Picture this. You, or your kid, or your parent, or your friend, has just watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. You’re jazzed. You’re looking for more. Maybe you go find the other movie, maybe the other TV shows, or maybe, and that’s why you’re here, you want to read the comics they’re based on. To do that, you need a reading order because there’s nothing that goes together better than reading orders and comics.
Except maybe pizza and cowabunga.
But where do you start? That’s a surprisingly tricky question with a tricky answer. There are a lot of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” series, some intertwined, some not. Looking to read every issue? Or just the “Mirage Continuity” ones? What about the current ongoing series from IDW? Do you start with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Reborn” or jump back to the start?
Then there’s the appropriateness of the content. Contrary to what the 80s would have you believe, the comics run the gamut of ratings. Are you looking for family-friendly? Read “TMNT Adventures”. Something with a little more edge but still fine for 13 year olds? IDW’s relaunch. Way more edge than that? Volume 3 aka the “Urban Legends.”
Finally, and most crucially, there’s the accessibility of these books. Do you find the single issues? Or maybe trades or omnibi? What about digital access?
And I’m sure you’re wondering by now: Elias, what in Splinter’s name are you doing writing another “TMNT” comic reading order? They already exist! In droves! Here’s one from Comic Book Herald. And another from TMNT Entity (more on this one later. For good and for ill.) And yet another from the TMNT Wiki. And, you guessed it, another from reddit’s TMNT Wiki (who knows how long this one will be around.) And one more for good measure from How to Love Comics.
You’re right. This is a silly exercise. For most use-cases, those other reading orders are wonderful. And yet, here I am, writing this column. Why? Because when I decided to educate myself on all things teenage, mutant, ninja, and turtle a couple years ago, I ran into an issue.
Specifically, I ran into a lack of issues.
No matter where I looked, or what list I checked, I could not find a complete (and correct) list that answered the questions above, most specifically where to find the dang things. As a completionist at heart, this was a great disappointment to discover. You’d think that for a franchise as popular as “TMNT,” all the comics would be in perpetual print, collected era by era, series by series. Maybe even in some kind of “complete collection.”
That would be wishful thinking.
A (brief) history
See, “TMNT” has had a varied and strange publishing life. It began as a self-published black and white parody of Frank Miller comics co-written and co-drawn by two guys, Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. Once it blew up, the comic (now multi-media property) became the lynchpin of Mirage Comics, their publishing company, with one-shots and short stories and supplemental series. Soon, those comics were being drawn and written by a cavalcade of talent that sometimes, but not always, included the original two creators. A brief list of notable highlights or consistent creators includes: Michael Dooney, Jim Lawson, Dave Sim, Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, Ryan Brown, and Eric Talbot. The issues remained in B&W in the singles but most got colored and collected as well.
We’ll come back to why these two points are important in a minute.
Eventually the first volume ended, was renumbered, then ended again a short while later. Alongside that was the family-friendly color version based on the cartoon published by Archie comics, a couple short lived spin-offs, and a syndicated newspaper strip, though not from Archie Comics. They, too, ended. Things then moved over to Image comics, where everyone took a turn for the gritted teeth and shock plot swerves and unceremoniously crashed and burned before ever finishing its story.
There’s also a short chapter where Dreamwave publishing got the rights to adapt the 2003 edition of the cartoon. Don’t worry about that one.
At the turn of the millennium, Mirage took the title back in earnest, and launched volume 4, this time without co-creator Eastman (as he sold his stake in the venture to Laird.) Added wrinkle: this is technically volume 3 since it ignores everything that Image did. Eventually, Viacom purchases the whole venture (TMNT, not Mirage) from Laird and while he was allowed to keep publishing volume 4 under Mirage Comics, only three more issues came out after the sale and thus Volume 4 is still, technically, ongoing.
Continued belowThis brings us to present day, where IDW has been publishing their own continuity of stories, complete with spin-offs. They also colored and re-released volume 3 from Image under a new name – Urban Legends – and finally completed the series. And published adaptations of each new cartoon iteration, of course. Gotta keep the synergy machine running.
Editor’s Note: Want to read some interviews with creatives from those eras, including co-creator Kevin Eastman? Check out our 30 Years of TMNT series from the 30th anniversary.
Back to my conundrum
Because of the many companies, many eras, and many disparate titles, there isn’t just one set of trades and no easy chronology within, or across, each iteration. That’s par for the course on “Daredevil” or “Batman” but for an indie title of this prominence, it’s quite the rarity. And then there’re the two added wrinkles that make any complete read-through a real bear of a time.
Remember how I mentioned that in the original run of comics they had a variety of creators working on the book, later to be called “The Guest Era?” And that they collected the black & white stories in both B&W and in color? These factors meant that when IDW put out new trades, they had decisions to make and constraints to adhere to. The solution? Kinda, sorta group issues by creator instead of sequentially and then also by their printing status: original B&W or recolored (be the colors brand new or from the first trades.)
This led to three or four different but similarly named lines existing and a doubling or tripling up of certain issues while skipping others. Additionally, a number of those original issues have never been reprinted or collected at all, notably the Rick Veitch written ones, and while there are B&W and color versions of the Eastman & Laird led issues, we only have the color versions available for most of the rest (as of writing.)
For the vast majority of people, that second part is probably not an issue. Who cares as long as you can read it? It is, however, frustrating for someone like me who wants to have a consistent reading experience and has been burned by colored black & white comics before. It also royally pisses off the preservationist in me since it means those comics, which were conceived of and drawn for black & white, may be lost forever in their original form if they aren’t properly preserved.
The rights issues are a pain but at least they are understandable. Veitch didn’t want to give up ownership when Viacom (now Paramount) decided that buying creators out instead of sharing royalties was the simple solution, thereby changing the deal he had with Mirage; Sim actually owns Cerberus; and any other crossovers are the purview of other publishers/creators. Still, it sucks as a modern-day reader and double sucks for the comprehensive one.
To find the goldilocks of “TMNT” reading orders is a fool’s errand. There never will be one. Something will always have to give. But by the ooze, I’m gonna try my hardest to make one that connects readers to the issues as easily and comprehensively as possible, no matter how you like to read. To be a sign-post pointing the way. And to maybe have a little fun in the sewers of NYC and the streets of Westchester. No spreadsheet wizardry required.
Goongala!
Come back tomorrow for Part 1: The Mirage Years.
