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Think we're kidding? Captain Planet has nothing on these (very) green teens! The series would touch on such kid-friendly topics as South American activist assassinations, US commerce department debates, and of course, the very real issue of aliens kidnapping rare creatures to save them from the doomed Earth. Read on, and imagine what kids hoping for pun-filled pizza-fueled antics felt when they read these over the past 20 years!
10) The Turtles Meet Bigfoot
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Special #1
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What could be cooler than taking the turtles and introducing them to weird monsters and mythological beings? Nothing, that's what! That's why this installment of the comic brought us bigfoot and a freaking sea serpent. The Bigfoot part of the story has to do with our heroes going up to the Pacific Northwest to do whatever it is they do, presumably order pizza and say things like "Cowabunga Jerusalem" (actually in TMNT Adventures #53). So yeah, meeting bigfoot-- that's going to be good times right? The story quickly turns into a "hey kids logging is bad" and "developers suck" story rather than, oh let's say, having Bigfoot fight Bebop and Rocksteady. Apparently the only thing that can stop the almighty dollar and bulldozers are superheroes. Well, that and zoning hearings, but Captain Zoning Hearing was busy in "The Case of the Missing Bennigan's Liquor License."
9) The Man Who Sold The World/Mighty Mutanimals
Issues #1-#3 of the Mighty Mutanimals miniseries, issues #19-#21 of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures
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Since issue #5, when this series split off from the animated continuity, we were introduced to a new stream of mutant animals almost every month. And you know what that means-- spin-off! An alien invasion after one Mr. Null, a human/demon/whatever businessman sells out the Earth to aliens is the catalyst for this "epic" story of a teenager turned into a gecko, a former Creole turned gator, a couple of South American mutants, a pair of alien bugs, and a Manta Ray. So what do these aliens want? Why, to destroy the Earth's ecology, of course! They're going to come down and eat the forest and lay eggs and stuff, sort of like that movie Independence Day minus Jeff Goldblum.
The villainous Mr. Null is the big business person in the shadows orchestrating the possible destruction of Earth, but the kicker is that he's generally unseen. Until you see he's some bald dude in a business suit with horns, and then he grows wings and stuff every time he does something evil enough to warrant it. Oh Archie, could your symbolism be any more obvious? (What's that? He can wear a speedo in a future issue? Wow!)
Trivia note: at one point the Mighty Mutanimals were supposedly up for their own TV series. This did not happen, but a large number of the characters eventually became plastic action figures in Playmates' original action figure line.
8) 1492
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #40
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Nothing ruins a good ol' fashioned European ass-kicking like having to make it educational. While what happened to the Americas after discovery by colonial powers is a dark moment in history, this issue transports our heroes back to the arrival of Columbus-- now looking like Lorne Michaels in tights-- along with monks or whatever other European evils can be brought over on the waves of the Atlantic ocean. In the 1990s the whole slavery/disease/genocide angle of Columbus was generally left out of the elementary school history books, and the decision to make a person for whom kids get a day off of school in October was a gutsy one. Plus the writers have to be given points for calling out that not everybody was actually speaking English. But could they make this more ridiculous and nonsensical? Of course!
While captured in a ship, Donatello meets a weird floaty eel Earth Spirit thing called "The Other" who is never referenced again anywhere in the series. He just shows up to go "wow, you're here in the past where a historical event is taking place! And Earth gets power from these things! Wow!" So if you signed up for pizza and cowabungas, too damn bad-- it's time for history class, and you get to pay $1.25 for the courtesy of finding out one of America's folk heroes was a total dick. Sadly, Archie Comics never got around to publishing its six-issue series on how Johnny Appleseed fucked your mom, which we presume was in development at some point or another. (Most likely as a "Sonic the Hedgehog" story.)
7) TurtleCo and the Rising Oceans
Various
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Not content to merely dump on the past and present, the writers made sure that when we meet the Turtles of the future, the Earth is a clear mess too! From the first accidental glimpse of the future-- after a series of intergalactic wrestling matches-- we see that the sea level has raised and lots of Earth is under water. We keep getting beaten down with the greenhouse effect in multiple issues, where our heroes are in a future where they can exist out of the closet and are actually semi-successful businessmen who decided to name their business "Turtleco."
Of course, what could make this better? The introduction of the flooded-out future was narrated by none other than Cudley the Cowlick, a giant disembodied interdimensional cow's head. So it's like a TARDIS, but more hamburger-esque, and with an unwillingness to let you enjoy your ninja stories. He did let the reader know that this was only one of many possible futures-- which was a little hammy for a floating hamburger-- but the message was clear: we're all screwed and it's all your fault, suburban white boys aged 5-11.
While presiding over the collapse of Earth, we find out that the Turtles have an unusually long lifespan and like Taylor in The Planet of the Apes we're reminded that everyone they know and love from the present is dead, which is what you want to hear after your parents drive you to the comic shop every month. (At least that was kinda cool.)
6) Morbus, the Toxic Waste Planet
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #13, #23
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After Shredder and Krang are defeated for the very first time "for good" in this series, an intergalactic warlord banishes them to all sorts of remote places. Krang gets dumped on a toxic waste dump planet, which is, in the 1990s, a fate worse than death. (It doesn't hurt that the planet is supposed to kill its inhabitants due to exposure to this junk.) Shredder gets teleported to prison, Bebop and Rocksteady are dumped sans pants to an "Eden world" with other animals running freely, and you are of course sentenced to continue reading this increasingly preachy series.
In #23 we see Krang floating on a radioactive barrel in a green ooze-puddle until rescued by Slash, the evil turtle, who is babbling about wanting his old palm tree back. Slash tells Krang to help him or die, so then we get to see all these guys and a big alien named Bellybomb hop on a stolen ship and go to Earth to get some palm trees or do whatever it is evil martians who are sentenced to death for unpaid parking tickets do. (This is not a joke. This is actually in the book.) So once again the decision to show off disgusting waste has ruined our chances of seeing Krang's homeworld or some other weird cool alien prison.
5) The Keeper
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #26
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The series' authors put in all sorts of references to things like the greatest Iggy and the Stooges album of all time. In this issue, we're given a number of Star Trek references. There's a yeti named T'pau, and The Keeper is now a Cthulhu/Doctor Octopus mash-up space alien who starts kidnapping a bunch of rare creatures on Earth because humans made the planet unsafe for them to stay there. It turns out this "Keeper" is actually named "Boss Salvage" and he's just kidnapping the yeti and all these other characters for their own safety, and in the end everybody is returned to their normal places of residence and there's Jell-o for everyone. (Actually, it's pizza, but whatever.) Remember kids, take good care of your planet or space aliens will kidnap all your unique life forms! (Although, sadly, not ALF. He gets to stay. That's democracy for you.)
4) In The Dark
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #27
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Aping Lovecraft has always been trendy, and this issue does it again with a story in Innsmouth. In this issue you get your environmental message with a quasi-zombie tale and a dash of Springfield from the G.I. Joe series. So what does Innmouth have for you? Some fully-dressed mutant creatures created through dirty factories are turning the citizens of the town into compliant zombies by force-feeding them weird industrial waste via, apparently, milkshakes. April gets cramps from hers, but pretty much everybody else turns into slaves of a cat, a crow, and an owl mutant. So remmeber, Without cap-and-trade your entire township will be at the mercy of mutant vermin dressed in hobo clothing.
3) Fight the Power
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #17
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Can you take a story on shrimp nets and make it into a comic book? Yes, you can! The villain of this issue is Cap'n Mossback, a peg-legged patch-eyed shrimp fisherman designed to parody/shame Robert Mossbacher, a government official who supported/backed off from the requirement that all shrimp nets include TEDs, or Turtle Excluder Devices. The comic actually breaks away from the story to show us the nets, how they work, and how happy the sea turtles are now that these low-cost devices were installed and that the turtles do not get caught with the shrimp. So the cover: high-flying adventure with four turtles on top of a majestic fantastical flying sea creature. The interior: talk-like-a-pirate version of the Secretary of the Interior and a demonstration of new fishing technologies, just like your average 10-year-old craves. Man Ray (later Ray Fillet, pictured) guest-stars.
A fun trivia note: future issues' letter columns mentioned that the TMNTs were hypocrites because the action figures wore dead sea life as armor and knee pads. Oh, you kids!
2) Leave Heaven Alone
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #14
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This issue introduces Jagwar, the offspring of some hot Brazilian chick and a South American jungle god. If you thought all you're going to get in this issue is a glimpse at really weird character art and how this pussy of a hero (in more ways than one!) keeps crying because of the fate of the forest, you're wrong. You're also force-fed the story of Chico Mendes, who seems like a pretty cool cat but this is a children's adventure comic about mutant animals. Rather than giving future furries fantasy fodder, this issue takes a detour into environmental terrorism, kidnappings, and of course, the assassination of union leaders. Wait, what?
Considering that a lot of licensed comic books in the 1990s were designed mostly to increase the awareness of licensed action figure toys or related products (the back covers frequently promoted Konami video games with ninjas in them), it's pretty remarkable what some of these issues managed to get published given that, in all honesty, nobody reading this stuff had any idea who the Hell any of these famous people were. Thankfully, there's one issue that didn't bother to promote any toys, but rather, just made us all feel really bad.
1) The Conservation Corps
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Meet the Conservation Corps #1
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The #1 in the comic title is misleading, as that implies a #2. This one-shot is yet another group of environment-friendly animal heroes including a mutant rhino not named Rocksteady. For some reason an alien created yet another band of angry environmentally-conscious mutant animal warriors to fight a very angry oil-covered mutant duck whose family was apparently done in by pollution. The duck itself is just a giant oil-covered duck that can speak, it's not like they went through the trouble to make him in any way related to Ace Duck (a pro wrestler in this continuity) or, you know, give him pants or anything. He's just a really big and angry talking duck.
This issue reads like a pilot for a superhero series that was never meant to be, and for this, you should be truly grateful. "Wallow in misery," the duck screams. I'm sure the poor children who shelled out their allowances for this issue did. It's not like the readers had overwhelmingly high expectations for the new characters introduced in the "Specials," as they never came back, and I can't imagine anyone missed these goons.
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