1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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