“Yesterday’s” Comic> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #36

“What did you do with the other issues?”

Why #36? Well, the source that I was using to get the previously free released Mirage issues has dried up. Not knowing which issues were released free and which weren’t I don’t want to go to a…legally questionable scan site for the reviews, as I try to support the official release whenever possible. I don’t know what Nickelodeon, or current license holder IDW, is doing with the other issues. I’ve reviewed the Color Classics reprints, as well as the early IDW run, as part of the weekly comic reviews or Today’s Comic when they came out, so I’m going to review the two Mirage releases in my collection and move to the next company. There’s more but let’s save that for the review and get the credits done.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #36

Mirage Publishing, Inc (August, 1991)

“Souls End” according to the fandom wiki

WRITER/ARTIST: Michael Zulli

CO-LETTERER: Rob Caswell

Okay, I’m doing this one two ways. This was the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I bought back in the day unless you count the colorized reprints from First Publishing. This is also part three of a story that started in issue #31 and for some reason wasn’t continued until #35, the issue before this one. To understand why I stopped getting this comic with the next issue I want to go over the comic as I read it back then, with no prior knowledge of the previous issues. Then I’ll look up what happened in the first two stories of this arc, “Souls Winter” and “Souls Withering…”, and see if that affects my opinion.

The plot as I can tell from this issue alone: The comic starts with a foreword by Rick Veitch and if I read this correctly he’s praising this period, where non-canon stories by guest writers were being made, for allowing writers to toss out the existing lore and do whatever the shell they want. Maybe in a side series, but not in what’s supposed to be the main line. I’m also not a fan of Zulli’s hyper-detailed art. It just doesn’t feel like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic from Mirage before I’ve even started reading. It’s also not to my personal taste, so judge my review of the art as you will.

So, one of the Turtles is injured. I can’t tell which is which. Also, Splinter looks more feline than rat. They have to flee their home for reasons probably explained in the previous issue. One of the other Turtles says a line that makes no sense to me in this franchise, that they are now three and don’t know how to be three, as if they haven’t fought solo or with only two or three of them before. The dialog is weird to my mental ears. Then some bird creature that is maybe something called Animus or Desolation or something flies into the injured Turtles’ body, declaring that he and injured Turtle are in the Turtle’s soul and he must choose between death and life. They run around a bit, the Turtle chooses life, and then suddenly the bird is gone and in the real world the Turtle tells his brothers that he is free.

I have no idea what the shell is going on here whatsoever. That was my reaction to the initial reading of this comic and that holds true today. Between the dialog and the art style this really didn’t feel like a Ninja Turtle comic, and I did know what this series was thanks to the First graphic novel of the space arc with the Triceratons and Fugitoid. I wasn’t comparing it to the cartoon; that was the Archie Comics’ style. I was completely lost, so let me look at the Mirage site and Turtlepedia Fandom wiki and see what’s going on.

Going by the summary for this issue alone, Shredder had attacked their home and that’s why they were leaving. The bird is named Desolation (I didn’t know if that was a name or a self-description), but we still don’t know which Turtle was attacked. According to the Fandom wiki, which might be using the Mirage descriptions, #31 has Shredder launching a psychic attack on Splinter, and the Turtles go into the mindscape or spirit realm or whatever supernatural gobbledigook they were using to help him, but that’s when the Foot surround them. That’s when the injured Turtle gets injured. So we still don’t know which Turtle fell. There’s some bit about a crow finding an artifact that that crow later turns into Desolation, who was sent by Animus after Animus himself turned down Splinter’s request for help…okay, I’m not as confused but I’m still lost.

I don’t know for sure how the fandom receives this story but for me it’s just a spiritual mess of a story and one I was not tempted to get back issues for. The dialog was weird, the art was too much, and I STILL don’t know which Turtle was injured, who Animus is, or why any of this mattered. I guess it’s a good thing this wasn’t canon. Again, some “what if/elseworlds” style side story would have been okay but this was my first exposure to this period of the main comic and I didn’t like it. I wrote it off to see what the next issue would be like. It would be a tonal whiplash like you wouldn’t believe, as I missed an issue and ended up with something out of Cracked Magazine. I’ll explain next time.