Originally published by: Mirage Comics and Archie Comics
(see Turtle Tips)
Publication date: Summer, 1990
Adaptation by: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman
Layouts: Kevin Eastman
Script: Peter Laird
Pencils: Jim Lawson
Inks: Eric Talbot, Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird
Color: Steve Lavigne
Lettering: Gary Fields
Dedicated to: Steve Barron
Summary:
Channel 6 news reporter April O’Neil is covering a recent
crimewave plaguing New York; one she doesn’t feel the local authorities are
doing anything about. As she heads to
her van after dark, she’s attacked by a group of thugs, but saved by a quartet
of shadowy figures from the sewer. As
she purloins a fallen sai and heads to the police station, those shadowy
figures in the sewers turn out to be…
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! They’re celebrating their first battle,
except for Raph, who wants his sai back.
They return home to Splinter and order some pizza while Raph goes out
for a movie.
Meanwhile, a crazy man sits in his apartment watching the news
on TV. He finally snaps and decides to
do something about all the crime in his city.
Later, as Raph leaves the theater, he stops a purse snatching and
follows the criminals into central park.
The crazy man, Casey Jones, gets to them first and begins beating on
them with a hockey stick. Raph intervenes and he and Casey fight. Casey slugs Raph
and gets away. The Turtle goes back home to
the lair and Splinter calls him over for a talk, warning him to get his anger
under control.
At April’s apartment, her boss Charles and his delinquent
son Danny stop by to see that April’s okay.
April shoos them away and heads to City Hall to antagonize Police Chief
Sterns for not taking the Foot Clan connection regarding the crimewave
seriously. The Turtles watch her on the
news and Raph sees a chance to get his sai back and leaves. Another figure dressed in armor watches the
same report and dispatches his henchmen to deal with her. And at the same time, Danny is arrested and
taken past Chief Sterns’ office.
In the subway, April is attacked by several Foot Soldiers
who want to silence her. She’s saved by
Raph, but knocked out in the process. He
takes her back to the lair, unaware that a lone Foot Soldier is following
him. When April awakens, and when she
calms down, Splinter tells her the story of how they came to be: The baby
turtles in the sewer, the canister of chemicals that bathed them all in ooze,
etc.
She then invites them back to her apartment above the
Second Time Around Shop and after they get to know each other, the Turtles head
home. Unfortunately, they find the lair
in shambles and Splinter missing. They
return to April’s apartment, unsure of what to do. Meanwhile, Sterns finds out about Danny’s
arrest and presses Charles to get April to drop the case. Charles and Danny stop by her apartment and
while Charles tries to get her to let the Foot Clan case go, Danny thinks he
glimpses the Turtles hiding.
At a warehouse on East and Lairdman, the Foot Clan and
their band of young thieves assemble.
Their leader, the Shredder, and his lieutenant, Tatsu, punish several
young thieves who were caught and had to be bailed out of jail. The Shredder tells the teens gathered that if
they want to be a part of his family, they must earn their place amongst the
Foot. Of interest, he wants to know more
about the freaks who have become a threat to their operations. Danny then raises his hand.
Later that night, Raph gets fed up with waiting around in
April’s place instead of looking for Splinter and goes to the rooftops to cool
off. He’s spotted by Casey Jones, but
even worse, he’s attacked by the Foot Soldiers and Tatsu. The fight spills into April’s apartment and
even though Casey shows up to help, the Turtles are outnumbered. They gather up the injured Raphael as the
building catches on fire and escape through a back door. As Casey holds back the Foot Soldiers, he
hears a message for April from Charles, firing her. They all escape in April’s van and flee the
city.
Witnessing the violence, Danny regrets his actions and
returns to the warehouse to talk to Splinter (who has just survived an
interrogation session from Shredder).
Shredder blames Tatsu for letting the Turtles get away and in a rage,
Tatsu murders one of the young Foot Soldiers who was under his command. Danny watches this in horror as Splinter tells him about
the true nature of family.
The Turtles escape to April’s old family farmhouse in Northampton. Leonardo takes to watching over the
recovering Raphael, while Donatello begins a friendship with Casey Jones and
Michelangelo begins training more seriously.
April also develops a relationship with Casey, albeit a budding
romance. Raph soon recovers and Leo
receives a psychic message from Splinter.
The Turtles gather and focusing their minds and bodies, speak
telepathically with their father.
Knowing that Splinter is alive, the Turtles decide that it’s time to
return to New York.
Quietly, they go back to the lair, though Casey stays on
the streets to stand guard. They find
Danny hiding in the place and April allows him to stay for the night on the
condition he go home to Charles in the morning.
As they sleep, Danny steals one of April’s drawings of the Turtles and
sneaks back to the warehouse. Casey sees
him leaving and follows. Danny goes to
talk to Splinter again, who tells him about Oroku Nagi, Hamato Yoshi,
Tang Shen and Oroku Saki (you know the story).
Splinter also tells him about how he was unable to save Hamato Yoshi,
but did scar Saki’s face in the fight.
The Shredder catches Danny, finds the drawing and realizes that the
Turtles are back.
The Turtles are prepared for the attack (having woken up
and found Danny missing with some of April’s drawings) and ambush the Foot
Soldiers when they show up. Meanwhile,
Casey frees Splinter and Danny, defeating Tatsu in battle. He also inspires the teenagers to abandon the
Foot Clan and return to their real families.
The fight escalates onto a rooftop, where the Turtles
face down the Shredder (only to get trounced).
Casey shows up with Splinter, who enters the battle and reveals that he
was the one who scarred Shredder’s face.
Shredder attacks and Splinter flips him over the edge of the roof,
evidently killing him.
The police arrive to clean up the mess and the teenagers
Casey inspired tell Chief Sterns that he’ll find all the evidence of the Foot
Clan at the warehouse on East and Lairdman.
Charles reunites with Danny and then rehires April (who finally kisses
Casey). The Turtles and Splinter
celebrate their victory with a cowabunga.
Several weeks later, April and Danny pitch the idea of
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the Mega Comics publisher. The editor rejects the idea for being too
farfetched. The Turtles, watching from
a window, find that assessment insulting.
Turtle Tips:
*Obviously, this one-shot comic is an adaptation of the
1990 “TMNT: The Movie” motion picture from Golden Harvest.
*3 versions of this comic were released simultaneously by
Mirage Comics and Archie Comics.
**Mirage Edition (black and white, 14 bonus pages)
**Archie Newsstand Edition (flat colors by Barry
Grossman, no bonus pages)
**Archie Prestige Edition (painted colors by Steve
Lavigne, no bonus pages)
*The Archie newsstand edition was published in the UK in 1990 by Fleetway under the title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie. Oddly, the "Ninja" was not changed to "Hero" as was done in nearly all other TMNT media released in the UK at the time. A new cover by an in-house Fleetway artist was used for this printing.
*On September 16, 2014, IDW released an updated version
titled TMNT the Original 1990 Motion Picture: Special Edition with new digital
colors, all the bonus pages from the Mirage Edition and Kevin Eastman’s
original layouts and notes.
*Mirage published an official parody of the film/comic adaptation:
Green-Grey Sponge-Suit Sushi Turtles: The Parody.
Review:
Note: The only version I own is the Archie Prestige
Edition, so that is the version I am reviewing.
I don’t normally care much for comics that adapt movies
and TV shows, as it always seems like a “why bother?” sort of situation, but
this first adaptation of the live action film series is a little
different. Having been adapted from an
earlier draft of the screenplay, it contains a lot of scenes that were either
altered or deleted from the finished film.
It sort of gives you a peek into the movie we might have gotten, though
largely it plays the same.
A few of the more interesting differences include the
epilogue with the comic publisher (which was filmed, but never used) and a back
story that actually included Oroku Nagi (the version in the film combines his
character with Oroku Saki). What I
really thought was cool was that this adaptation contained the original version
of the scene where Tatsu punishes the young Foot Soldier, murdering him. The scene in the film is exactly the same, but
they dubbed in groans to indicate the teen survived (though the reactions from
everyone around him are incongruous; they clearly think he’s dead). There are other snippets here and there, like
Casey watching April’s news report and being inspired to fight crime (in the
movie, he just randomly shows up already as a vigilante with no build up) and a
bit of character development for Michelangelo, who takes being defeated the hardest
and begins to train more seriously.
It’s a bizarre situation, because while these little odds
and ends that were cut from the film but retained for the comic adaptation actually
help to improve the narrative cohesion of the plot, the flow of the story is
INCREDIBLY condensed. They compress the
whole film down into a 50-page graphic novel, and it’s impressive how much
content Eastman and Laird were able to keep, but this thing flows FAST.
The story doesn’t suffer so much as the action does;
fight scenes are very brief and over as soon as they start. Eastman’s layouts are great and for 50 pages
he crams in as much as he can (this was a very action-heavy film), but the epic
showdown with the Shredder spans a whopping two and a half pages (the Turtles
only battle him for the “half” portion of that “two and a half” pages). It’s my understanding that the Mirage edition
(and thus the IDW edition) contains bonus splash pages and spreads which
decompress the action sequences so that they aren’t so brisk. I’ll have to check that edition out some day
and see if it reads better than the Archie version.
The adaptations for the sequels aren’t as good as this
first one and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend those comics to anyone, but I
do think this first adaptation is pretty cool and worth checking out. Lawson’s finishes over Eastman’s layouts look
excellent and Steve Lavigne’s painted colors give it a nice feel (though he
miscolors the bandanas during the campfire sequence, making it a little
confusing). I don’t know about the
colors in the other versions, unfortunately.
There’s also the fact that all the characters are drawn
with their Mirage Comics models, so it looks like the Mirage characters are summarizing their own adventures (the movie adapted all the Foot Clan arcs from
TMNT Volume 1 #1-21). It sort of reminds
me of Now Comics and how they adapted “Ghostbusters II” by drawing all the
characters in their Real Ghostbusters likenesses (an easy way to avoid having
to license the likenesses of the actors).
Anyhow, you’re kind of spoiled for choice when it comes
to versions of this thing, but while I like Lavigne’s colors in the Archie
Prestige Edition, I think Mirage wins the day with the bonus pages. The IDW edition has the bonus pages, but it has newly applied colors that are often very wrong and very bad (a constant issue with IDW's colorizations of Mirage material). So I'd say stick with Mirage or Archie... BUT the IDW edition DOES come with Eastman's complete thumbnail layouts, so it may be worth picking up just for that bonus.
Grade: B- (as in, “But what, no dump truck? That was Casey’s big moment!”)
