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The 25 Greatest Moments in TMNT History

Ever since you guys did that article involving the 25 greatest moments in Transformers history, I figured I'd do my own version with the Ninja Turtles.

I tried to include a little something from every version: the various comics, the cartoons and the movies. The comics being my favorite aspect of the franchise garnered the most numbers, of course.

Its a heckuva a read, mind you, so it's no skimpy "list". Spent my entie day off from work on it, totaling about 8 hours and 17 Word pages.

Anyhow, I thought I'd share.

I like it. I'd forgotten about a lot of the TMNT I'd read over the years(the only two issues I have left, I think, is the 2 issue crossover Mark Martin did using Gnatrat).

One batch of issues I lost and wish I hadn't was a three issue arc done by Rick Veitch in which Raph(I think Raphael was the one it happened to) gets bitten by a leech. And for most of the arc, we see Raph slowly disintegrate. He loses his skills, his co-ordination, his ability to think, to talk. As much fun as the Mark Martin stuff was(Splinter's way of unwinding after a harrowing day of having the timelines warp around him a few times? Watch Speed Racer re-runs.), the Raphael's degeneration arc just struck a tone that the other didn't.

Heinrad wrote:I like it. I'd forgotten about a lot of the TMNT I'd read over the years(the only two issues I have left, I think, is the 2 issue crossover Mark Martin did using Gnatrat).

One batch of issues I lost and wish I hadn't was a three issue arc done by Rick Veitch in which Raph(I think Raphael was the one it happened to) gets bitten by a leech. And for most of the arc, we see Raph slowly disintegrate. He loses his skills, his co-ordination, his ability to think, to talk. As much fun as the Mark Martin stuff was(Splinter's way of unwinding after a harrowing day of having the timelines warp around him a few times? Watch Speed Racer re-runs.), the Raphael's degeneration arc just struck a tone that the other didn't.

Oh yes, that was "The River" trilogy.

A great little story arc, though Laird tends not to acknowledge it as "canon".

Veitch did a lot of great work on TMNT that tends to get overlooked because it was written during the "guest era" between issues #21 and #45, where the series was all over the place and very few of the arcs were part of the main continuity.

"The River" was probably his best work on the series, though I'm rather fond of his Casey Jones miniseries, too.

I liked the description of us as awesome. It was downhill after that.

Nah, top work as always. I've got a friend who's going to orgasm over this...

TMNT3. What a film.

Nobody saw tmnt forever?! That was awesome!

Nice list. It's near impossible for me to watch tmnt over here. I managed to gather up everything up to fast forward, and maybe about half of that, but I didn't even know about turtles forever until reading that list. And there's a trade of the mirage stuff available? Is it still in print? Only ever read bits and pieces of it.

angloconvoy wrote:Nice list. It's near impossible for me to watch tmnt over here. I managed to gather up everything up to fast forward, and maybe about half of that, but I didn't even know about turtles forever until reading that list. And there's a trade of the mirage stuff available? Is it still in print? Only ever read bits and pieces of it.

They ran the 4Kids TMNT series on TV Tokyo over there a couple years back, but canned it after 52 episodes due to lack of interest (it's been my understanding that foreign cartoons tend to only do well on satellite networks).

Turtles Forever is on You Tube, though! If you've only seen through Fast Forward, you'll be fine. It's pretty detached from the last season, Back to the Sewers, and is accessable to new viewers.


And Mirage recently published a trade collecting issues #1-11 and the 5 microseries only a few months back as part of the 25th Anniversary celebration.

However, the Viacom buyout immediately put it out of print, so now it goes for upwards of $80 to $100 bucks on eBay, despite only being 4 months old.

On the bright side, the official TMNT site has the first 17 issues and the 5 microseries available to read for free on their site here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Thanks for the info. TV Tokyo's pretty much my favourite channel. They show most of the best stuff when it comes to animation and they do even occasionally get the odd american show (spider-man was on a while back).

I did notice the official website had that stuff, but I still much prefer paper over screen as a comic medium. Still, have to take what I can get.

Actually, after posting I remembered I saw almost all of fast forward, I just missed a couple towards the end. Haven't seen any of back to the sewers though.

Is there much speculation on what Viacom will do with the franchise?


Edit: Ok, just finished watching Turtles Forever. It was fantastic. I stayed up well past my bedtime to watch it though, so I'll go into a bit more detail when I get time.

angloconvoy wrote:Is there much speculation on what Viacom will do with the franchise?

They've stated that they want to reboot the franchise into something more akin to the 80s Fred Wolf cartoon series.

A new live action movie is already in preproduction (supposedly, the Turtles are going to be brought to life via CG-enhanced costumes ala "Where the Wild Things Are"). Viacom's also stated that they're beginning work on a new CG-animated Turtles cartoon for Nickelodeon.

Other than that, they only tidbit we've gotten is that Viacom is also in discussions with Lions Gate in regards to purchasing full rights to the Fred Wolf TMNT cartoon from the 80s (Mirage owned all characters and likenesses from that series, but Lions Gate owned the episodes-themselves and all the music).

No word of any kind on what they plan to do with the comics. Laird had it written into the contract that he is entitled to self-publish up to 15 TMNT comics a year, so long as they're single issue format and are of a length no greater than 22 pages. Laird specifically had that written in so he could finish the long lingering TMNT Vol. 4 series at his own pace.

Most likely, since to my knowledge Viacom doesn't have their own comic publishing branch, they're going to license the franchise out to other publishers like IDW or Dark Horse. They, in turn, will work on a new series and release trades of older material.

That's all speculation, of course, but is the likeliest thing that'll happen with the TMNT comics, now.

So no more cool cartoons which tell an actual coherent story then? Shame.

Turtles Forever was great. I liked Mikey's interaction with the Fred Wolf Turtles. Also, the Turtle Prime bit was massively entertaining. I liked the step by step from hardcore to mental. Mind you, what was with Fred Wolf Leo's voice? Was it just me or was it a bit weird?

angloconvoy wrote:So no more cool cartoons which tell an actual coherent story then? Shame.

Turtles Forever was great. I liked Mikey's interaction with the Fred Wolf Turtles. Also, the Turtle Prime bit was massively entertaining. I liked the step by step from hardcore to mental. Mind you, what was with Fred Wolf Leo's voice? Was it just me or was it a bit weird?

Yeah, Leo's soundalike was disturbingly off, while all the other Fred Wolf Turtles sounded relatively close to their original actors (Raph was a spot-on Rob Paulson impression).

As it turns out, the casting folks at 4Kids only used the first season of the Fred Wolf series as their source material when casting the soundalikes. As we all know, character voices tend to change and evolve as the actors get comfertable with the roles and find their nitch (compare season 1 Bender from Futurama with season 3 Bender, for example).

If you go back and watch season 1 of the Fred Wolf series, Cam Clarke uses a deeper, more authoritative voice than the younger, whinier one he used in the later seasons.

Leo's soundalike in Turtles Forever was trying to emulate Clarke's season 1 Leo and ended up sounding not a thing like Leo at all.

Likewise, that's also why Krang was croaking constantly throughout Turtles Forever. The croaking thing was something Pat Fraley did primarily in the first season of the Fred Wolf series and toned down for the later seasons (and eventually stopped doing it altogether).

Somehow though, the croaking is how I remember Krang, so that didn't bother me a bit, especially as they were highlighting a lot of the more ridiculous aspects of the Fred Wolf show (not that that takes much effort, if you ever want to be really confused, get hold of a copy of the British TV re-edits, where they removed any weapon use and chopped in other bits from episodes with completely different settings)

Has The River been collected in anything? I know they collected the Mark Martin stuff into a TPB at one point, although it slots into his Gnatrat oneshots easier without part 1(as Gnatrat isn't in part 1).

And why doesn't Laird want to acknowledge it? If Turtles can mutate, why not leeches?

I did like the Fred Wolf cartoon, oddly enough. The first story of it seemed to be the only one that was coherent(although to be honest, I still think the "Cur-lee manouver" is one of the greatest things I've ever heard of), but they broke the fourth wall enough that it was still fun to watch. That being said, I pretty much only caught it in re-runs.

EDIT: Just watched Turtles Forever. Not bad. They were spot-on with Rob Paulson's Raph voice, if not completely character-wise(sarcastic witticisims weren't showing up enough). And I have to admit, what happened with Shredder Prime was just funny. They did a good job of finding somebody who can sound like Cam Clarke, but his delivery was way off.

Heinrad wrote:Has The River been collected in anything?

It was collected in trade a looooooooong time ago. Back in the 80s. All the old TMNT collected books go for ridiculous prices right now, though. It'd be cheaper to just get the original singles, which go for a buck on the after market.

And why doesn't Laird want to acknowledge it? If Turtles can mutate, why not leeches?

With the exception of "Sons of the Silent Age" and "Dreams of Stone", all the issues of TMNT Vol. 1 between #21 and #45 weren't done in-house by Mirage, but were done by guest creators. Laird wants to keep continuity in-house, so he doesn't acknowledge any guest issues as canon....even if they're referenced by issues he DOES consider canon ("The River" being referenced in "Sons of the Silent Age").

Oddly, he also doesn't consider "Men of Shadow" to be canon, and that one was done in-house by A.C. Farley. Laird's opinion of the "guest era" of TMNT Vol. 1 is a little muttled.

angloconvoy wrote:if you ever want to be really confused, get hold of a copy of the British TV re-edits, where they removed any weapon use and chopped in other bits from episodes with completely different settings

Yeah, what's all this TMNT? Its TMHT!

I had some of the old black and white comics growing up, but was far more into the cartoon, probably because the comics were hard as hell to find around where I lived.

However I used to have one issue that I loved to death, and I would really like to hunt it down one day if it isn't extremely pricey. I can't recall the title or anything, but the turtles were drawn very different, like they were huge and monstrous, like snapping turtles or something. The issue was very violent and had the turtles fighting ninjas (the foot clan maybe?) in the snow IIRC, and one of the turtles actually loses a hand in the fight. I remember Splinter being in the story, and they retreated back home to him, but that is about all I remember really.

Any ideas what issue this was, or is my memory so muddled I'm getting all the details wrong and making it impossible to identify?

Ackula wrote:I had some of the old black and white comics growing up, but was far more into the cartoon, probably because the comics were hard as hell to find around where I lived.

However I used to have one issue that I loved to death, and I would really like to hunt it down one day if it isn't extremely pricey. I can't recall the title or anything, but the turtles were drawn very different, like they were huge and monstrous, like snapping turtles or something. The issue was very violent and had the turtles fighting ninjas (the foot clan maybe?) in the snow IIRC, and one of the turtles actually loses a hand in the fight. I remember Splinter being in the story, and they retreated back home to him, but that is about all I remember really.

Any ideas what issue this was, or is my memory so muddled I'm getting all the details wrong and making it impossible to identify?

Ah, that would be Michael Zulli's "Soul's Winter" trilogy from TMNT (Vol. 1) #31, #35, and #36.

In February of 2007, Mirage published a trade paperback collection of Soul's Winter, which also features the three short strips Zulli did that were part of the storyline but were published in various TMNT anthology titles.

It was a good story arc and one of the best "alternate universe" tales we got during the guest era of TMNT (Vol. 1). You can get the single issues pretty cheap, but the trade is nice for convenience sake (plus you get those short strips Zulli did, too). The trade has been out of print for two years, so I don't know how expensive it might be these days.

Sweet, yeah that is it alright. I only had the first part though, issue #31. The art was really cool to me at the time, and from that site it looks like my memory served me well. I might have to hunt those issues down out of nostalgia

I still own most of the TMNT issues I bought back in the 1980's. I still have the individual Turtles stories and issue 4 up to 33.

Back then I had to quit collecting due to the rough times my family was going through.

I still remember reading TMNT back before it became a "household name".
And people would look at you crazy when you said that you were reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!!!

The Turtles Forever movies was awesome. I'm glad that they did the TMNT 2003-2008 series. Since3 it was closer to the original story line than the original 1987 cartoon.

:swirly::)