Christopher Spencer

Professor Hobbs

Com 410

27 September 2012

Informal paper # 3

For my present meets the past paper I am going to compare the comic Teenage Mutant

Ninja Turtles that came out in 1984 to the new television show the is airing September 29.

Teenage mutant ninja turtles aka TMNT was created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird the

concept behind TMNT was to combine slow cold reptiles with Japanese martial artists and for it

to be a team of fours brother each with different ninja weapons. Leonardo the leader of the group

used two katana’s as his weapon and the oldest of the four turtles, Michelangelo the easy going

one wielded a pair of nunchaku, Donatello was the scientist and inventor of the group and his

weapon of choice is the bo staff, and last Raphael the bad boy of the group uses a pair of sai’s.

With the story plot being the four brothers being the good guys fighting against the evil shredder

who is a evil ninja trying to take over the world.

Then the new TMNT coming out tomorrow has the same basic elements as the original

except for a few color and design differences. That included them having their original weapons

plus a secondary one now for everyone except Raphael who still only has his pair of sai’s. Also

with each color having a mask with a certain color to tell the different between the characters:

Leonardo (blue), Michelangelo (orange), Donatello (purple) and Raphael (red). In the original

they all had red masks and looked the same the only way you could tell the difference was by the

weapon they were holding or using. The thing that amazed me the most is that when I did

research on the original TMNT was on how dark of a comic it was compared to the new one

getting launched on nickelodeon. The old one was in black and white which added to the dark

fell to its plus in this version of it characters would die or get killed and they would show it. As

with the new version they don’t show any blood or really kill off any of the characters and if they

do they are never dead for too long.

In the original comic the theme was most likely met for older children ages 12 to 15 and

into the teenage years since it was more real tones like having to make tough choices and that

there is not always going to be a happy ending and to be happy with what you have in life

because you never know when it can be taken away. With the new series most of the messages

focus on working together as a team and using social skills. One thing that they focus is on was

how the four brother have different personality and how sometime they fight but the end of the

day they solve their problem and end up working as a team. This teaches children that you can

get along with anyone and how to work out situations by talking to people and looking at their

point of view and not just your own.

Overview the comic and the show are similar in many ways but some of the big

differences are that for one the newer one is more colorful than the comic and more kid friendly

and focus on issues the children may face in their everyday life and how to handle situations on

their own.

Work cited

Teenage mutant ninja turtles (1987 tv series). (2012, 08 Aug). Retrieved from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_(1987_TV_series)

Teenage mutant ninja turtles. (2012, 10 Sept). Retrieved from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles