Zine-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle

Zine-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle is a backup story printed in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Amazing Adventures issue #2.

Appearing in Zine-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle[]

Major characters[]

Minor characters[]

Splinter

Main Locations, Vehicles, and Accessories[]

Summary[]

Michelangelo is bored with nothing to do—not even chores. Splinter observes Mikey's boredom and decides to intervene. Noticing that his son has left comic books scattered on the floor of the lair's common area, Splinter suggests Mikey make comic books of his own. Mikey loves the suggestion and quickly gets to work back in his room.

Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo are out patrolling on the rooftops of New York City, when they discover an outdoor music concert. One of the nearby rooftops has a giant novelty can of Ground Chuck Energy Drink set up for the event, so the Turtles stand near it and observe the concert below. Raph comments that it looks like a "gathering of the Irma", but Mikey tells him not to joke about that. The brothers start casually enjoying the concert, and Mikey starts dancing, but he clumsily backs into the giant can, knocking it down and spilling its apparently very real liquid contents onto the event below. With suspicions raised, the Turtles quickly flee the rooftop. After climbing down the building, Leo orders the team home. But they turn an alley corner only to come face-to-face with some of the same people they saw at the concert. But these are not humans—they are The Kraang in human-skinned Kraangdroid suits. And though they really had come to see the concert, they still use this opportunity to start battling the Turtles with laser guns. Donnie jokes that Raph was right about a gathering of Irmas. Mikey notices a nearby rack of thousands of cans of Ground Chuck and improvises a plan to burst many of the cans with his nunchaku, spraying the Kraangdroid suits with carbonated liquid and shorting out their electronics. The immediate threat taken care of, the Turtles return to the Party Wagon, and Leo drives as his brothers eat pizza.

Mikey's brothers are looking over his shoulder at his new comic, Party Dude vol. 1. Leo summons Splinter to come see it, though also insisting that it is fiction. Splinter briefly critiques the comic book Mikey has just made, and to everyone else's surprise he asks his son if he may keep it for himself. Splinter mounts the book at his personal shrine in the dōjō next to his old family photo.

Trivia[]

This story's plot has similarities to My Hero!, a short story published in Tales of the TMNT volume 2 #25 in July 2006. In that story, which takes place when the Mirage turtles are still preteens, Splinter initially discourages Michelangelo from making comics, but his heart is touched after discovering and reading more of Mikey's homemade comic pages.
In Mikey's homemade comic, the music festival is sponsored by "Ground Chuck Energy Drink", referencing the lower tier 1987 cartoon villain, in both name and using his face as a logo. This also doubles as a reference to the real world energy drink brand Red Bull.
The "Zine-age" word play in the title references the slang term "zine" (/ziːn/) derived from the word "magazine" and often used to refer to independently published magazines or comic books such as, say, the very source material of the Turtles themselves.
The "A ninja is you!" screen on Mikey's video game is a parody of the infamous victory screen ("A winner is you") from Pro Wrestling on the NES.