BW Media Spotlight

Admittedly that’s out of personal bias. It’s more accurate to say that the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is my favorite version. I’m only now getting familiar with the comics thanks to the “Yesterday’s” Comic reviews but this is probably the most faithful version in tone and characters. The live-action movie may have used a more accurate origin and Casey but was still filled with the changes from the show, like April O’Neil being a reporter instead of a scientist. However, with limited exposure to the Mirage comics at this point what really drew me to this show was that it was less about the comedy and more about the action. CBS may have adjusted the original cartoon back to what we saw in the original miniseries, with less emphasis on fourth-wall breaks having just the right level of camp to take it seriously while still feeling like the same show, but they overcorrected during the “red sky” years.

This series made me feel like I was watching a bunch of ninja crimefighters. It had some great uses of science fiction, as well as plots and sometimes full stories lifted from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s comics. This even included the Donatello special that was a tribute to Jack Kirby. I’m not the guy who champions something just because it’s darker. Darker doesn’t make it better, but it was a benefit to this show. It also introduced more superheroes than just Bug-Man, who looks like the Symbion patent zero, including Silver Sentry, the RIGHT way to do “black Superman”, and “Nobody”, a superhero with ties to Casey Jones, who gets to be more a part of the story than the occasional Dirty Harry impersonator of the original show. I could go on about this show for quite a while, but I don’t have time for that so I’m taking the easy way out.

Before discussing the intros from the Fox Box period I present to you the following retrospective by ERod, the Blockbuster Buster, into the history of the show, followed by my own thoughts on the shows. Enjoy.

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