TMNT For Dummies - Part 1: Forever Red

After reading countless blogs and websites outside of the normal scope of TMNT related ones, it has dawned on me that on the whole, the Murakami Wolf-Swenson (MWS) animated series and the three movies produced during its run, are the only incarnations of the Turtles most people are familiar with. Despite going through multiple incarnations in the past 25 years, and with the advent of this magical thing called the "internet", people by and large seem to be woefully unaware of some of the finer points of the Turtles' rich history.

First off, I think it's kind of despicable that people are still asking the same stupid question about why a Turtle that isn't Raphael has (or why all four Turtles have) red bandannas. This should be a moot point by now. The Turtles have had red headbands since the beginning, and it was only when the MWS series started in '87 that they were seen wearing ones of different colors. Nearly every comic published by Mirage has had them wearing red, and that totals up to at least over 500 comics, I'm sure. You would think that these individuals would have seen at least one of these comics. For cryin' out loud, they all wore red on the cover of the first TMNT home console game, which every Turtles fan born before this millennium has to have seen or played (in fact, this cover is even cribbed from a cover of the Mirage comics).



Seriously, does that image not ring a bell with everybody and their mothers? Even if by some magically bizarre event someone who likes TMNT has not seen this before, the answer is literally at one's fingertips. Typing the obvious into one's internet browser, http://www.ninjaturtles.com , and maybe making a few stray clicks here and there will undoubtedly yield red bandanna wearing Turtles and/or an explanation for said phenomenon. Or there's this website called "Google" where you can find almost anything. It's an amazing tool that I use all the time. Hell, I'll get y'all started! http://lmgtfy.com/?q=red+bandanna+tmnt

Lookit that! Second result! Or if you want to actually ASK Google:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+do+the+ninja+turtles+have+red+bandannas%3F

Second result there too! Amazing! In fact, this result is on WikiAnswers, which is a good place to ask this kind of stuff to begin with!

Maybe part of the reason I'm steamed is because despite this being the "digital age" where information is so easily accessible, people are still too lazy to look anything up. They spend 16 hours a day playing World of Warcraft or surfing porn, but tl;dr through a paragraph of three sentences in length. Or maybe it's because of ding-a-lings like this:

Me: Hope I did Leo justice. Oh, and if you have to ask why he's wearing red, you automatically fail.
Nitwit: You mean Raphael right? Leonarod [sic] is the one with the blue bandanna.

Maybe this dude tl;dr'd my modest length descriptor of the image of Leonardo that I was referring to (which is honestly shorter than most classified ads). While he didn't out-and-out ask why he's wearing red (thus technically has slipped through a loophole in this), he still automatically fails for A) not reading what I had written, and B) not doing the research.

Let me make this loud, and let me make this clear.

All four members of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wear red bandannas in the original Mirage Comics in which all other media is loosely based on. It has been this way since May of 1984.

Anyway, it's wayyyy later than I wanted to stay up, so I'm going to "To be Continued" this mutha 'ucka and go to bed. Peace.

EDIT: Okay, so this didn't click until the following day, since I was really flippin' tired when finishing this off, but the Turtles didn't actually appear on a cover in red until issue 5, in October of '85. I'm kind of certain they had to have appeared wearing red in some capacity prior to that, but I've not any evidence at this second. W'ever... they still have been wearing red for over two decades and ostensibly longer than most people who are unaware of the Turtles' doing of such have been alive.