Hey, have you heard the Good Word? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are turning forty this year.
If you’ve been reading my stuff here at Biff Bam Pop! at all this year, you may have seen that I’ve mentioned that a couple of times.
It’s a gig I’ll gladly take too. Next to Shaggy and Scooby, the Turtles are some of the most relatable characters in modern American literature and, even though I’ve burned this joke before, they continue to be an evergreen property. Just as Shaggy and Scooby are all about cowardice and sandwiches, the Turtles are about pizza and fun and we are with them 100% of the way. If I were trying to make a word count or working on a TED Talk, I could probably put forth that the four primary Turtles represent the entire spectrum of human emotion. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were really cooking when the dreamt these mutants up.
Out this week from IDW is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 40th Anniversary Comics Celebration. Here’s the blurb:
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turn 40! Revisit some of their greatest eras with stories told by some of the many creators of the page and screen who made each iteration of the Turtles so special! This all-new anthology takes a look all the way back to the start, celebrating that initial spark of creativity from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and then works its way through the next four decades, highlighting fan-favorite touchstones from comic books and beyond. Eastman leads a host of incredible talent who are contributing new stories and pinups from a gaggle of legendary TMNT contributors, including Jim Lawson, Tristan Jones and Paul Harmon, Ronda Pattison and Pablo Tunica, Tom Waltz and Michael Dialynas, Ciro Nieli, Lloyd Goldfine with Khary Randolph and Emilio Lopez, Andy Suriano, Chris Allan and many more, all hearkening back to the era of TMNT they are best known for, ranging from the initial Mirage series through the 1990s and up until now, as well as the Tales of TMNT and Rise of the TMNT. Featuring a host of covers designed to celebrate individual decades, including new pieces by Eastman & Laird, Campbell, Randolph, the Escorza Brothers, Michael Dooney, Vincenzo Federici, Michael Dialynas, and the mighty Simon Bisley! Plus a special ‘Golden Age’ cover by Michael Cho!
As is the case with anything TMNT related, I was stoked to get an advanced look at this book. Pretty much every era of the Turtles is well represented and there’s literally something for every fan (I say “pretty much” because I don’t recall there being any The Next Mutation or the Michale Bay-produced movies in there…I think we’ve all rightly memory-holed those).
The book is as advertised on the cover: a celebration. It’s well worth picking up even if you’re a casual TMNT fan, because you may find a hitherto unknown to you version of the Turtles that you’re interested in learning more about. I was pleasantly surprised to see Urban Legends getting a few pages in the book (yeah, Donatello was a cyborg in that book…it was a whole thing).
So order up a pizza and grab the variant cover of your choice and enjoy this book!
