Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may just be the biggest part of my childhood. Those heroes in a half-shell have had a long and storied career, but despite trying several times to break-through into the hearts and minds of newer generations, I'm not sure the turtles have been all that successful.

And maybe because of this, those turtle boys find themselves going back to their roots, with a new comic book series penned by series co-creator Kevin Eastman that seeks to YET AGAIN establish the origins of the TMNT. It is, for the most part, successful.

• THE GOOD

If there's anybody you want to be writing your Turtle story, one of the creators of the characters themselves is who you want. Eastman has a flair for writing the absurdly ludicrous ideas of having domestic turtles mutated into large humanoids and learn ninjutsu in a pulpy/gritty tone that makes the whole thing oddly plausible. This is essentially the re-telling of the origin story once again, but the changes that Eastman makes to the basic formula are filled with delicious nuggets or reference and foreshadowing to all kinds of Turtle lore that fans are going to love.

Keeping with the "new, but old" feel of this issue is the artwork by Dan Duncan. His rough pencils fit right in with the pulpy action, and the darker colors reinforce the feel of the darker story the evinces the feel of the Daredevil-inspired stories that spawned the original Turtle books themselves.

• THE BAD

As much promise as this first issue shows, I get a vibe that perhaps Eastman and co-writer Tom Waltz are trying to straddle the line too much. The reason this book was so readable for me because I was intimately familiar with the source material, and therefore could follow leaps in logic and found the references in the story meaningful. I'm not sure a new reader or (if they exist) someone who had no idea what a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is are going to find this initial offering so inviting. Of course, the changes made by Eastman also threaten to alienate long-time fans of the series, but that remains to be seen. Also, although the turtles themselves look great, as do all the anthropomorphic animal characters, the artwork stumbles a bit on human characters. It's never bad, just the change in style can be a bit jarring.

• THE VERDICT

Only time will tell if this TMNT series gets to live out its full potential. It may be trying to do too many things to find an audience that just doesn't exist. Still, existing turtle fans can feel comfort in knowing that this is classic TMNT with changes that leave the future wide-open for more exciting story-telling. People who don't know about the series already may also enjoy the ludicrous pulp they pick up from this IDW title. There's plenty of turtle power here to recommend this book to the curious.