Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Q: Childhood nostalgia aside who is, once and for all, the best Turtle from TMNT? -- @drawesome86 A: The thing about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that, more than almost any other team in comics, they're less of a group and more of a single unit. As much as the four Turtles might have individual personalities and quirks --- and, y'know, favorite colors that make them nice and toyetic --- it's hard to imagine ever really separating them out into four distinct characters that don't have an equal place within that unit. So on one level, asking to pick out the best one is like handing me a slice of pizza and asking if I prefer the cheese, the sauce, the crust or the toppings. It's all one delicious thing. But on another level, I really like ranking things, so I think we can probably get you an answer. And honestly, I'm pretty sure what you're actually asking here is "Who's better: Michelangelo or Raphael?" because we all know it ain't gonna be Leo or Donnie.

When you get right down to it, this was the sort of thing that pretty much had to happen. I mean, if you're going to take advantage of having a premise like a Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover --- and I think the past few months have shown us that James Tynion IV and Freddie E. Williams II are definitely up for the challenge --- then eventually, you're going to want to make some new mutants and have them fight Batman. It's the most logical, toyetic, ridiculous and amazing thing you possibly could do, and as the series hit its final issue this week, that's exactly what they did. So in case you missed it, well, Mr. Freeze is a polar bear now, and it's kind of my favorite thing.

Earlier this year we got a tease of Prime 1 Studio's plans for the 1990 cinematic classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but there had been little movement on the statues since then. The good news is, the collection of everyone's favorite amphibious heroes has a release date. The bad news is, it's going to cost you as much as 287 large, three-topping pizzas from Domino's. That's a lotta cheese.

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the great inexplicable pop phenomenons of our time, a creation that began as a one-note joke between friends, and went on to conquer the world. It's a franchise that's proven to be endlessly adaptable, appearing in endless variations in numerous media, with an appeal that spans generations and a fanbase that continues to expand with each passing year.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a weird-looking crowd, which makes a lot of sense when you consider that they're teenagers, mutants, ninjas and turtles, all of which are traditionally pretty weird-looking groups. They've got the weird shaped heads, the blocky three-fingered hands, and then there's the part where they'er wearing clothes, but only belts, elbowpads and kneepads. But what if --- and bear with me here because it's a pretty radical idea --- they looked a little weirder?

Ever since it first launched, IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series has been too big for a single ongoing title. In what has to be one of the most impressive editorial feats of the past few years, the massive story that was being told over the course of the series was spread throughout multiple titles, weaving through the main title and then splitting off to books like the one-shot Micro-Series or minis like Casey and April - and as astounding as it was that it all held together, I'll admit that as a reader, it was a little bit of a pain to flip back and forth through at least two collections while trying to figure out a reading order. It seems like they're going ahead and putting everything into one official second ongoing series: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universe, which kicks off in August with an issue that features Kevin Eastman and Bill Sienkiewicz teaming up for a brand-new backup story.

If you ever walked through the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles section of a toy store -- or if, just throwing this out there, you happened to be a kid in the late '80s who made sure to make a friend of dubious quality because he had all the action figures and video games you could ever want to play with -- then you probably already know that there's no shortage of mutants in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe. Heck, there's even a few turtles in there diluting the brand! But even so, the ancient art of ninjitsu demands that the TMNT themselves remain hidden in the shadows, which is why it might be a problem when a newspaper starts reporting that there are giant mutant turtles out there fighting the Foot Clan - especially since they're not talking about the TMNT. That's what's happening in TMNT: Animated Adventures #9, and you can check out a preview below!

If there's one thing that drives Bebop and Rocksteady more than anything else, it's that they are massive, unstoppable screwups. Those dudes can't even go into a building without bringing the whole thing down to its foundation and kicking off a gang war, so just imagine how much trouble they could get into if they had access to, say, the entire time stream. This June, that's exactly what's happening. Over at the AV Club, IDW has announced Bebop & Rocksteady Destroy Everything, in which the eternal misfits of the TMNT franchise find themselves bouncing around through time itself courtesy of writers Dustin Weaver and Ben Bates, with a cast of artists that includes Nick Pitarra, Sophie Campbell, Giannis Milonogiannis, and Ryan Browne. And if that wasn't enough, they're bringing a few old friends along for the ride, too!

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are finally getting the 3D action game they deserve, and they couldn't have asked for better company. Platinum Games has a strong catalog of excellent action games, with a few not-so-great ones sprinkled in, to be fair. Still, even in those that don't quite qualify as memorable for the right reasons, the actual action was almost always still remarkable. After the success of Transformers Devastation, Platinum again turned its eye to another '80s cartoon, albeit this time with a benefit of a modern comic backing it all up. Based in the IDW universe of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Platinum's game will let players take on the roles of all four Turtles in co-op brawler that looks to add another notch in the developer's "Good" column. Where the first trailer was a bit of a broad overview of what to expect from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, this latest video (exclusively revealed on IGN) gives us a better look at the bosses from the Foot Clan and Dimension X that will put our heroes to the test.

One cool thing that happens when you have a property that's been around for a while is that you get all these different versions of the same characters, which almost inevitably leads to a team-up. It's something that happens in comics all the time, with superheroes from different Earths teaming up to battle a threat that's too big for the heroes of any single dimension to handle. It's a little more rare on television, but on Sunday, March 27, it's going to happen to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when Nickelodeon's current version of the team joins up with their counterparts from the original 1987 TMNT cartoon in a cross-time team-up called, appropriately enough, "Trans-Dimensional Turtles." Check out the clip above!