman's uncle. And they use all this to found Mirage Studios, which is called Mirage Studios because this is a quote from Eastman, I think. Quote. There wasn't an actual studio. Only kitchen tables and couches with lap boards.

[Craig]

Yep, yep.

[Andrew]

And then after a. Like a. They put together like a four page press kit and blast that out to a bunch of media sources. And that gets them some initial attention.

[Craig]

They had advertised the coming volume in like a. Independent comics, like zine or Mac or like paper, like circular. So like there was interest. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

So they're. They're doing issue two and then by the time issue. Issue two is happening, they have 15,000 advance orders.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So already like five times what the. What the first run was. And it just kind of takes off from there. But. Okay, go. Go with your.

[Craig]

Oh, sure. Yeah. So something that's interesting from this. This collection that I'm reading, the Ultimate Collection, volume one, that is published by idw. Though it does have a Nickelodeon logo on the inside. It's kind of interesting. It has little afterwards from Eastman and Laird. Not all of them are of equal length. They also have, like, kind of annotated panels. The majority of the annotated panels are like, we were so excited to get this wacky idea on paper. What were we even doing? Like, that's kind of the energy for some of these.

[Andrew]

It sounds like we know what they were doing. I mean, you implied that they were just smoking a bunch of weed. I don't know what your source on that is.

[Craig]

Eastman says, so when Peter was watching his favorite TV show, it was job to annoy him. And I did so that night by doodling a sketch of a turtle standing upright with a mask on and nunchucks strapped to his forearms. I dubbed it a Ninja Turtle, and we had a good laugh. A few hours later, in a typical night of studio nuttiness, we had a finished drawing with four martial arts characters in dramatic poses and a title. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Okay.

[Andrew]

I think in 1984, that would have been really. I mean, that was. Yeah, just the name is very grabby.

[Craig]

It's very grabby.

[Andrew]

By the time you get to when we're, you know, teenagers in the. In the, like, late 90s and early 2000s and all that, like, weird early Internet, like, bacon, monkey, pirate. That's so random. Humor is, like. Is flourishing.

[Craig]

It's very. Ninjas, Ninjas versus Pirates.

[Andrew]

Yeah, like, kids still do. Kids still do that. So random humor. I know. I know enough. Enough kids to know that they. They prize randomness above actual funniness every single time.

[Craig]

It's true.

[Andrew]

And it was.

[Craig]

I. It. Nothing in this volume acknowledges the, like, kind of parody elements of the initial, like, designs and conception, though I think you have to acknowledge them. Like, they. They will say, we're inspired by Jack Kirby. We're inspired by Frank Miller and his work on Daredevil and stuff like that. But they don't go out and acknowledge that, like, okay, it's a bunch of, like, group of teens. There's some Teen Titans comics happening at this time. They're mutants, like X Men's big. And all of the ninja stuff is just daredevil, like, parody and ripoff. Like, the. The canister of ooze that turns them into teenagers is a riff on how Daredevil gets his powers. The splinter in Daredevil, his sensei is named Stick. Get it?

[Andrew]

Yeah, I get it.

[Craig]

Shredder is basically Silver Samurai with cheese graters on his hands. They do say in the thing that, like, one of them was just like, yeah, we were hanging out. I was living in his house, and I was washing dishes, and I picked up a cheese grater and was like, wouldn't this be funny if it was on your arms? Like, all right, now you have the Shredder. The Foot Clan is. You know, the hand is the name of the ninja clan and Daredevil.

[Andrew]

So it's pretty intrinsically linked, it seems like.

[Craig]

Seems like it. And then we're.

[Andrew]

Where do Bebop and Rocksteady fit in?

[Craig]

So they're not here. I don't know where they came from. They might be.

[Andrew]

They might be a. They might be a creation of the. Of the.

[Craig]

Yeah. And we'll talk about the, like in fiction kind of origin story because it is ever so slightly different from the cartoon show, but in keeping with the movie. Adapt the first film. Movie adaptation. It's sort of a. Like, who killed Bruce Wayne's parents? Like, you have to address it when you're doing a new Turtles. Okay, tell me more about the history

[Andrew]

of the Turtles and just Laird and Eastman both. So this. This comic takes off very quickly, and it takes off very quickly. Laird and Eastman both struggled to different degrees with. With the huge and rapid success of the comic. Laird went through a period where he says he no longer actually liked drawing, and he had kind of some. Some artists block. And both of them took just regular and extended breaks from the franchise as they were. As they were overseeing it. I've got so one huge watershed moment for the series. We covered, like, the early. The early success of it as a comic. Yeah, one huge moment for the series that kind of defined. That defined it for the rest of time was after a few small toy runs with other companies in 1987, Eastman and Laird licensed the franchise to Playmates Toys. And Playmates Toys sells $1.1 billion in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys. Between the years of 1988 and 1992, only GI Joe and Star wars were bigger than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Playmates did need some convincing early on because this is just like a black and white comic. It did not have a bunch of other stuff behind it. And so to convince Playmates of the potential of the franchise, they first had to sell a TV show based on the concept.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

So this is a. The 90s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is a cartoon made to sell toys in the vein of Transformers, though technically. Technically is a cartoon that was made to sell the rights to.

[Craig]

I think it's credited to this guy, Mark Friedman, who, like, sealed this deal, and I saw some references to him Being really taken with the fact that they had this role, like Ninja Turtles in the role playing game by Palladium. Like there was just. They had already gotten stuff off the ground in terms of branding. And he was this kind of maven of navigating the play, the Playmate Steel. But yeah. And that locks in some of the stuff with the cartoon, obviously. Locks in things like the different colored

[Andrew]

headbands, colored masks and stuff. Yeah.

[Craig]

Because all of the art in these issues is black and white or grayscale.

[Andrew]

And when you do see colorized versions of these early turtles, like, they're all red.

[Craig]

They're all red. Because the covers, for a while, the covers are two tone. And then starting in volume four or five, they. They start having more colors. But yeah, they're. They're all red. So keep going.

[Andrew]

As far as the. Far as the comic goes, there are four volumes of the original comic run, not counting different spin offs that were being produced out of Mirage Studios at

[Craig]

the series is peak or the licensed Archie comics version. Yeah. TV show. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Volume one runs for 62 issues between 1984 and 1993. Three. Volume two is written and illustrated by Jim Lawson, who's one of many artists who comes in to Mirage and works on the original run as it gets like, too big for East, Eastman and Laird to handle on their own. And that runs for 13 issues from 1993 to 1995. There is a volume three that's relaunched by this guy named Erik Larson who worked on Spider man, who is the creator of something called the Savage Dragon. That I've never heard.

[Craig]

I've never heard of that.

[Andrew]

A bunch of comics people know what it is.

[Craig]

Yelling in their cars right now.

[Andrew]

And yeah, this. This volume runs for 23 issues between 96 and 99, and does all kinds of weird continuity stuff that when Laird and Jim Larson come back for volume four, just decide to ignore.

[Craig]

All right, sure. Comics.

[Andrew]

So they. Yeah, they. They do a volume four and it just kind of peters out. Like my. My impression of Laird, who I think is the main, like, creative force at the. Behind the franchise in this, like 2000s period. I just don't think that he. He has trouble working to a deadline and has trouble working consistently is what I pick up. Just like.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

The publication. Publication information for this series at this point. So what do we got? We got Eastman sells his interest in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Layered. He sells most of it in 2000 or 2001.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And then sells the remainder of it in 2008.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

I think. Yeah. He had reserved the right to, like, keep getting a small income.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Series for those years, but then totally sells all of it. In 2008, he had moved, like, he had moved to California.

[Craig]

He bought, like, the magazine Heavy Metal. He was, like, doing all sorts of stuff.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Eastman had it like, his. His other thing, aside from Ninja Turtles, like, his other big thing is that he. It. It burned. It burned fast, and it burned bright. This. This independent comics publisher named Tundra.

[Craig]

Tundra, yeah.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Which run. Which he runs from 1990 to 1993. Because he. Because he went to Laird, and he was like, I want. I kind of want to help independent artists do stuff.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Because that's the kind of help that I wanted us to have when we were starting out. And Laird, in retrospect, wisely says, we are so busy with this Ninja Turtle thing, I don't want to run this stuff out of Mirage. So Eastman fund founds Tundra Publishing. It goes from 1990 to 1993. Burns through between 8 and 14 million dollars. But his intent with it was to help independent comics creators succeed. Succeed while still, like, owning their own work.

[Craig]

Yeah, he didn't make a lot of money on it because, yeah, he was letting them retain all the rights, which, you know, one of the things we've read, like. You read From Hell years ago, right?

[Andrew]

Yeah, that was. Yeah, I was. I was gonna say that one of the. One of the things that Tundra was involved in starting. They were not around to, like, finish a bunch of stuff, but they were involved in starting the initial run of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, which we did in episode 380.

[Craig]

Yep, sure.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, Eastman is off doing his own thing. Like, he moves. He and Laird aren't really, like. There are creative differences that neither of them, as far as I can tell, have, like, talked about the specifics.

[Craig]

It's also my understanding that the. There's that Netflix toys that made us show from years and years ago that, like, really plays up the breakup that. I don't know that that is actually, like, fully accurate.

[Andrew]

And then it seems like there was some drift. And then in 2020, they did collaborate again on a project called the Last Ronin. So it's like, it's. It's not like they're Simon and Garfunkel or whatever. Like, they. They can stand to be around each other.

[Craig]

Eastman started doing Turtle stuff again in the 2010s.

[Andrew]

Yeah, he. He's. He's done some work on the modern IDW run of the series. Yeah.

[Craig]

Most of which is After Laird sells to Viacom.

[Andrew]

So yes, okay, so Eastman sells to Laird and then Laird in 2011. My notes are all out of order because I took, I took notes by subject. But then all the subjects are like, temporally, Laird sells the rights to Viacom Nickelodeon in 2009.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

The 2011 date is when IDW publishing

[Craig]

the rights to the original series. There we go. There we go.

[Andrew]

And that's also when they launched their

[Craig]

own

[Andrew]

new run of a comic series that's its own separate thing that started in 2011. There is a period. So part of the, part of the deal, like the IDW deal is that I. Mirage Studios has shut down, but I think Laird personally retains the right to publish up to 18 black and white Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics issues a year. He can still just decide to do that if he wants to.

[Craig]

Okay, Peter.

[Andrew]

And he has not really exercised the right to do this though in 2014 he did release the last published issue of volume four of the original series on free comic book day.

[Craig]

Okay, cool.

[Andrew]

See, a Mirage finally shuttered in September of 2021, which I think probably means that Laird is not going to put out other no probably stuff. But as far as I can tell, that was something granted to him and not to Mirage as he can still decide, oh, I want to do 18 teenage mutant ninja Turtle comic issues this year.

[Craig]

Com are.

[Andrew]

You can just. They're so weird.

[Craig]

Comics are. I love when we do comics episodes because they're so weird. Because it's like what are we doing here, folks?

[Andrew]

I mean it's just. I get the same, it scratches the same itches as doing when we patreon.com, we do special collections episodes about animated movies and like there's no thread you can pull in the history of animation that does not lead to the entire rest of the animation.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[Andrew]

But like, but yeah, like I think that's, that's most of what I've. I've got on the two of them. Like Laird had for a while a.

[Craig]

He had a foundation, like a foundation,

[Andrew]

a non profit called the Zarek. I think I'm pronouncing it right.

[Craig]

It's a Scrabble word. Is what is where he found Eric

[Andrew]

with an X in front.

[Craig]

This is my sci fi oc Eric with an X.

[Andrew]

This is a non profit that provided. And this is similar to Eastman's thing with Tundra. Xeric was founded to give grants to self published comic book creators, which it stopped doing in the early 2010s because by then Independent comic people had mostly shifted to webcomics.

[Craig]

Oh, sure, that makes sense.

[Andrew]

And at the time it announced, you know, an intent to keep doing charity work related to the arts. I have not found. I can't find much about what Zarek has been up to since then. Like all the, all the news articles seem to dry up around 2011, 2012, when they said they were not going to do the grants anymore. But it's apparently still active. So. Okay, Eric with an X, if you're still out there doing stuff, let us

[Craig]

know when your grant submission deadline is.

[Andrew]

But yeah, like overall, if you're, if you're talking about the book relative to any mo. To most adaptations of it, and especially the adaptations we grew up with, like, yeah, it's black, it's black and white, and it's, it's got a darker, less goofy tone. And those are the, those are the two things that I think people are surprised by when they work backwards from the cartoon to the comic.

[Craig]

That will be the meat of our conversation after the break. I think, I think I just want to mention that, like, those movies were big for me. Obviously the TV show is big for me. You did not see the movies. You were telling me until you, much later we. Were you not a ninja household?

[Andrew]

Well, no, I've just, I've talked many times about the weird media restrictions that were placed on us by our parents. As. I mean, the, the textbook example is when Bart went to hell and Simpson season two, they didn't want us to watch the Simpsons anymore.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then the first Simpsons I watched when I was allowed to watch it again was the one where Homer befriends but then gets weirded out by, by a gay man played by John Waters.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And so my mom asks my, my, my conservative mother asked me what the Simpsons was about when I watched it. And I was like, well,

[Craig]

I, I was like. I was trying to remember when I became a Ninja Turtles kid because like, yeah, I was too young to have seen the original. Was it 1990 movie?

[Andrew]

I mean, we watched the cartoon and the cartoon was like a first run syndication thing. So it was, it was like it was everywhere. And we would have gotten it even. Even though we didn't pay.

[Craig]

You're just like breathing air and you, yeah, just around you learn about the Ninja Turtles.

[Andrew]

And I'm like, I mean that honestly, like that's part of why Star Trek, the Next Generation is the biggest iteration of that, of that franchise is because it also was a first run syndication show and it was just on Everywhere.

[Craig]

And so I definitely didn't see the first movie in theaters. I definitely saw Secret of the Ooze in theaters.

[Andrew]

You learned the secret.

[Craig]

Yeah. What is it that it makes you turtles and it. And it turns Shredder into Super Shredder, played by the wrestler Kevin Nash.

[Andrew]

The secret of the ooze is you always have to be thinking, I really want there to be ooze and that. And that attracts ooze.

[Craig]

I want to be a ninja and I want to be a turtle.

[Andrew]

If you're thinking, I don't want to be covered in ooze. I don't want to become a ninja turtle. That's just going to make. That's going to attract those things to you.

[Craig]

Anyway, I've played a lot of Ninja Turtles video games. I definitely saw Ninja Turtles, Three Turtles in Time in theaters. That's the. A bad movie.

[Andrew]

That was the last of the guys in costumes run, right?

[Craig]

Correct. And what's. What's kind of interesting about those three movies is, like, the first one is, for a period of time, was the most successful independent film ever, box office wise. Because it was this kind of like, weird.

[Andrew]

Weird to think of.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Ninja Turtles as being an independent, like an art house.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah. And it was like this perfect kind of marriage of like, the people trying to do it was. It was a New Line Cinema release. They got the Jim Henson folks to make the suits. Even though I don't think Jim Henson liked Ninja Turtles. He just thought that, like, okay, we're trying to make puppets keep like everybody loves.

[Andrew]

Yeah. The man just knew his way around a block of foam. Like, he knew. He knew how to make this stuff work.

[Craig]

And they also are, like, they work with, like, a Hong Kong cinema outlet, Golden Harvest, that was, like, interested in making sure that, like, kung fu movies were like, you know, martial arts movies were coming back and things like that. And so it's this like kind of perfect storm of a bizarre property. It's oddly faithful to the comics, is my understanding. It's kind of, you know, it's a little grittier in tone. Yes. They still eat a bunch of pizza, but. And then the quality goes down with each one precipitously. Like, the suits get worse, they get sillier. The. The time travel one is like a play for a Japanese audience that I don't even know if it was ever released there in its first run. So then they just kind of have to lie dormant until that animated one we saw in 2007, which is. I mostly remember for.

[Andrew]

I mostly remember the Black Betty.

[Craig]

Black Betty. And they put Shredder's helmet on a shelf. And then they took another break until they made those two Michael Bay ones with Megan Fox. And then they made this one that Seth Rogen helped make, which was this new animated one which people do really like. So cool. I think there's another one of those on the horizon, so we'll have to watch it sometime. I would like to.

[Andrew]

We could. We could do it. We could do a turtle themed movie night where we watch that Ninja Turtles movie and Dana Carvey's Master of Disguise with the. With the Turtle Club. And we could. We could call it Turtle Club. That's. That's the movie night. That's the theme.

[Craig]

All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Ultimate Collection, Volume 1. I'll see you all at the Turtle Club. Turtle. Turtle.

[Andrew]

Craig, not all of us can do machines.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Or cool but crude.

[Andrew]

Or cool but crude. Yeah. Squarespace will help you make a website that tell everybody about your sort of subterranean dojo or whatever it is that you want to get the word out about.

[Craig]

I would like to make a web based profile that tells everyone what my signature color is and what my favorite martial arts weapon is.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Craig]

Can only help me.

[Andrew]

And I can only have the one weapon.

[Craig]

Only one.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

I guess.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Cowabunga.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Oh, no.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

So, yes, this collection. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ultimate collection, volume one, originally published in January of 2012 with a paperback edition, 2017. And the original volumes that are included are from May 1984 to May 1986. Kind of published every few months. There's a big layover between volume one and volume two. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Time for it to become a word of mouth success, I guess.

[Craig]

Yeah. And you can kind of feel it even in what is in volume one, which is. I mean, yeah, the Turtles versus Shredder.

[Andrew]

Obviously you would have this thing that was created kind of as a joke, but, like, kind of not, because they did publish like 3,000 issues of themselves.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But done without the intent to make it a thing. And then the second issue where it's like, oh, well, now it's a thing. We got to make it a thing.

[Craig]

Now we got to make it a thing.

[Andrew]

I would expect those two comics to be trying to do different things.

[Craig]

Yes. So we'll talk about the kind of arc of these. I think it's kind of broken up. Volume one is the original comic where they talk about shredder. Volumes 2 and 3 are. Volume 2 is really still kind of its own thing where Baxter Stockman shows up. We'll talk about Baxter Stockman.

[Andrew]

I don't know who Baxter Stockman is.

[Craig]

So that's.

[Andrew]

This is.

[Craig]

I love this. I love this. Imprinted on my brain from, like, a variety of, like, the. He's. I don't think he's ever been in a movie. Not one that I've seen anyway. But he features heavily in some Ninja Turtles video games and also in the cartoon, as I recall.

[Andrew]

But no, I know. I mean, I know the turtles. I know. In terms of good guys.

[Craig]

Yeah, let me know. What. What do you know about turtles?

[Andrew]

I know the turtles. I know. I know Splinter. Yeah, I know April o'. Neill. Yeah, I know. From the cartoon. There was, like, a nerd girl with glasses.

[Craig]

Oh, there was tech stuff or something. Okay. Like a Marcy type. Like, what is that?

[Andrew]

Yeah, Marcy to April o' Neill's Peppermint Patty. And then bad guys. I know Shredder. Yeah, I know Bebop and Rocksteady.

[Craig]

I know.

[Andrew]

Just, like the Foot Clan writ large. Is Shredder their boss?

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Okay, cool. And then I know Krang.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And I know the big guy that Krang rides around in.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Krang may be a robot.

[Craig]

Yeah. It's some sort of robot suit. Yeah.

[Andrew]

And that's. That's what I got. Is Crang in here? Is there crank there?

[Craig]

Crang is not.

[Andrew]

Who invented Krang?

[Craig]

That's a great question.

[Andrew]

I asked Krang Shredder's boss.

[Craig]

Well, are they just friends? So that's a classic tension in the cartoon, I believe, similar to, like, a Serpentor. And who's the bad guy in G.I. joe?

[Andrew]

Oh, I don't know.

[Craig]

Who's the actual bad guy?

[Andrew]

Cobra Commander.

[Craig]

Yes. Like Serpentor. Cobra Command. Like, there's like, they both.

[Andrew]

And they both even got snake things.

[Craig]

I know there's, like, a bad guy, and then there's like, what if we're. Like, what if Rita Repulsa had a boss? Like, after the Lord said was her

[Andrew]

boss, but then he was her husband after he got brainwashed.

[Craig]

HR I actually don't know where Krang came from, officially. Maybe the Archie comics, I think, actually.

[Andrew]

Or I should. I should have warned you beforehand that I was.

[Craig]

That's okay. I'm just kind of looking this up quickly. I think he. I think he. He appears in the original TV series and then shows up in the Archie comics. What is interesting in these Mirage comics is you can see where they got Crang from. And then I think in one of the TV series, I think maybe the. The mid aughts TV series, they had a different version of the whole Crang situation that was more tightly wound up with what is happening in these comics. Okay, so, yeah, okay, you've got, like, a basic understanding. So, like, we've got. We've got the first volume that talks about Shredder. We've got Baxter Stockman and April o' Neill. In volumes two and three. There's a one shot about Raphael in meeting Casey Jones. Do you remember Casey Jones? And what Casey Jones is?

[Andrew]

No.

[Craig]

Okay, so Casey Jones I'm thinking about.

[Andrew]

I only can only think about Casey Kasem, radio DJ and voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Okay, well, him, right?

[Craig]

No, it's not. Okay, we'll talk about Casey Jones. He's another vigilante. He's sort of a Punisher type, but

[Andrew]

he's like a guy.

[Craig]

He's a guy.

[Andrew]

He's not a big part. Who cares?

[Craig]

A big part of the 1990 movie is that the Turtles wind up spending a lot of time with April o' Neill and Casey Jones. And like, April and Casey have, like, real adult chemistry in this weird movie for kids. And who future Edgelords. Who knows? It's very weird. And then starting with volume four. So, like, the Raphael one shot is not a proper numerated volume. And then we get volumes four through seven, which are very strange. And I don't think I really understood that this is where these comics were going to go.

[Andrew]

Every. Everything I read, every synopsis I read about, like, the late, like, late volume Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics made me feel the way that I feel when I read about what the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics. Oh, where, like, where like, Spike has a spaceship or something. It's like, I guess volume four of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is. They're all in their 30s now. They're not teenagers anymore.

[Craig]

Oh, you. The. The big volume four. Yes.

[Andrew]

Yeah, like. Like the big volume four. And there are also aliens who come and live on Earth.

[Craig]

What?

[Andrew]

So the Turtle, then? So the turtles can come up and walk on the streets and be accepted as. As members of society, but they do have to pretend that they're aliens and not just like, locally grown weirdos.

[Craig]

I suppose I should use the term issue rather than volume. It's probably the more because these issues

[Andrew]

are all part of volume one, except for maybe the Raphael one shot. And I know there were also there was like a series called Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something that Mirage did like. There are other spin offs aside from the main series volumes, especially during the heyday of it.

[Craig]

So this collection is going to introduce us to our four turtles. Andrew. We've talked about them already. Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, Eastman and Laird have somewhat conflicting stories on why they picked four Renaissance painters for their names. It boils down to whether or not they thought they could come up with good Japanese names or not.

[Andrew]

And probably best they didn't try.

[Craig]

Yes, but I can't remember. I'm gonna look in the book real quick. I think it is. I don't remember. I think it's Laird who's like, yeah. Oh. Because Eastman at one point is like, we didn't want to give them Japanese names because that might alienate some of our readers. And Laird's like, yes, well, exactly.

[Andrew]

You have any readers yet?

[Craig]

Also that. And Laird is like, well, we also have, like, you know, Master Yoshi and Oroku Saki and Roku Nagi. We have all of these Japanese characters in this issue. What do you mean we can't give them Japanese names? We just picked silly Renaissance painter names because they were funnier. So that's what they got.

[Andrew]

And how are the. So the theme song obviously differentiates the Turtles. That's how we open the episode of Overdue.

[Craig]

Correct.

[Andrew]

Are the. Are the Turtles differentiated at all in the. In the comic? Is it, like, mainly what weapons they use? Like, do they have personalities that sort of map to the cartoon show? Like, tell me more about.

[Craig]

Happy to answer that question.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

In these eight issues, we do get Hothead, Raph. Raph being the angry emo one is a through line throughout this 40 year property. Just need to reiterate how long the Turtles have been here. Yeah, but they've been here for 40 years. It took them like six years to make a movie. A Batman had been around for, like 50 or 60 years before he got.

[Andrew]

Yeah, come on. Batman.

[Craig]

Before he got, like, a serious movie. Like, Adam west had been there.

[Andrew]

But no, you. I mean, no, you can't. You can't say serious movie. You have to count the Adam West.

[Craig]

I guess you do. I guess you do. Even then it's still like 20 or 30.

[Andrew]

It's still decades.

[Craig]

Yeah, but so they all have their signature weapons. So Leonardo has dual katanas. Raphael uses, like, mini trident size tridents.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Sai Donatello has a BO staff, which is why I always picked Donatello in the very difficult Nintendo Entertainment System game, the very first one, because he could hit guys from further away.

[Andrew]

He has the most reach.

[Craig]

Yeah, Michelangelo. Why would you pick Michelangelo? His nut? His nunchucks or nunchaku, which I did not know was an actual word until I was like an adult nunchucks. He had a very terrible range in that game. But no, he's here. He's using nunchucks. I would say that Leo and Mikey are the least similar to your fully developed personalities from the cartoon.

[Andrew]

Does anybody do any machines?

[Craig]

Oh, Donatello does a lot of machines.

[Andrew]

He does a lot of machines there.

[Craig]

There's at least two issues where he sits down and does machines.

[Andrew]

Nice.

[Craig]

And there's at least what you know. There's the whole Raphael issue where he. Which is about how angry he can get. And then he meets Casey Jones, who's someone angrier than him, and he goes, oh, boy. Well, that's too angry for me. There's not much in here about Leo being the leader. And in my recollection of the cartoon and the movies, that's largely a like a Leo Raphael kind of conflict, where Raph is maybe just as strong as Leo is, but like, like doesn't have the leadership skills. But Leo's like, well, but I want. But like, I am the leader, but does anybody want to follow me sort of thing. The Mikey party dude stuff, I think is largely a construction of the toys and the cartoon.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Okay.

[Craig]

Mikey here is like, he's in the fights and he gets hurt at one point and they put a band aid on his head and he's fine.

[Andrew]

He's certainly one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[Craig]

Exactly. There's no pizza here. There's no pizza in any of these comics.

[Andrew]

So they didn't have the rights to pizza.

[Craig]

They did not have the rights There is they. When they go. Spoiler. When they go to space, they do. They do order beer.

[Andrew]

They're teenagers. I mean, I guess think about space international waters. But for.

[Craig]

Think about it above. I was. I was re listening to an episode of the podcast Blank Check about the first Ninja Turtles movie and they were noting how it's only in some of the recent film adaptations. Not sure about the cartoons where you've really felt like they are actually teenagers. They do seem to give more like lays about recent college. Yeah, they're like 26 early 20 year olds. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, you should get a job now. Ninja Turtles is what they are.

[Andrew]

Yeah. They're like, you can't sleep on a mattress that's sitting on top of a box spring that's sitting on the floor anymore. Like, you can't keep Doing this

[Craig]

can't keep sleeping on a mattress.

[Andrew]

Your computer desk cannot be the box that your computer came in.

[Craig]

Just because someone we know did that doesn't mean you could just say that to me randomly on a podcast. That.

[Andrew]

He lived that way for such a long time. He did, until I made him go to, like, target with me and buy a table.

[Craig]

And this unnamed person is a very successful.

[Andrew]

He's a very successful and lovely man.

[Craig]

Shout out to everyone in everyone's lives who is, like, surprisingly successful, despite that one weird thing that you can't believe they did. Mm. Or the many weird things you can't believe they did.

[Andrew]

I just like the. Yeah. The one weird, like, area of their life where they can't be. Where. Where they can't care about it. They're just, like, constitutionally unable to care about.

[Craig]

When we meet, we'll meet April. April o'. Neill. At one point. She is not a reporter in these comics. She. We first. We first meet her doing technology for Baxter Machines for Baxter Stockman. I believe she runs some sort of used computer parts shop or something. At one point. I remember at least one cartoon adaptation where she was an archaeologist, which was, I think, an excuse for the turtles to encounter all sorts of old mysterious objectors and stuff.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Well. And like, oh, here's a magic trinket or something like that. Right. We. Obviously, we are. Our man Splinter, who is a rat. He's a big.

[Andrew]

No. What's it. What's the deal?

[Craig]

So the turtles are, like, what, you know? Yep.

[Andrew]

The turtles are humans who are turned into turtles.

[Craig]

No, no.

[Andrew]

But I thought the ooze turned them in to turtles.

[Craig]

No, no, no, no.

[Andrew]

So Splinter is like an actual Japanese man who was turned into a rat. Or he was a regular rat who got big in sentient. Which direction are we? Direction Are we talking?

[Craig]

Let's crack open this. These issues here. So issue one opens with our turtles just being, you know, classic 80s superheroes beating up street toughs. There is. There is a panel, and this is, like, narrated. It's my understanding that this is kind of cribbed from Frank Miller, kind of, like, over serious narration, I don't think. I don't remember if it's supposed to be Leonardo or just, like, one of the turtles is talking kind of thing. There's even a bit where, like, after they beat up some thugs and they hear the cop cars coming, and they're like, well, we. Normally we wouldn't run from those who would be our allies, but they wouldn't understand us. Like, all right. Well, I see. I see. Where. Okay. Turtles.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

But anyway. And so they meet up with Splinter, and he's like, listen, turtles, it's time for you to know where you came from. I need to tell you your origin story. My origins.

[Andrew]

And the bees.

[Craig]

Yes. So. But for sewer turtles, he tells them about how when he was just a little rat, Shredder was just a. Not Shredder. Splinter was just a little rat living in a cage,

[Andrew]

despite all his rage.

[Craig]

Yeah, despite.

[Andrew]

I didn't think. I think I get you. So it's just so good with that.

[Craig]

No, it's just like the way you ask it as a question. Like what? He lives that way, despite all his rage. He was owned by a man named, you know, Master Yoshi, who lives in Japan. He is? Yes. He is a ninja master. And he and a man named Oroku Nagi were both in love with this woman, Tong Shen, and Orokunagi wanted her for himself, and he's beaten her up. And Masayoshi sees him doing this, and he kills him. And they. He has to flee to the United States with Tong Shen because you're not supposed to kill another member of your ninja clan or whatever.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And Oroku Nagi's younger brother, Oroku Saki, builds up some ninja forces and travels to the United States and kills Master Yoshi and Tangshan and Splinter, who is a rat owned by Master Yoshi, sees all of this. Of course, he, as a rat, would copy his master's ninja moves, which is how he knows ninjutsu.

[Andrew]

Yeah. That's how it works.

[Craig]

This is what this origin story is in the movie, just so we all are clear. And he does escape, and he's just living in the sewers like a rat. Then there is a car accident where a canister of mysterious ooze is dislodged from a mysterious truck with the letters TCRI on it, because a blind man was walking in the street, and a man pushed him out of the way. So the truck steered weirdly, and the canister fell out. The canister hit a terrarium containing four little turtles in it that a boy was holding. And so the ooze may or may not have touched the little boy, but it landed in the sewer with the turtles and the rat who was just there.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And the rat starts caring for the turtles, and the rat grows big and becomes Splinter, and the turtles start growing into teenage turtles, men who know ninjutsu because Split.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That's a whole. I'm trying. Can you think of other 90s 80s and 90s properties.

[Craig]

Street sharks.

[Andrew]

Something was like Alex somebody. Okay. Yes. Somebody got magical powers because something fell off a truck.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And Alex. Alex Mack was the other one I could. Like the big one. I could think of.

[Craig]

I don't remember how they made the

[Andrew]

street Sharks crush of the show. Marissa or Larissa.

[Craig]

Larissa.

[Andrew]

Larissa Oleynik. Street Sharks. Yeah. I. That's just like a ripoff Ninja Turtles, isn't it?

[Craig]

Well, yeah, that's a ripoff. I don't remember where. I mean, I was gonna say I don't remember where they came from, but the biker mice came from Mars. They were biker mice from Mars.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Because also, like, there wasn't a truck on Mars.

[Craig]

I don't think there was a truck.

[Andrew]

Spilled something on Mars.

[Craig]

That's spilled it. But no, this is apparently, as I said earlier, very similar to how Daredevil gets his. His powers. But no, they are not in the cartoon. I think it is master Yoshi who gets hit with the ooze, who had touched a rat and turns into splinter.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

But in this case, it is a rat who had watched Master Yoshi turns into a rat man. And the turtles turn into turtle people. And they are his children, and he turns them into ninjas.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

And so he tells them that they need to event now that they are strong enough, they need to avenge his master Yoshi and go fight Shredder, who is Oroku Saki.

[Andrew]

Okay?

[Craig]

And so Raphael goes and delivers. Like, he throws his sai through a window in Shredder's office. Where Shredder.

[Andrew]

Shredder has an office.

[Craig]

He runs why? He runs, like, a ninja mob mafia business, where he's, like, shaking people down for protection money. And he's like, my ninjas can protect you. And then all of a sudden, a scythe flies through his window. And they're like, your business. You can't even handle your own house. Shredder. Like, what are you talking about? And so they do a rooftop battle with the ninjas, and the ninja, like, the Foot Clan. Excuse me? And the ninja Turtles fight the Foot Clan, and then they all fight Shredder. They have to team up to beat him, but they will not kill him. They tell him that they are honorable, so he has to commit seppuku, and

[Andrew]

he's not honorable, so he doesn't do it.

[Craig]

He pulls out a thermite grenade.

[Andrew]

Oh, thermite.

[Craig]

Thermite grenade.

[Andrew]

Oh.

[Craig]

And they knock that away and knock him off the roof, and there's an explosion, and all they find of him is his Cheese grater, arm plating. If you've never seen Shredder, look him up.

[Andrew]

Shredder. Wait.

[Craig]

I just mean people at home.

[Andrew]

I've seen. Oh, yes. Okay.

[Craig]

Just, like, look up what Shredder looks like. He's got a cape. He's got a helmet. It's all very pointy and sharp. It's very silly and kind of iconic. Yeah. Why does he have them on his legs?

[Andrew]

It just seems like he'd get. He'd get caught on stuff all the time.

[Craig]

All the time. But Shredder's gone. And the Shredder falling off a roof is, like, kind of a classic, you know, canon event in any new Ninja Turtles property. Will he come back? Who knows? He does not come back in these run of issues. Oh, really?

[Andrew]

No, not at all, guy.

[Craig]

Not at all.

[Andrew]

And I think that is in the cartoon. He's the main guy.

[Craig]

He is the main guy. And I think it speaks to. They published one comic, and then they thought, oh, I guess we should make more. Like, they just kind of did their little parody comic, and then they decided that they should make some more. So the next one is Baxter Stockman. Baxter Stockman. Andrew is a. Is a. He's a scientist, and he is responsible for the mousers. Do you know what a mouser is? Do you remember what the mousers are now?

[Andrew]

I mean, from. In Mario 2, they throw bombs, okay?

[Craig]

In Ninja Turtles, there are these little robots that are on two legs, and they've got big, like, snapper mouths, and they're supposed to go around and, like, eat up mice, okay? And Baxter Stockman's whole deal. So it, like, in the cartoon, he becomes, like, a weird fly man. They do a whole, like, the fly thing with him in the cartoon. But here he is just an enterprising scientist and an Elon Musk type, perhaps.

[Andrew]

No, let's pick somebody else.

[Craig]

Whatever. He has a particular solution to New York City's rodent problem. He has these mouser robots. And then April o', Neill, his scientific assistant, reads in the newspaper all of these. All of the cops are confounded by the bank heists. They can't understand how people are tunneling into the bank vaults. And Baxter Stockman takes her into his basement and shows her all the robots that he's built using all the money that he stole from the bank with his mouse robots. And she's like, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm gonna hold the city hostage. I'm going to have my mousers, which can dig through anything, threaten the Foundations of every major office building in the city of New York. And they.

[Andrew]

It comes back to commercial real estate again.

[Craig]

Yeah. With real Lex Luthor type. They better pay him $20 million or else. And she runs away. The ninja turtles find her in the sewers running from the mousers, and they save her. And Donatello does machines with April to try and shut down the mousers. So that's. That's volume two. The volume three. They finish up the mousers, but Splinter is gone. Where does Splinter go?

[Andrew]

Oh, no.

[Craig]

Volume three is mostly them hanging out with April while she drives a VW bus.

[Andrew]

That.

[Craig]

I guess.

[Andrew]

How does April feel about the turtles?

[Craig]

She thinks she is clear.

[Andrew]

Is she? But. But do they see her as a romantic interest?

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

That's always the. That's always the sort of implication about why these four teenagers are always hanging around this woman in her yellow jumpsuit.

[Craig]

I was not. There's a lot of panels in these comics. Surprise, surprise, that. Where she's like, like, posed suggestively, like, just like, leaning up against a wall or something. But there's never any. She's mother to them. Like, okay, she's taking care of them. They've lost their.

[Andrew]

Like, not in, like, a oedipus way. In like a. No, just regular mother way. Okay.

[Craig]

No, like, they've lost their sensei. They need a place to crash. And she comes and picks them up in her VW bus. There's like a blues brothers esque car chase where their bus is mistaken for another stolen VW van, and they have to get away.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And then she gives them a place to stay. And then we get a little epilogue about where Splinter has been. He was found in the sewers, bleeding from mouser attacks and taken to a mysterious science building where Andrew. All the people who work there. Splinter sees them in the break room, and they all have crangs in their bellies. They're not real people.

[Andrew]

There's multiple crangs.

[Craig]

Yeah. So these are. I think these are called the ultroms or the ultoms or something.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

In largerms. Excuse me. There's no L. Utroms. Okay. In the larger.

[Andrew]

I'm just gonna let you keep saying this word until you figure it out.

[Craig]

Utroms. That. That word is not used here. These are. These are aliens. We find out in a later issue. You. There's a Raphael. One shot where he hangs out with Casey Jones. He gets in a fight. He does like, some sparring with Mikey and almost really hurts him because he's so angry about Splinter. And then he kind of runs away, and he's like, why did I get so angry? I have so much. It's like, you know, I have a three and a half year old. And we're constantly, like, trying to teach ourselves about feelings over here. And, like, Raphael is like, why am I so mad all the time? And there's a shot we cut to Casey Jones, a man in a, like, a. A weird loft apartment. Do, like, sitting in a recliner doing lifts with a barbell while he watches four TVs at once.

[Andrew]

That's how you know how, like, smart and, like, high functioning he is. Right?

[Craig]

Yes. Yes. He is watching four TVs at once of, like, cop shows. And I. Eastman. And later, like, yeah, we just wanted a superhero. He wasn't a superhero or a vigilante because, like, his wife had been killed. He just, like, liked bad cop movies too much.

[Andrew]

Sure. Okay.

[Craig]

And his whole deal is he wears a hockey mask and he carries a golf bag filled with bats and hockey sticks and golf clubs and stuff. And Raf sees him beating up some street thugs and is like, that's too much. I'm going to step in. And they spar a little bit. And then the episode ends with them, like, running off to save someone together. Okay, okay. All right, then the next four episodes. The next four issues are a. Like a full arc where the Turtles try to find Splinter. They're fighting the Foot Clan. They see a logo on top of a building. Some of the writing in these issues is kind of silly. Andrew.

[Andrew]

Okay. Oh, silly, you say? The comic about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is. Was silly.

[Craig]

Yeah. They're fighting. They're fighting ninjas. And then they see a building with four letters on it. TCRI and they go, what? It's like the letters on the canister from the ooze that created us, which makes no sense. They were turtles.

[Andrew]

They were literally turtles.

[Craig]

They were not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Why would they know how to read that? Doesn't make any sense.

[Andrew]

What's TCRI stand for?

[Craig]

I don't remember the countries individual Cosmic something. I don't remember what it stands for. But they end up having to break into this building after talking to April because they think that they need to know what's going on in there. They find Splinter in a tube because those people in the sewer found him after he was recovering from his injuries. And they fight some of the alien Krang robots. They smash a console. They get sent through, like, a teleporter. Andrew. And then in issue five, they wind up hanging out with a Robot.

[Andrew]

Cool.

[Craig]

This is where I was like, what am I reading?

[Andrew]

Yeah, what's happening?

[Craig]

Exactly. And, like, big picture, there's a robot who's trying to make a transportation machine. There are. There's an evil human Federation and a space sentient Triceratops civilization called the Triceratons, which do appear in the cartoon at one point, but I don't remember them. They also want the robot who knows how to make a teleportation device. And the Turtles are hanging out in, like, a Mos Eisley cantina at one point, and they get. And they are, like, kind of mixed up in this fight between the evil Human Federation and the Triceratons. And then they wind up on the Triceraton home planet, where they do, like, a Dune esque Roman Coliseum fight against the dinosaurs, but they get away, and they take the robot with them. And then the Krang aliens teleport them back to Earth, defeat the dinosaurs. But New York City has seen all of these teleportation beams come out of the building. So they send in the National Guard, and all the aliens teleport away, and they teleport the Turtles and Splinter to April's bathroom.

[Andrew]

What?

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

I think you're trained. I think I've been trained by the cartoon to expect, like, okay, I'm watching the Turtles. What are. What. What's Shredder. What's Shredder gonna do to him this week? It's. It's like a. It's. Inspector Gadget was another cartoon that was. That was happening in this era. And every. And every. You know, it's very. The formula of it is the. Is the point of it. Like, every episode, something weird is happening. Inspector Gadget should be dead, but for his niece.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And her smart dog. And then at the end, Dr. Claus, like, well, Inspector Gadget got me again. I'm gonna get him next time. And then the next episode you watch, it's. It's the next time, like, he's trying to get him again. Yeah, but I guess if you're, you know, especially if you're doing a parody comic in response to current comic trends, you wouldn't want to be like, all right, Shredder's back. We're gonna do them again. You would want to keep, like, doing different stuff, which is, I guess, how you get to, like, space. Like, space robots by, like, issue four.

[Craig]

So the robot Honeycutt is also called the.

[Andrew]

Excuse me.

[Craig]

Yeah, his name is Honeycutt because he was a doctor. He was a human man in space.

[Andrew]

Dr. Honeycutt Dr. Honeycutt. Dr. Honeycutt was my father.

[Craig]

And he. He was in, like, a Rogue One situation where he was being forced to make a teleportation device for a militaristic society, even though he knew they would use it to teleport bombs, and he didn't want to. So he tried to delay, delay, delay, and then a lightning bolt struck him and his robot, and he got put into his robot, and he got called the Fugitoid, which is apparently a character that Eastman Laird had already come up with that they thought was neat. And also, I think they had come up with the Triceratons before Ninja Turtles 2. But obviously, you've made your successful Ninja Turtle cartoon, so you're just gonna start putting your ideas in there.

[Andrew]

Sure. Yeah.

[Craig]

And so there I'm trying to. Let me look up this. There's, like, a quote. Okay, so this is from the annotations. I don't. They don't say who wrote these. I'm not sure if it's layered or not. Now, my favorite, the bar scene, the Star wars cantina and everything we could get away with just short of a lawsuit. Ninja Turtles, drinking, shooting lasers, even killing. Guys, what the hell were we doing? Pretty much having a blast.

[Andrew]

Pretty much having a blast. I think that's our thing, too. What are we doing?

[Craig]

What are we doing?

[Andrew]

I feel like we could talk about this basically forever.

[Craig]

Forever. No. And that's kind of why I sped through these last few issues, because it's like, it's a long way to get to. They're reunited with Splinter. Okay. The alien thing is kind of strange, but by the end of this collection, they are back where the aliens are gone. So, like, if they come back, it'll be a whole new thing. The Triceratons are gone. If they come back, it'll be a whole new thing. Baxter Stockman's in jail or something. I don't remember, whoever he is.

[Andrew]

And Shredder, I'll never remember back.

[Craig]

Shredder is presumed a million years dead. And, like, along the way, we had some, like, wacky action scenes. There's not a lot in this collection of what I think about when I think about some of the Turtles movies, which is, like, they have to learn to work together. They have, like, intrapersonal dynamics that they

[Andrew]

have to learn to be the world's whatever.

[Craig]

The Fearsome Fighting Team. Yeah.

[Andrew]

The most Fearsome fighting team.

[Craig]

Yes. There I was, even leafing through it, just to double check. Like, there's not even a lot in these early issues of Save for that one issue where Raph goes off on his own. Except for the couple beats where Donatello is doing machines, which is mostly in the Mouser vault issues.

[Andrew]

They're always at the highest. The highest concentration of machines.

[Craig]

Yes. They're almost always all together. Like, especially when they go into space and all that stuff. Like, every page that has turtles, if, like a frame has only one of them in it, it's because it's like a fight sequence. But they are moving through the plot together as a group of four all the time, just going from outlandish sequence to outlandish sequence. So it's like, yeah. Which I don't. I truly don't remember how much the cartoon differs from that, but it's my recollection of the films as they've been constructed. Is a bit more interested in, like, what if we pull them apart a little bit and that makes for a better film structure. I suppose to your question of like, it doesn't do the reset that a cartoon show is going to do, but it is doing a. Like, well, the turtles are always there and they're always a group together moving through stuff. Even as the comic is like, well, what if they went to this weird place next? And what if they went to this weird place next? Where else can we put them where people will. There is a whole bit where they're on this, like, strange planet and they're like, I guess we can just walk around now because we look like aliens.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But, yeah, it's weird, man. Nobody ate pizza. I was a little disappointed.

[Andrew]

It's too bad. It makes me want to eat pizza just to just so somebody's eating pizza.

[Craig]

You know, blood does exist in these. It's. I think I was prepared. I think I was like, maybe mistakenly prepared for it to be more gruesome than it is, though. It is like, yeah, people get cut with swords because that's always. I don't.

[Andrew]

I don't think darker tone automatically means, like, you're talking about.

[Craig]

It's not gory, like blood everywhere.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But it does acknowledge that, like, the. A sword can cut people, which the cartoon. The cartoon mostly gets by having all the foot clampy robots. So it can have them cut people in half.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

And not be a problem. So, yeah, it's just weird, man. I did not expect them to go to space and encounter dinosaurs. That was a real surprise.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's a. That's a kind of like, you hear about that and you're. You're like, oh, yeah, this is. This is like, fast nine, fast ten. Like, this is the.

[Craig]

Yes, yes.

[Andrew]

This is you. You've passed your peak already when you're. When you're doing this stuff.

[Craig]

They did not care to iterate on the ninja idea.

[Andrew]

No. She's like, well, what if we went to space? Let's just do it.

[Craig]

Let's just do it.

[Andrew]

Legends. Yeah.

[Craig]

Truly. I mean, honestly, that's what they decided to do, and it worked out.

[Andrew]

It sounds like this was fun.

[Craig]

Very fun. I don't think these collections are high art. I can't speak too much to the quality of the art. As, like, a comics aficionado, I found it fine. It's my understanding what is, like, kind of interesting is that at least in these early volumes, they were pretty disciplined about, like, they each had to do, like, the art on every page together.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

And it is. It's only a few issues in that they get somebody else else to do the lettering.

[Andrew]

Yeah, they, like. The first person they hire is a letterer, I think, and that's Steve Levine, I think. Yeah, that's. That's a ways in.

[Craig]

That's issue five. So. And that's. That's after the micro series. So, yeah, they. They did it all themselves. And they were like. The paper was expensive. There was, like, one scene in the first issue where it's, like a shot of New York City, and they fought about whether or not to include it because it's like, no action is happening or is this worth it? It's like a pretty good street shot, actually. They seem to really love drawing weird technology. Like, it's like, with the mousers, there's machines to do, a lot of machines to do the mousers, all of the alien tech stuff. They just really had a ball.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Okay. Ninja Turtles.

[Craig]

That is the ultimate collection. Volume one of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's obvious, as we've said, there's so much more Ninja Turtles out there, but we always find it fun to go back to the beginning on some of this stuff and see where it all came from, find out what the secret of the ooze is. Andrew.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I mean, I don't feel like I'm any closer to that than I was when we started the episode. But I'm glad to have, you know, the journey is the point, I guess.

[Craig]

Yeah. I was just surprised how much of the Ninja Turtles lore was just literally in that one first issue, and then the rest of it is just silly nonsense.

[Andrew]

It's just like, what if we went to space this time?

[Craig]

Went to space this time every Every Jefferson Airplane becomes a Jefferson Starship. You know what I mean?

[Andrew]

Eventually.

[Craig]

Yeah. Well, thanks for letting me tell you about the Ninja Turtles, Andrew.

[Andrew]

Thank you for telling me about them.

[Craig]

I'm glad that you are the Donatello to my. Sort of.

[Andrew]

One of the other ones.

[Craig]

One of the other ones. I'm not Venus. The Ninja Turtle that they. The. The girl Ninja Turtle they invented for the live action show in the early days.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Craig]

Don't look up photos of Venus de Milo. The only Ninja Turtle.

[Andrew]

I was gonna do it, but then you said not to do it.

[Craig]

The only Ninja Turtle named after a work of art rather than an artist. Think about it.

[Andrew]

Anyway, they didn't invent lady artists until, like the 60s.

[Craig]

Yeah. This is my Ninja Turtle, Georgia O', Keefe, because I know lady artist.

[Andrew]

Before that, you know.

[Craig]

God. Anyway, thanks for listening, everyone. No matter what Ninja Turtle you are. You can send us an email overdupodmail.com find us on social media at overdue pod. And thanks to Nick Lauren. Just not Chuck Lorre, who composed our theme song. Andrew, if folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue podcast.com's the Internet website. Up there we have the schedule for the month that it is and all the links that Craig talked about and a little web player and a bunch of other stuff. Patreon.com overdue pods the other link to know about. You can give us a little bit of money and get access to our Discord community, access to the special collections episodes that we talked about, access to an ad free version of the Feedback, the long read project that we're working on right now called Tokyo Drifters, about the manga Akira and other things as well.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Patreon.com overdpod y' all make the show possible and we appreciate you for that.

[Craig]

Andrew, what are you reading for next week?

[Andrew]

Next week I'm gonna read mash, a novel about three army doctors by Richard Hooker. This is, of course, the book that inspired the movie that inspired the show mash.

[Craig]

I love to dig into a property.

[Andrew]

Love to dig into a property. It's already begun, of course. Yeah. And that'll take us to the end of March. That'll be.

[Craig]

That sounds good. Thanks, everybody, for listening.

[Andrew]

All right, everybody, thank you. Yes, thank you for listening. And until we hit you with our nunchucks next time, please try to be happy.

[Craig]

Cowabunga.

[Andrew]

That was a headgum podcast.