[Mblake81]

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When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opens in theaters this weekend, one thing is almost certainly guaranteed: the film will most definitely be thematically and tonally different than the original Mirage Studios comic book series from the early 1980s. That’s because pretty much every iteration of the TMNT has been vastly different from the original source material.

Created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1984, TMNT was never intended to become a global phenomenon. With a print run of just a shade over 3,000 copies, and published in a black and white magazine format, the first issue of the series reads more like a send-up of other, more established comic book characters like Daredevil and the New Mutants. As a result, Eastman and Laird never held back with their series, filling it with gratuitous violence, grotesque imagery and wild and irreverent plot points. Those who first became familiar with the ninja turtles with the rest of the universe in the late 1980s after the launch of the TMNT animated series, will in all likelihood find Eastman and Laird’s comic book characters to be completely unrecognizable. In fact, with the black and white format, the reader can’t even tell which turtle is which unless they were holding a weapon.

Anytime I see someone say Toxic I get visions of Reddit memes and Canadian female hobbits running around with "No Hate in Norrath" signs.