Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the 40th Anniversary
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on July 20, 2024, 1:09 a.m. by DemonDragonJ
This year is the 40th anniversary of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one of the most popular media franchises in the western world. Although the franchise is best-known for its various television and film adaptations, it actually began as an underground comic series, written and illustrated by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and the original comics were fairly dark, compared to the much lighter tones of the various adaptations, as the creators were parodying various trends and tropes that were popular in American comics, at that time, most notably with the franchise's word salad title and the turtles themselves being named after famous painters and inventors from the Renaissance.
The creative and unusual nature of the comic made it very popular with underground audiences, which eventually led to a television series in 1987, which, in turn led to it becoming a massively popular franchise, although the creators continued to write the comics for many years, until they eventually sold the franchise to Nickelodeon, who have certainly made the most of that acquisition by producing further movies and television series.
Naturally, as with any popular franchise, numerous other franchises attempted to emulate the success of TMNT, leading to many other animated series that featured anthropomorphic non-human animals as its main characters, but none of them ever achieved the same level of fame and cultural impact as did the original, and have largely been forgotten, today.
I fully expect that either Nickelodeon or the original creators of the franchise shall do something to commemorate this momentous milestone, as it would be most unfortunate to not do so; what does everyone else say about this? How do you feel about this year being the 40th anniversary of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
FormOverFunction says... #3
If anyone ever gets the chance to play the tabletop RPG for TMNT I’d recommend doing so. We had a TON of fun with it back in the day. Not sure if it’s in print any more. Time really flies.
July 20, 2024 9:36 a.m.
If anyone wants to read a really good TMNT story I can not recommend The Last Ronin enough
sergiodelrio says... #2
Might as well be the next Universe Beyond theme xD
July 20, 2024 8:56 a.m.