Raise Some Shell: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Pop Classics #1 - Softcover

Richard Rosenbaum

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1770411798 ISBN 13: 9781770411791

Publisher: ECW Press, 2014

Synopsis

Raise Some Shell critically and cleverly examines the origins, evolution and impact of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. It starts with the beginning as a self-published black-and-white comic book in 1984, through its transformation into a worldwide phenomenon by the mid-'90s and beyond. With the the voice of a true lifelong Turtles fan, Rosenbaum argues that the Turtles' continuing success isn't mere nostalgia, but rather the result of characters, and a franchise, that mutated in a way in which they survived and thrived in a post-modern world.

About this title

About the Authors

Richard Rosenbaum is a fiction editor at Broken Pencil (Canada’s magazine of the underground arts and independent culture) and a regular contributor to OverThinkingIt.com. He received his Master’s degree in communication and culture from Ryerson University, and this is what he’s doing with it. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Richard Rosenbaum is a fiction editor at Broken Pencil (Canada’s magazine of the underground arts and independent culture) and a regular contributor to overthinkingit.com. He received his Master’s degree in communication and culture from Ryerson University, and this is what he’s doing with it. He lives in Toronto, Ontario. His favourite Turtle is Donatello.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Raise Some Shell.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

By Richard Rosenbaum

ECW PRESS

Copyright © 2014 Richard Rosenbaum
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-77041-179-1

CHAPTER 1

ORIGINS AND EVOLUTIONS

The early 1980s saw a radical transformation in the medium of comics. The mainstream was growing darker: writer and artist Frank Miller was drawing Marvel Comics toward the shadows with his run on Daredevil (May 1979–February 1983) — blind lawyer by day and superpowered crimefighter by night. Particularly with his creation of the ninja assassin Elektra and his greater focus on issues of corruption, drugs, and organized crime, Miller was at the forefront of the wave of "gritty" titles that surged in popularity over the next decade. At the same time, he published his groundbreaking miniseries Ronin (1983–1984), in which an ancient Japanese warrior is reborn in a futuristic New York City and attempts to bring a destructive gang war to an end. Ronin heralded a deepening interest in Japanese culture and tradition within American art — actually influenced by the art coming out of Japan itself. Ronin's largest debt was to the manga series Lone Wolf and Cub, and Miller later created original covers for the series when it was eventually published in North America.

Meanwhile, Miller's colleague at Marvel Chris Claremont was carrying the other side of the banner for the avant-garde of mainstream superhero comics. In 1975, he was given writing duties for a second-tier title called X-Men and was well on his way to turning it into the bestselling comic book of all time. X-Men (and later The New Mutants) told stories of a group of superpowered humans born into a world that hated and feared them, who nevertheless fought to protect that world from others born with similar gifts and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. The depth of Claremont's characterization combined with his strong understanding of how to deploy symbolism and social metaphors struck a chord with readers, and X-Men became the model of what a successful comic looked like for the next two decades.

At the time, Daredevil, Ronin, and X-Men were the domain of comics' most brightly shining stars. But in the medium's darker corners lurked a different sort of animal. Specialty comic book stores emerged in the early 1970s (culminating in the formation of Diamond Comic Distributors, which, by the late '90s, had practically monopolized the direct market for comics), creating a new space for family-unfriendly fare, and artists around the world used this channel to find an audience for more serious work in a form that was too often dismissed as kids' stuff. The most notable of these new underground comics was Cerebus the Aardvark, created, written, and drawn by cartoonist Dave Sim from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Cerebus started out as a straight-ahead parody, a comedic mash-up of Marvel's Howard the Duck and Conan the Barbarian featuring an anthropomorphic aardvark mercenary named Cerebus who adventured through a magical and very anachronistic continent called Estarcion, seeking fortune and ... well, pretty much just fortune. Cerebus proved to be a success against all odds, and Sim became a leading figure in the creator-owned comics movement. Cerebus ran for 300 self-published issues (between 1977 and 2004, which Sim convincingly describes as the longest continuous work of narrative in recorded human history); it wandered far from its roots and turned into a deep and controversial meditation on contemporary issues such as politics, religion, and gender —

Edition details

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1770411798
• ISBN 13: 9781770411791
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216