TMNT

As is usually the case, last weekend's San Diego Comic-Con involved a ton of announcements, but there's one really cool new project in the works that might've slipped under your radar: A "big box" Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles board game set for release in early 2016 featuring art by TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman, and a design by Kevin Wilson.

You know how every now and then, a comic book company will advertise a new series by saying something like "Because YOU demanded it," but it only delivers on that promise about half the time? Well, this weekend at Comic-Con International in San Diego, IDW and DC announced a book that I have been demanding since about 1987: Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a six issue team-up series from writer James Tynion IV and artist Freddie E. Williams II that promises "wall-to-wall ninja action" in Gotham City.

If you didn’t like Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, just know that it could’ve been a lot worse. An early draft of the script turned the Turtles into aliens from another dimension and Shredder was turned into Colonel Schroeder, a secret alien who can grow blades. That’s just one of the facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which gets totally tubular with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Here at ComicsAlliance, we've gone to bat pretty hard for IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, but the ongoing story in the comics isn't their only avenue for telling stories of mutant mayhem. For almost two years, TMNT New Animated Adventures has been on the shelves, tying into the cartoon that's currently running on Nickelodeon, telling kid friendly stories that are frequently pretty weird. And now, it looks like they're going to get weirder. This August, IDW is relaunching the cartoon tie-in as TMNT Amazing Adventures, and for the first issue of the new book, they've got a variant cover by Samurai Jack's Andy Suriano and a backup story by James Kochalka - and I never knew how badly I wanted to see what that guy has to say about Michelangelo until now.

I think we can all agree that the best comics are cheap comics, which is why I always keep an eye on Comixology's sales page to see if there are any good deals to be had. This week, there's a massive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sale, including all ten volumes of IDW's current TMNT series, plus the miniseries collections that go with it. It's a lot of comics, and that presents a problem of its own: With so much out there to get, which ones should you pick up? This time, the answer's simple: You should get all of it. Seriously. It's that good.

I've been completely in the tank for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics ever since I caught up, but to be honest, I've had a much harder time getting into the animated series that's running on Nickelodeon. I've liked pretty much everything I've seen from it --- especially that one episode where they start LARPing their way through the sewers in full-on wizard costumes --- but since there actually is a pretty complex continuity on the show and I haven't found a real streaming option to start from the beginning, I haven't tried. When Nick announced that they were putting the hour-long "Fight From New York" episode online, though, I decided that I'd do my best to give it a shot. Sadly, it's one of those login-with-your-Cable-Company dealies, but if you can, I'd suggest giving it a watch, because it is 100% bananas. I mean, where else are you going to see Corey Feldman get in a fistfight with Gilbert Gottfried?

The world of pro wrestling can be a beautiful thing. For proof, you need look no further than the recent developments in lucha libre, in which there are not one, not two, but three different groups of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-themed factions that have recently begun warring with each other. I can only assume this conflict was inevitable, but it came to a head when AULL's Tortiguillos Karatekas were taking on the IWRG's Tortugas Ninja in a four-on-four tag team match that was interrupted when a third faction, Las Tortugas Mutantes, ran in and started attacking everyone.

The thing about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that once you have, you know, teenage mutant ninja turtles, there's no real reason to not just go all out and start making mutants out of everything. This, at least, is the premise of Mutanimals, a team of animal-human hybrids made with the same mutagen that gave us Leo, Mikey, Donnie and Raph, just without the guidance of Splinter --- and listen, I'm as surprised as you are that that sentence actually makes perfect sense. The current version of the Mutanimals were gathered together by Old Hob, the gun-toting one-eyed cat seen above, to form an army to fight Shredder and the Foot Clan, and next week, they're taking the spotlight in their own limited series from Paul Allor and Andy Kuhn, and it all starts with Pigeon Pete having a pretty terrible day.

IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic is exactly my jam. I wrote about it a few months back when I finally dived into the series, and the incredible mix of sci-fi, the supernatural, romance and, of course, teenage mutant ninja action has made it one of those comics where I almost don't want to keep reading because I know I'm going to run out and have to wait around until there's more. This week, though, I finally got around to digging into City Fall, the big event that the series was building to since it started. I'd been saving that one for when I had some time to go through it, and I wasn't surprised at all to find out that it's great, full of well-crafted character-driven action that brought together everything that happened in the series up to that point. What did surprise me, though, is that I came away from it having actual feelings about Rocksteady and Bebop for the first time ever. Seriously.

Should you ever need a reminder that the 1990s were a strange, strange time, look no further than We Wish You a Turtle Christmas. Released in 1994 at the height of that hazy, pre-Pokemon era when when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise reigned as the most popular thing in the entire world, Turtle Christmas was a 25-minute video in which the Turtles sang Christmas songs about themselves. If that sounds weird, believe me that it's actually even weirder. So today, deck the sewer walls and wash that pizza down with eggnog as we take a look back at this holiday classic, and the great many questions it raises just by its very existence.