The world-wide success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is something that cannot be disputed. This property went from being a gritty indie comic aimed at a more mature readership to one of the most successful toy lines and kids television programs in history. Due to its immense success, there were sure to be plenty of rip-offs as everyone wanted a piece of the proverbial pie–and now, TMNT has seemingly reclaimed one of the most blatant copies that arose during the height of the franchise’s success, and TMNT did so in truly epic (and possibly inadvertent) fashion.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was originally a comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and it was decidedly not for kids. In the first issue alone, readers are told that the Turtles are trained assassins who have been working their entire lives to pull off a single assassination for their father, Master Splinter. Splinter had a grudge against a man known as the Shredder, the leader of a rival ninja clan known as the Foot. Splinter told the Turtles to kill Shredder for him, and they did just that–gruesomely. However, that striking debut for the franchise didn’t stop the creators from mutating the series into something much more marketable for kids while also refining the Turtles themselves into more dynamic characters that would be beloved by fans for decades to come–and it worked. With the success of TMNT, a number of other heroic animal/human mutants started popping up in the form of seemingly derivative franchises including Fighter Toads, Biker Mice from Mars, and, of course, Street Sharks.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #37 by Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, and Cory Smith, Master Shredder is meeting with General Krang on board Krang’s ship in the middle of the sea. The two villains are discussing potentially ing forces and using their combined might to take over the Earth. However, Krang thinks Shredder has nothing to offer, and shockingly kills the villain with a single punch. Come to find out, however, that the man Krang killed wasn’t actually Shredder, but an insignificant member of the Foot Clan standing in his place for just that reason. When Shredder revealed himself, he unleashed hell upon Krang and his crew by dispatching a few of his mutant followers: a mutated owl called Koya and a mutated shark named Bludgeon.
This TMNT issue marked the official debut of the mutant shark, Bludgeon, and it was insanely epic in more ways than one. Not only is the character himself a force to be reckoned with, but his mere existence is the perfect reclamation of a genre created entirely by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles itself. If it wasn’t for the success of TMNT, it is likely a series like Street Sharks–the main characters of which Bludgeon is incredibly reminiscent of–wouldn’t have been made at all. This isn’t to say that Street Sharks doesn’t stand on its own as it is an incredibly fun universe with tons of awesome elements beyond being similar to TMNT, but the fact of the matter is TMNT undeniably changed the game for these types of properties and seemingly paved the way for their success.
While the existence of a man-shark mutant within Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles canon doesn’t automatically make the character a callback to one of the more popular TMNT imitations in recent memory, it would be incredibly satisfying if it was. The idea of animal/human hybrids in a small group who fight against the forces of evil essentially began with TMNT, and Street Sharks carried that torch towards its own realm of success until the popularity of that series flickered out into oblivion–and its remnants have seemingly been reclaimed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
