In a weirdly roundabout way, though never mentioned by the news, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are arguably as easy to identify by onlookers and every men as Batman or Superman are. The cultural tour-de-force of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles many installments persist in every generation since the 80’s. Some people might have grown up with the original comics (rare as that is) but more likely one of the myriad animated series they’ve been featured in.

Originally, Eastman and Lairds Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as the original series is often called – was a stark parody of Frank Miller era Daredevil featuring a group of violent adolescent mutant turtles. That series got weird, and that weirdness is the end result of almost every take on the characters.

In the original Eastman and Laird universe, April O’ Neil came out of a television set, Casey Jones was more of a psychopath and The Shredder died in the first handful of issues. That’s just the tip of the Teenage Mutant iceberg, though.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures is the sort of thing that gets called Wonderfully Weird by an internet pop culture writer like me twenty years after the run has ended, and ten years after anyone has thought about it. While it starts off as a comic distillation of the animated series at the time, it’s easy to imagine someone at Archie comics standing up during a board meeting, flipping a table, and screaming at the top of their lungs something along the lines of “Well now we do it THIS way.”

Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles Adventures mostly sticks out in my mind for having some pretty weird art for a kid to just awkwardly stumble into. My impression as a tyke was mostly of some Ninja Animals from the cartoon series, and this is a series that gets dark. Maybe as dark as the original comic books themselves.

Giving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventures to a kid is probably an easy way to introduce them to depression at an early enough age. Allies die, and not always in the fun and friendly off panel way. Turtles get married, and ultimately it was too much even for Archie Comics.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures basically ended up as one of many footnotes in the turtles history. Fondly remembered by enough teenagers-turned-adults that the final storyline eventually got wrapped up at the end of the nineties.

Fondly remembered enough to get the official DEEP-HELL seal of approval: GIVE YOUR KIDS THIS COMIC AND MAKE THEM SAD ABOUT CARTOON ANIMALS.