Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Compendium Coming Soon | popgeeks.com
Yeah, the Ninja Turtles started as comic book characters, but most kids in the 80s and 90s didn’t first become acquainted with them there. They first saw them on TV, as cartoon characters…and then, to bring things full circle, a comic book BASED ON the TV show was made. Unlike the indie black and white original, this one was mass-market, so even though it was a filtered version, it’s the Turtle comic most kids became familiar with.
Now it’s coming back! We’re pleased to learn IDW is printing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Compendium Vol. 1, a massive heavy collection of TMNT Adventures comics. There will be nearly 800 pages in this behemoth, and it’s coming by the end of April (O’ Neil)!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures showed up on comic racks in August of 1988, back when the cartoon was still running only on weekends. It was Archie of all companies that acquired the adaption rights, but it was a good bet, as the Turtles were about to blow up culturally. The comic started as a miniseries before graduation to an ongoing. At first the stories were just adaptions of TV episodes, but after a few issues it began heading in a different direction.
And what a wild direction it was! There are places and characters here we wouldn’t see pop up in any other Turtles adaption. It was usually brought to life by the wizardly artist Ken Mitchroney, who not only made the TV show style look easy, but had a last name that sounded like it’d come out of a Turtle’s mouth (“TOTALLY MITCHRONEY, DUDES!”) There were, um, other artists too…there was this guy named Don Simpson who always drew them massively off-model, with visible scales all over their bodies and gigantic teeth. Behold:
Gnarly brushstrokes, dudes. It’s Mitchroney’s art you want this book for, if nothing else, and he wrote the foreword.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Compendium Vol. 1 will be released in comic shops and bookstores April 29.
