Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird, TMNT Collected Book Vol. 1

If you grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s watching Saturday morning cartoons, you are probably in nerd heaven right now. That is, of course, assuming that you are like me and are still obsessing about those cartoons many years later. Regardless, mainstays of those Saturday mornings such as G.I. Joe and Transformers have finally made their way to the big screen. And we can only hope for a redo of the live action He-Man “film” sans Dolph Lundgren. Fingers crossed!

But there were also the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who are still alive and well in the form of comics, toys, TV shows and movies 25 years later. That’s right – 25 years later. It has been a quarter of a century since Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird released the first issue of their creation at a comic convention in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and launched one of the biggest marketing juggernauts of all time.

To celebrate, Mirage Publishing has released the TMNT Collected Book Vol. 1. The title is a bit of a mouthful but the collection is amazing. It contains the first eleven issues plus five one-shots featuring each of the four turtles and all in their original black n’ white glory.

When I finally had a chance to sit down and read this behemoth of a collection, I was amazed that unlike so many of the things I loved in my youth the original stories still stand up. I remember them being awesome and they still are. They are fun when they need to be, dark when they need to be and possibly even grittier than I remember. These stories are nothing like what Archie Comics turned the Turtles into.

For someone who is looking for a nostalgic jolt or someone who enjoys the Turtles in their current incarnations, this collection serves as an excellent reminder of what propelled the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to pop culture stardom a quarter century ago.