Part 3: Top NECA TMNT Archie Comic Book Figures That We Need ASAP!
- Mr. Geek-E
- Jul 19
- 35 min read
“We’re looking for a few good Archie Comics mutants!”
Howdy folks and welcome to SpeekyGeeky, as always, I am your host Mr.Geek-E!
Well, as seems to be the trend with this series, this part 3 took a tad bit longer than expected, but after waaay too long, we're back. Bigger and better than before? Sure...why not, but those are YOUR words and we're still only into the first sentence of this video, so maybe let's wait to see if we pass that anxiety inducing high bar until at least after our first character selection, yeah?
So it's been a minute and IN that minute we've managed to get an overwhelmingly dense flurry of furry and cold-blooded mutants alike. Since episode 2, we've seen the release of Archie's Slash, Mondo Gecko, Cryin Hound, Stump Wrestling Leatherhead, BellyBomb (2 versions EVEN), Shredder Krang, all four of the Stump wrestling Turtles, Wrestling Ace Duck, and teases of Archie April, 5th Turtle April, El Mysterio, and Wingnut and Screwloose (who will help us ALLLLMOST complete the Archie version of the Mutanimals)...which we aren't counting as officially complete until we also get a classic looking Leatherhead (and as we noted in our previous episode, we'll also be requiring his human Jess Harley appearance as well), Candy Fine and Ninjara...who YES, we know that last one wasn't TECHNICALLY part of the original team, but HAD the unfortunately never produced Fred Wolf Mutanimals cartoon series ACTUALLY come to fruition, the series bible unwaveringly showed that Ninjara WOULD have been an official and CORE member of that team! So in our eyes, that's grounds for a bit more than partial credit.
...but GEEK-E...following THAT logic, aren't you forgetting a few other KEY members of the team like Cudly, Deinotaur, Soakorr, and Skate? No siree bob, as you might be able to tell from our last episode with the focus on Cudley the Cowlick (which can be found right here btw), these little known but equally exciting expanded roster characters are ABSOLUTELY on our radar, and even though these are all worth digging further into, we currently have our eyes set firmly on the Ninjara and Cudley prize...but now that we say that out LOUD...we entirely realize that we can't even fool OURSELVES into thinking we won't be covering these characters sooner than later. Because DANGIT we really want to tell you all about how cool they would have been, not to mention the roster from the also cancelled "The Selected" Mutanimals Spin-off series. Calm down Geek-E, settle...settle, you'll get there, say it with me, next episode, next episode...now take a few deep breaths.
We know we brought this up in the previous episode, but it's worth repeating, NECA continues to deliver with flying added colors with the inclusion of fan-favorite Ken Mitchroney providing sweet sweet original art on the packaging of each and every new figure, giving fans not JUST an outstandingly beautiful figure that looks like it just jumped off of the page and into our hands, but also all new nostalgic looking art to drool over as fans pull the lovely character options from their temporary confines.
Reinforcing yet again why it is such an incredible thing to have a company that truly cares about the characters, the mythos, and the fandom firmly at the wheel, able to dish out the fantastic selection that fans have been clamoring about getting for decades, and it's a beautiful and astoundingly meaningful thing to behold!
Also, just a helpful reminder to folks who aren't all caught up on their Archie TMNT Adventures comics, last year it was revealed that IDW will finally be putting out their first Archie Compendium collecting enormous swathes of the series for fans who haven't been able to obtain these sought after issues yet. The first volume of which should be shipping around the time of this very episode, for convenience, we'll again provide the link to folks in the episode's description.
With SDCC once again coming right around the corner (and frankly we'll probably have come and gone by the time the video of his premieres), we're quite certain we'll be treated to even more of the Archie line's incredible roster in the coming months as well.
We have a pretty extensive list of favorites from this iteration that we have always HOPED would someday see plastic in the Turtle ranks on our shelves and display cases, and we've got a sneaking suspicion YOU might have a few of your own as well. There are SOOOO many incredible options that to do them justice, we'll need to break them down through a barrage of fun and dorky videos, and, well whadda ya' KNOW? ONE of which you happen to be settled in to enjoy riiiight this very second! Well, how's THAT for immediate gratification!
So join us now, for PART 3 of SpeekyGeeky's ongoing Deep Dive "Top NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Archie Comics Toys We'd Like to See":
4. MONSTEREX
It's important to think of The TMNT Adventures comics and the Specials as two distinctively different yet still epically bodacious mutated animals.
SURE, the Adventures series proper may have focused on some stand alone issues where they addressed expanded topics and characters outside the scope of the story progression, but the Specials were where some of their most outlandish concepts and off the wall characters were introduced... ranging from Pirate Dogs and Pigs, to Mind-manipulating goats, to one of our all time favorite "what the HUH?" type characters in the form of MONSTEREX!
When we were younger, chances are we each had a favorite classic movie monster that spoke to us. For some it might have been Dracula with his ability to mesmerize his prey, turn into a bat, and spout the iconic phrase "I vant to suck your blood", for others the Werewolf might have spoken to them with his ability to transform from regular ol' human to that of Berserker Barrage Wolverine-like carniverous beast...you had a fascination with the aquatic? No worries you wee little nerd you, for that you simply had to look no further than the terror from the depths that WAS the creature of the Black Lagoon, and of course Frankenstein's Monster who was our brawler card in the bunch, our go-to for when we needed to go all "Franky SMASH!" But inevitably while we were choosing our favorites and weighing each of their merits, there was always that friend that would loudly proclaim "I pick ALL of them!" YUP, we ALL knew THAT kid...the kid that made us go "We...we can DO that? That was an option all along?" The kid we WANTED to be mad at, but COULDN'T because secretly we were ALL thinking the same thing and were only upset because we didn't think to say it first.
And THAT is Monsterex in a nutshell, he is the embodiment of all our favorite classic Monsters all wrapped up into ONE awesome villain. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes legitimately deserving of the villainous title, but ultimately severely underused within the fuller scope of the world of TMNT despite how freaking RAD he was.
One quick aside before we leap headfirst into his origin, if you are digging thids video and want to see more of our content as it premieres, don't forget to give this video a quick "LIKE" and also be sure to hit that subscribe button to ensure you see more of the content you enjoy and to help others see it as well. All our content is absolutely FREE to viewers and your interacting and subscribing to our channel helps push our content to other folks who may appreciate what we do as well...ALSO, we dive into Monsterex a little further in our Universal Monsters TMNT deep dive riiiight here, so if you are enjoying hearing about this character and want to hear even MORE about this character and other horror-based characters, be sure to check out THAT video as well!
Where were we again? Ohhhh right, just who exactly IS Monsterex?
Making their triumphant debut in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Special issue 3 Monsterex came hurdling out the gates and directly into our impressionable hearts in a tale that saw the mashed up mutant defeat the Turtles not ONCE but TWICE, defeated only by the grace of the sun...which happens to be Monstex's, much like Dracula and the WereWolf's Achilles' heel.
The story itself was a bit of that Deux Ex Machina charm we came to know and love from those stories of the 80s from start to finish, from Monsterex's "don't think too hard about it" origin of Krang zapping the Turtles TV with Mutagen as they happen to be watching a monster marathon to well...that same monster essentially on the verge of fully defeating the Turtles if not for the break of daylight. As always the story left us both with WAYYYY too many follow-up questions as we re-read it as an adult, and also makes us realize how formidable this baddie was and still COULD be to the Turtles...if they could somehow find a way to get around the hiccup that is that pesky SUN!
In terms of the "how dang quick do we need this character in our collection" category, Monsterex joins the ranks of characters like ManMoth in that he made a big enough splash with fans of the series to warrant getting a repeat appearance later on in the series..where he once again nearly defeats the Turtles, this time at an amusement park...and ONCE again is defeated by his arch-nemesis, old man Sunshine!
Ok...so now's the time on shprockets when SpeekyGeeky pulls a cheat card and uses one character's spotlight to highlight another equally important character. Stay with us here though because this particular character is still VERRRY much a logical pairing to Monsterex as he A) he was ALSO introduced within the same origin issue of the character and B) He played a significant role in leading to the Turtles ability to eventually defeat the living embodiment of the Monster Mash known as Monsterex...and ALSO...you're TOTALLY singing the rest of that song now aren't you? How do we know? Because we MAYYYY have been doing the exact same thing all throughout this portion of the episode...it being a (ahem) GRAVEYARD SMASH and all.
"But Geek-E, weren't you going somewhere with this before your ADHD entirely took the wheel?" Why YES, we were going somewhere indeed astute viewer who is always so wonderful at keeping us on track! And that place we were going, was to the character BOOKWURM! Ohhh ok...coolcoolcool...and we can tell YOU are excited by this character Geek-E...but like...wanna elaborate? Oh you better believe we'll elaborate...we thought the exposition was cluing folks into that, but COME ON, you think we're gonna just dangle the (cough cough) WURM on the hook without digging in further at THIS point? We're talking our special interest territory here, so yeah, buckle up buckeroo, we're about to go full on EARLY BIRD mode.
As we mentioned a moment ago, BOOKWURM is a mutant worm introduced within the 3rd special of the TMNT Adventures series as a sage historian ally to the Turtles who happened to be a good friend of Splinter's that WHOOPSIES, conveniently forgot to bring up he had in his back pocket as a potential resource BEFORE the threat of Monsterex came lumbering directly at the Turtles door (Door? Is it technically a door to the lair? Entrance? NOPE, that doesn't have the gravitas that DOOR does here, we're sticking with DOOR).
WHY didn't Splinter ever bring up that another wise mutant existed deep within the sewers which the Turtles could have formed bonds with or derived knowledge from BEFORE this moment, you might ask? SHHH, importantly let's not forget that this was a kids book, so enough with all the questions that an adult might ask which would make all the convenient plot points suddenly muddy as all SHELL, okie dokie? For now let's just sit back and enjoy the fact that "HEY, there's an awesome looking new mutant suddenly in the mix and.... OOOOOH SHINY!"
So obviously, ADULT us has a TON of questions we'll likely never have answers to with this character, surrounding how he and Splinter came to know one another (Splinter, when asked this EXACT question, in classic breaking the 4th wall style, playfully, but frustratingly called this out, simply dismissing this plothole with the parrable "Even an Eagle cannot circle the globe in one flight, for now heed the teachings, rather than question the teacher"...which...like...I mean...come ON...that's a frustrating answer, right? It's like finding a stranger in your basement who your dad seems to know and you rightfully ask "who the heck is this rando in our basement" and your dad responds with "ask not WHO he is, simply listen to the wisdom he has to impart to you"...if I'm a kid OR an adult, SORRY, but that's not a good enough answer...there is MORE to this than you are letting on and the fact that you are asking us NOT to ask those questions is needlessly suspect as heck, ESPECIALLY if it wasn't intended to be).
But there are also some other important immediate questions like, are there even MORE mutants Splinter knows about that he has kept a secret from the Turtles simply because the right plot point didn't require him to DIVULGE to them that he knows about said mutants? And, importantly, what was this BookWurm dude's actual ORIGIN?!
But here is what we DO know about the character...1) He was a convenient wealth of information that was a gateway to explaining the usefulness and meaningfulness of being well read as he learned much of Monsterex's weaknesses from having read all their respective classic novels 2) He was incredibly cool looking and 3) We feel like there is a lot more to this character we as readers only got to scratch the surface with in terms of his capabilities...like, this dude felt as if he had hints of Dr. Strange where the books started to magically float to the pages he was discussing...HOW??? He's a mutant Worm, but that doesn't mean he automatically was bestowed with magical MAKE-THINGS-FLOAT telekenetic-like powers...that is a LEARNED and HONED skill...and I'm here for ALL of it even if we don't quite know HOW he is able to accomplish these "beyond your typical mutant"-like feats, and 4) He had an incredible aesthetic and yet somehow, even after ALL these years, NEVER had a figure...soooo...what we're saying is...this feels like a very logical opportunity for a two-pack...or technically... would this be considered a 5 PACK because Monsterex is just sooooo many baddies all wrapped into one?
How do we see these figures coming to us? While Monsterex could easily come as a deluxe oversized figure all on his own, if NECA decided to go the 2 pack route as a "Chills and Thrills of TMNT Adventures" themed pack, we think Monsterex and BookWurm go together like movie Monster marathon and Elvira's UP ALL NIGHT!
Monsterex would come with all sorts of additional articulation, a funhouse mirror with lenticular images that could alter his various appearances in fun ways, a guillotine, a puddle that can connect to their feet to give the appearance of a melting feature, a fried version of the Turtles TV, and an old-timey car cutout that we could pose with them lifting above their head as an Action Comics #1 homage which was also utilized within the comic.
On the BookWurm side, we could see him coming with a articulated tail (Ala Playmates classic ScaleTail or the more recent Mattel's Lady Slither), some of his FAVORITE books like a very "breaking the 4th wall" self-aware copy of "TMNT Adventures" and "Strange Turtle Tales: the April O Neil Story", along with various open books of monsters that have figure stands to help them float, bigger sized stacks of books, and a lesser articulated version of his eventual protege, INNARDO...you remember HIM right? The mutant that was the by-product of the removed gall bladders, appendixes, tonsils and eluded unmentionsables of patient's whose rooms he burgled in human form before being mutated? Nope, no reason to ask why this adult criminal is now seemingly best friends with a little lost kid and why April sees this and entirely ignores "stranger danger" to just immediately fully trust and befriend him...except for, to be fair...he IS CLEARLY FRIEND shaped. Also adding to this immediate pouring of cold water on our previous statement, we later discover that he isnt ACTUALLY a bad guy, and is only drawn to the items he had been stealing because they belonged to the residents of folks he originated from...well..at least parts of who he originated from...as we noted, it's...yeah, this dude is COMPLICATED!
Sorry, WHAT was that? Ohhhh OK you DONT remember Innardo or HOW THE ACTUAL SHELL they got away with this nightmare fuel-inducing backstory? And now you have literally ALL the questions about why this character existed within the Archie series in the FIRST place?
Yup, even AFTER reading his whole story again as an adult, it STILL feels like an LSD induced fever dream and we STILL don't quite understand what Innardo's whole deal was...OTHER than that we absolutely NEED an excuse to have him as an action figure. YES, he looks like what we imagine the inside of a rancid hot dog could reasonably mutate into and also YES, the fact that he sometimes is shown wearing seemingly unnecessary glasses and a toupee that are fooling ZERO people and don't seem to be connected in ANY way to the plot STILL somehow manages to add to his charm in much the same way that we can't help watching that cliff scene from Mac and Me...we KNOW it's bad, but yet, we just can't look away...and DANGIT, YES, I DO want this train wreck of a figure on my shelf...because he's a train-wreck from my youth...and every time I see him he makes me smile...well...first...dry heave...but then... smile.
With an imagined figure pack of Monsterex and BookWurm, to not include Innardo in SOME fashion felt like a betrayal to our younger self who always wanted a character that looked like the manifestation of the question "what if Muckman's little buddy Joe eyeball was BIGGER and somehow GROSSER"... was somehow magically brought to life...and now that I say this out loud...it kind of makes me wonder if in fact he WAS a prior unused design of Joe Eyeball...ohhh brain...don't you EVER stop?
3. VID VICIOUS
Sure, much like the original concept for Mutagen Man, at first glance Vid Vicious looks like one of those characters that probably was a handful of absolutely bananas ideas all wrapped into one fun package. Throughout the Turtles history, whether it be the cartoon or comics, there was a deep-rooted sense of characters utilized to draw attention to environmental and social issues of the time, and Vid Vicious seemed to tap into that model. Heck, the title of the story "Space Junk Face Funk Cyber Punk Thief" probably gave away the game right from the get-go, letting readers know the overarching harm from increased man-made junk from space and it's inevitable return back to Earth.
Sid...oops, that is to say, VID Vicious, isn't technically a mutant the way the Turtles are, his mutation derived from a Satellite hitting a radioactive waste canister that then plummets back to Earth and finds it's way to an off-the-grid loner in the woods who was just about to throw away his final connection to the outside world, when BOOM, the outside world quite LITERALLY hits him like a big ol' bag of bricks (or y'know...I guess to be more factually precise... LITERALLY... like a big hunk of radiated space debris).
Like we noted a few moments ago, this character feels like it was pulled from a handful of source materials of the time, he felt similar to "Lawnmower Man" in that he is a simple man pulled into a world he loathes that he is now able to draw from as a weapon, part Howard Beale from the movie "Network", and aesthetically there also seemed to be some overt Magneto from the x-men vibes happening, all mashed up with hints of some previously scrapped Playmates toy concepts like Burne Bot (where Burne's consciousness went into a walking TV screen), Junkman (who, as the name implies, was a man infused with a variety of junk with an outfit looking like it came straight out of a junkyard), and a hint of "Z", the pandimensional spacecraft computer from the 1987 animated series seems to have been drawn from here as well (which...sidenote, are we the ONLY folks out there that WISH we'd have a full body to go with the desktop version we got in the accessory-style form of THAT character?).
Unlike other environmental-based villains like Captain Mossback who was overtly evil in his destructive plans (who, YUP, you better believe we'll ALSO likely tackle at some point down the road with this Archie deep dive series), Vid Vicious was one of those characters cut from the same mutant cloth as characters like Guerilla Gorilla who weren't inherently BAD, but went to some extreme means to achieve their goals because they felt like they HAD to, but under the banner of absolutes like "good guy" or "bad guy" we would feel disingenuous putting him entirely in the villain section of the TMNT cardback...in fact, if anything, he mainly just suffered (ironically considering he was at least partly a TV) from being (ahem) a poor communicator.
True, he went about reaching his somewhat ill-thought-out goals of informing the world of the environmental disasters in an impulsive and decidedly villainous manner (in his own words, a mantra of "what comes around, goes around"), but ultimately his end goal wasn't drastically different from the Turtles where he was simply trying to protect those who couldn't protect themselves and just happened to have a proclivity for taking extreme measures because he felt time was of the essence toward achieving those life-saving goals. The point is, that in that regard, much like Magneto, his intentions are noble, but the ways in which he set out to achieve them are what thrust him into villain territory. Like...kidnapping is BAD Mmm'kay...
Vid Vicious's story, unfortunately, remained unresolved in the world of Archie. He briefly appeared the following issue, only to fly away to an unknown destination while Shredder took center stage. Which was a shame because it seemed like there was a TON more stories to tell with this character.
We got a sense that Mr. Vicious, Vid...can we call him vid? Deeply wanted to make a positive change, but had he not absconded with April sans consent in the hopes of achieving his goal, he very well might have been viewed as an ally to the Turtles at some later point and logically even joined with the Conservation Corps whose mission seemed to entirely echo his own...y'know...MINUS the threatening to irradiate the oil fields to cease our reliance on fossil fuels.
Through the unproduced Mutanimals animated series concept bible, we DID see that Vid Vicious was intended to return and potentially play a much larger role within the expanded universe, so it is quite possible that was also the reason for his inexplicable sudden disappearance from the primary comic.
What was undeniable about this character however was the fact he looked as if entirely built to someday be a toy (though somehow NEVER was). His stomach felt very Arnim Zola or MODOC influenced, where at times it could be a skull and crossbones and other moments he could sprout a face and extra pair of arms while still maintaining his original face functions from his actual body, so it was unclear whether this part of him was in reality some sort of symbiote or an extension of his consciousness brought to life (similar to Pizza Face's ultimately unused head growth twin Pepperoni)..there is a brief line within the comic where his chest refers to itself in the 1st person, so it is incredibly possible that this ENTITY was in fact the mutant, lending weight to the notion of it being a symbiote of sorts, using the host to achieve their shared goals.
How do we see this character coming to us? First off, we'll need at least a few swappable chest-plates (the red skull and crossbones as the classic look, one where it's a lenticular static tv screen, and another where it's his extra face and set of hands protruding outward), an energy ray that could attach to his fingertips, and a flight stand that could emerge from an old timey tv set that looks like he is being lifted into the air using static energy.
If NECA were to release this off-the-wall but incredibly needed character in figure form, there would be no bunny ear adjustment needed, because this is one tube in the toy aisle that we'd be instantly glued to. Any TMNT day, ANY TMNT channel!
2. SARNATH & QARK
(In our Best Arnold Voice) ARE YOU NINJA TURTLES? Come with me if you want...uh...an excuse for more space adventures...
Wait...SARNATH? Where have we heard that name before? He sounds so familiar...
Wasn't there an EYE of Sarnath in the Fred Wolf series that was used to shrink down the Turtles in the aptly titled "The Incredible Shrinking Turtles", another shard of it that was used to GROW objects like an overgrown carnivorous plant that we saw in "It came from beneath the sewers", and in that same episode yet ANOTHER shard that was utilized to take control of machines? THEN once all those shards were put together it allowed for the temporary creation of various monsters under the users' control?
Yeah, we're pretty sure in the 87 Fred Wolf series they even put the shards into a helmet that Shredder and then a still in human form Baxter Stockman wore in order to send fleets of baddies against the Turtles, including yet another easter egg baddie from the video games that we went into detail about ALL the back in our fourth deep dive episode, in the form of Cement Man! We'll go ahead and plop the link to THAT deep dive right here for folks interested in learning more about THAT character and its connection to the eye of Sarnath as well.
In FACT, as the character and the origin of the name Sarnath are becoming clearer with each passing moment, we are starting to recall that the introduction of the Eye of Sarnath closely mirrored it's introduction within the Archie series as well, eventually leading to the introduction of Sarnath himself and his trusty seeing eye companion Quark later on in the series.
Because of this closely mirrored approach, it leaves us pondering if it stands to reason that Sarnath himself MIGHT have (at least behind the scenes within the writer's room) been discussed to have been included within the Fred Wolf series proper, only to end up on the cutting room floor like a handful of other characters from the comic world like Panda Khan, Fugitoid, and Gizmo and Fluffy. But wait...come to think of it, the Eye of Sarnath ALSO played a fairly big part in the Hyperstone Heist game that came out around the same time as the 87 series and the Archie run that essentially had the EXACT properties as the Eye of Sarnath, only with a different name, the HYPERSTONE? And then AGAIN in the recent Shredder's Revenge game where players collect the shards to progress forward, and in BOTH instances it was the tool for which the primary villain became SUPER SHREDDER.
Clearly the lore of Sarnath runs deep within quite a few iterations of Turtles, but within the Archie universe itself, the importance of the character and of the eye remains a constant from essentially the START of the series all the way through to the END. A quick and important addendum to this is that officially the series never received a proper ending under the Archie umbrella at the time...and only more recently, as we mentioned in our last Archie-facing episode, obtained a resolution with the kinda sorta Official/but not like "OFFICIAL official... at least from a seal of approval by Viacom standpoint" "TMNT Odyssey" and "TMNT Forever War" by Arseniy Dubakov...these issues are an import and not super easy to come by within the states without a fairly hefty price tag, but are an incredible read and bring back many of the original artists and writers from the Archie series to give it the send-off fans deserved and had been waiting anxiously for for over 30 years, so if you CAN find a way to get your hands on these issues, they are well worth the read.
Wowza Geek-e, this background is pretty dang dense and we haven't even talked about Sarnath and Quark the CHARACTERS yet...you know...the ones you said this part of the deep ABOUT...are we planning to do that anytime soon, we don't all have eye of Sarnath induced timeslip generators where we can go back in time and reclaim all those minutes you just took from us you know!
Ohhh, well played! We see what you did there you sly viewer you, casually bringing up the timeslip generator as it connects to the later "Future Shark" plotline involving Armaggon where he steals Future Donnie's time travel device that was fueled by the eye of Sarnath and uses it to cause all sorts of havok in the future. We appreciate YOU conveniently bringing up that major point so that we can FINALLY just dive into the awesomeness that was Sarnath and Quark like you so kindly directed us back to.
So what was Sarnath's whole deal? In a nutshell the character himself is a powerful sentient robot that was part of a species called the Triasts. They were created to serve another species called the Mergia...the same species of alien that crash-landed on Earth in the first arc of the series that had a whole ET-vibe going who gave the eye of Sarnath shard to the Turtles...SOOOO, remember that the alien dude who we initially were led to believe was just a kindly old alien...turns out, NOPE, not so much, not even by a looooong shot, and HOLY MOLY did we have our adolescent emotions needlessly toyed with if we shed even one undeserved tear for him...in FACT, the ONLY reason he had those eyes in his possession when we THANKFULLY saw him kicking the bucket, was because he had plucked them from Sarnath himself while he slept after the ET-like Mergia alien discovered Sarnath had the sheer audacity of trying to champion a long overdue equal right movement toward trying to gain the long overdue freedom of his species from the rule of the Mergia who treated his fully sentient species as property when they simply wanted to co-exist and be free to live their lives. So that Mergia's death? Yeah...that was ABSOLUTELY the correct trajectory for him, no notes...that was the best action he could have done after doing what he just did...other than using the eye to go back in time and stop HIMSELF from doing it in the FIRST place.
Sarnath played an enormous part in the later issues of the Archie series with the Black Hole Trilogy (which left him becoming much more closely tied to the Turnstone we talked about at length in our previous episode...which you can hear about riiiight here for reference) and helped to bring a sense of full circle back to the beginning of the series, as well as a handy story refresher for folks who weren't able to snag some of those earlier issues at the time they were coming out.
In present day, as these issues become more and more available, it's easy to take for granted that back in the early 90's, if you missed a few issues, there was a good chance you may just have to fill in the blanks with your own imagination...and based on MANY a conversation we've had with fellow Archie readers over the years, depending on scope of kiddo's imaginations, would sometimes lead to hilarious results for what they THOUGHT happened in those story gaps...but y'know WHAT?? This raises a good point...there has never been a series focusing on the endearingly wrong directions our adolecent minds perceived the Archie series going based on not having the full picture...so perhaps a long overdue series surrounding that topic is warrented? Would that be something folks here might be interested in seeing and hearing about? Let us know in the comments and if there is enough excitement for that, we'll see if we might be able to fix that!)
Detour much GeekE? Yeah...whoopsies! So... back to Sarnath! In a nutshell, this was one rad looking character...well technically TWO because he and his trusty seeing eye-like dog companion Qark are kind of a packlage deal here. We don't know if it was a 90's thing specifically, but that era seemed to have a proclivity for shelling out heroes and villains with a (ahem) HANDFUL of extra arms...be it Mortal Kombat's Goro, Kintoro, Motaro, Sheeva or Kollector, Cyberforce's Stryker, DC's Salaak from the Green Lantern Corps, Marvel's Sugar Man from the Age of Apocalypse, Pokemon's Machamp, Bucky O'Hare's Deadeye Duck, Fred Wolf TMNT's Antrax or Archie's very own Cryin' Houn', El Mysterio, Catmandu, Nova Posse's Exeen, and of course Sarnath. We don't have an answer for what turned the tide for this uptick in multi-appendages, other than the obvious answer in that more arms meant more of the character to love!
Ok so how do we see this Silicon-based hero coming to us if he were made in PLASTIC? We see him gracing our shelves as an oversized three-pack (HEY, if we can do it twice with Last Ronin's April, we can do it here too) that would involve himself, Qark, and the old man Mergia Alien who obsconded to Earth with poor Sarnath's eyes...WHY? So that we could display Sarnath finally getting his much-deserved vengeance on the character after all these years in toy form...what do you MEAN you'd argue he died so technically Sarnath already got vengeance and we're just being petty? Why does it still bother us after all these years? Because resolution and CLOSURE, THAT'S WHY! Well...and also because ever since we brought up Mac and me, we can't stop looping on the idea of recreating the toboggan scene in toy form...so there's also THAT.
Ok so naturally the Mergia alien would also come with a crashed ship and all of Sarnath's eyes (and YES, come to think of it... Archie WAS wayyyy creepier than we remembered now that we find ourselves having to say this kind of stuff out loud).
Sarnath himself would come with an extra severed arm with wires hanging out of the nub (which, again, not helping the point we just made a moment ago), an extra head which we could insert the eyes back into (YUP, we hear ourselves, stay with us), a chunk of building debris he could use as a hurling weapon, plus replicated weapons from all of the Turtle bros with shiny looking light effects, and a channel 6 camcorder attachment for his head, oh, and we wouldn't say NO to another opportunity to gain us a Turnstone should he come with one of those as well. For Qark his trusty Battle Beast companion, we'd opt for decent additional articulation like a hinged jaw so we could display him with fierce set of chompers or with mouth wide open with slobbery tongue hanging out. We'd also want a fully articulated bashing tail for...well...all sorts of Battle Beast Bashing Be-hind action...say THAT 12 times fast!
1. THE UNCANNY TRIO
NOPE, contrary to what internet foodies might say, we are NOT talking about Eggplant, Summer Squash, and Melon...WE'RE talking about the dastardly mutants NOCTURNO, NEVERMORE and HALLOCAT.
YES, we are also fully aware that one of the characters names sounds like he would be something you'd confide to a loved one that you accidentally had overnight during one of those really fun dreams...so now that our fifth grade selves have managed to move past all of our NOCTURNO emissions jokes, let's dive into who the actual shell these rad characters ARE and what makes them so well suited for getting the toy treatment!
Though a good deal of the younger generation of Turtles fans may be asking right now, "why are you focusing on the cheering background characters in Shredder's Revenge, Geek-E?" Gather round little geeklings, because you'll be excited to know that in fact this TRIO has been popping up within the world of Turtles in various forms for decades now!
The Uncanny Trio was the name bestowed upon a group of mutants that happened to be mutated together and found a kindred friendship post mutation...well...friendship AND their UNCANNY (eh eh) ability to control humans to do their bidding ala Stepford Wives or Children of the Corn style.
Ok, so before we dive into this gift they possess (well..we ASSUME it's a joint effort thing, it's never really made entirely clear if it's all three of them or just ONE and the other two just kind of go along with it), it's important to dig a little more into their origins and the scope of the tale they were introduced.
It all begins in the Innsmouth, Massachusetts. If you are thinking to yourself that this very specificly named town rings a bit of a familiar bell, it MAY be because this was the name of the fictional town that was popularized within HP Lovecraft novella "the shadow over innsmouth" which focused on a mostly deserted fishing town full of dilapidated buildings and people who walked with a distinctive shambling gait and who had odd narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes. Which is significant because what we just described from THAT story is, in a nutshell, the imputus for THIS homage of a story. So a well-earned high-three and a heartfelt COWABUNGA to any folks in the audience who correctly just guessed that this trio of mutants were actually a backchannel for a wink and nod crossover with HP Lovecraft...show of hands...show of hands...oh NOBODY guessed THAT one? That's what we thought.
So basically in this origin story called "In the Dark"...which...also could be referring to those earlier mentioned "NOCTURNO emissions" (DANGIT GEEK-E, we thought you said you got all of those out...aaaand now you just made us say a gross thing too...so not cool...but let's continue)...their is a super illegally operating company who is burning toxic waste, and WHOOPS, an OWL and a CROW accidentally fly too close to the fumes pouring out of the chimney and find their way as ingredients of this mysterious brew...and then, for good measure, the cat of the dumping site foreman (with the pre-mutated name of Pookey for any folks out there needing an answer to a super obscure question for your next TMNT trivia night), is also thrown into the toxic waste. And even though they all went in at the same time, and we are all now fully aware of a character who was the explicit byproduct OF that in the form of INNARDO earlier in this very episode, the three animals come out the end of the process as three fully grown individual mutants. NOCTURNO the Owl, NEVERMORE the Crow (get it...like Edgar Allan Poe...Quoth the Raven, Nevermore) and HALLOCAT the...well...the cat...that one is literally right there in the name.
Where were we again? Oh YEAH, so a couple of shady workers for this company, while doing their best thinly veiled impression of the characters from of Mice and Men...but here named George and Benny vs George and Lenny...so y'know...legally distinctively different... get this mutation revenge tour rolling...the reasons of the Trio's revenge is implied to be in a similar style to Vid Vicious where it was because of the companies illegal environmental actions that led to their very creation, and THUS the reason for the revenge...but the flipside of that is also that without this environmental meddling they wouldn't have these mutant powers in which they would be able to SEEK their revenge...which is quite the connundrum and clearly points to some room for perspective here it seems...to be transparent here though, the ONLY reason we're taking the devil's advocate approach here is that we happen to love mutants so much that entertaining the notion of fighting the powers that create them to us just means there would be fewer mutants...and less fun stories surrounding them...so take this part of the rant with a grain of salt.
SURE, these sound like pretty rad characters, mainly, because y'know... they ARE! But it's not ONLY that they have aesthetics that immediately check many of our mutant boxes for our toy shelf all in one swoop, they ALSO happen to be way more involved in the TMNT lore than folks might realize.
Starting with the smallest member who also happens to be the de facto leader of the bunch, Scra---uhhh---we mean HalloCat! If when you first saw this character you couldn't help but do a double take that his appearance looked an awful lot like a certain other felonious feline from the Playmates line, give yourself a big pat on the back and a pinch of catnip because you're initial instincts were 100% spot on.
That's right, our favorite impossibly difficult to find in the toy aisle, Crafty Crook Cat Scratch was indeed directly inspired from Hallocat! Scratch AND Hallocat were designed by Ryan Brown, with the latter cat actually existing not JUST in toy form, but ALSO video game form (TMNT 3: Radical Rescue to be exact and then many years later as his original form as a background character in Shredder's Revenge) at roughly the same time as his Playmates figure release.
In FACT, when Ryan originally pitched Scratch as a figure, it was with Scratch (then called "the cat burglar") as a little buddy to NOCTURNO (then called, a significantly less punchy name of simply "Burglar, jewel thief Owl mutant"...THOUGH, to be fair, in the description he ALMOST uses the name within the phrase "they strike at night by the light of NOCTURN-OWL eyes"). Sadly, this early version of Scratch that would have also included Nocturno...the...we guess..NOCTURN-OWL...was ultimately rejected by then TMNT Brand Manager for Playmates' Karl Aaronian...so...y'know...over 40 years ago style Whomp Whomp...
Which, back in THOSE days, they just didn't have the present day knowledge to understand it was...and let me get back in the 90s lingo mindset for a moment...a-hem..."all THAT and a bag of chips"..."Da' Bomb"...or even "off the hook"...don't folks MISS the 90s? Also, does anyone ELSE have a sudden nostalgic urge to call the OK Cola 1800-I-feel-OK hotline? No, that's just US and entirely gives off how isolated we were from other humans our age as a child? Cool Cool coolcoolcool..
So, as is to be anticipated (or FEARED) with our deep dives... we've clearly now gone completely off the rails...soooo back to our favorite part of the 90s that is ALSO one of our favorite parts of our TODAY, the Turtles!
While many characters within the world of Turtles started as one thing and eventually ahem MUTATED into another, Hallocat as a feline pinstriped criminal seemed a very minimal leap toward the eventual incarnation of Scratch as a feline pinstriped criminal...but NOW slightly taller and with different color fur action.
Brown DID attempt to bring Scratch himself into the Archie comic that would have coordinated to come out alongside the toy release, but that story would have seen him acting solo and would have presented him as a wholly DIFFERENT character than Hallocat. Within THAT story (which would have been called "You scratch my mutant, I'll scratch yours,") the character Scratch would have been introduced creating a fleet of mutants underground using his "mutant manufactoring machine" within the cities ancient (ahem) CAT-acombs. Along with his army of mutant rats, he devised a plan to become the undisputed king of New York City with the only thing standing in his way being the Ninja Turtles. That story would have ended with Scratch being defeated right after creating his very last rat mutant named "Silverfist" (which WE like to believe was a precursor to the eventual evil Splinter character from Tales of TMNT and the 2003 series Sliver) and his rat army ending up in the welcoming hands of none other than the Rat King.
*SpeekyGeeky Sez: It's worth noting here that at the time of producing this episode we DID reach out to Ryan Brown for clarity on this and a wealth of other lingering questions from TMNT's past, we are told those answers ARE coming, but weren't yet available for THIS episode, so stay tuned folks
While there has been some chatter that Scratch was also eventually the inspiration for the IDW character Old Hob, as we've mentioned in our 2012 TMNT deep dive (which, for convenience, you can find riiiight HERE) , there are seemingly much more directly recognizable inspirations in the form of TMNT and Other Strangeness's Catsblood Claw and Caesar with their proclivity for big guns, eyepatches, and corresponding gaggles of hench-weasels, vs Scratch WHO, and this is true...happens to ALSO be a feline mutant who ALSO has a name that is a pseudonym for the devil...aaaaand end of list.
To be clear, our intent is not to quibble about his TRUE origins. However folks feel close to the awesomeness of this character, we feel the same, so it doesn't really matter the journey we took to get here, we're on the same party wagon to cat-scratching awesometown, and we're primarily just taking the absolutely necessary opportunity to lay this all out and make crystal clear for folks that if Scratch just so happened to be on your list for one of your most sought after classic figures...WELL, HERE is the INSPIRATION that led to the eventual creation of THAT character. Which, on a scale of meaningful TMNT in-world street cred, we tend to think ranks pretty high up there.
But Geek-E, this is a long way to go for the rest of the Trio that were only just in that ONE issue though, right? Well, TECHNICALLY it's true from an Archie comics proper perspective, but also TECHNICALLY they were in a handful more (and NO, we aren't counting the sourcebook here just to make that math work, stay with us). We give it the "technicality award" here because Nocturno DID make another central character story appearance in the same MONTH and YEAR that he made his appearance in the Archie series, here it was in the 1991 TMNT Magazine with a rad tale called "Beat or be Eaten" where the Turtles are seemingly meeting him AGAIN...but for the very FIRST time while they have to fend him off from eating Splinter, then inevitably befriend the Mutant Owl, that YES, also goes by the name NOCTURNO here, so technically NOCTURNO becomes an ally to the Turtles in the expanded canon.
Then, in 1993, the full Trio themselves ALMOST made a SECOND appearance in ANOTHER issue of Archie (in a TMNT Adventures Special) by Heavy Metal artist Milton Knight (the SAME Milton Knight who introduced such characters as Kid Cortex and Oxymoron...and YUP you better believe we'll be coming back to THOSE bodacious characters in an upcoming episode as well).
Milton's story called "Coney Island Days" was actually fully illustrated and for a brief time you could find it on his website up until his website stopped...y'know...existing. The story ultimately ended up getting cancelled and never released due to...WELL...due to the fact that the Archie comic ITSELF got cancelled...but we always thought that was an absolute shame, because despite the comic never releasing, we actually HAD a copy and thought it was important for folks to see what that never-released tale would have looked like...soooo would you LOOK at that? All those Loony-Toons-eque pages were now just shown throughout the course of this deep dive for the VERY first time (at least in THIS fashion)! We are all about adding extra layers of historical background on our favorite characters here folks, so if you are like many Turtles fans and have never seen this before because it has never been in print, well, now, after all these years, you have the ability to get a closer look and connect in just a little deeper, soooo y'know...TURTLE POWER!
In a nutshell, after an explosive encounter with the Uncanny Trio in the sewers, the now amnesiatic Turtles find themselves situation comedy style teamed up with a not so thinly veiled homage to the Honeymooners (here named Horton and Malphie vs Ed Norton and Ralph Kramden respectively) who promptly exploit their inability to remember who they are and turn them into a new Coney Island attraction called "The Killer Turtles Mutilators Extraordinare", the Uncanny Trio get wind of this and hijinx ensues.
Did this story create more questions than we had before we read it? SURE DID! Do we wish it would have gone more into WHY the Uncanny Trio knew where the Turtles lived and what their ongoing beef was with them where they were willing to go out of their way to track them to a park and throw a LITERAL elephant at them, all seemingly because...well...because the plot needs to happen? Also emphatically SURE. But was it still a fun and beautiful read that we WISH would have seen the light of day in comic form and we're glad exists? Hands down YESSIREE and ZOOM TO THE MOON.
Okay, so how do we see these characters coming to if NECA ever brought them to us in glorious toy form? We know we've never TECHNICALLY seen this before with 2 figures, but we'd love to see something similar to what we got with the Ultimate Mondo Gecko. For reference here, we're saying along the lines of where it was essentially Mondo with a smaller scale heavily articulated Kerma. In the Uncanny Trio setting, we'd be looking at a regular sized Nocturno and Nevermore, with a smaller but still heavily articulated Hallocat.
We'd also see them coming with lesser articulated versions of their non-mutant selves (so we could recreate the mutation process on our shelves), some stacked crates (as a callback to the Shredder revenge cameo), a pitchfork, an oversized bell for which to tie Splinter up to, a cartoony looking go-cart as a nod to the unreleased Archie comic that Hallocat could sit in, some additional clawed extended hands for Hallocat, and a cup of steaming mutagen they can be posed with to look as if they are trying to mutate unsuspecting human characters on the shelf)
SPEEKYGEEKY'S TMNT POLLS
Since we're already talking about wholly new characters in plastic, we figured we would take a moment to ask you the viewer who YOU would like to see in one of our upcoming videos. We have been running polls on our YouTube community page, as well as our SpeekyGeeky Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit pages as to which Archie TMNT characters we might want to see as Toys.
Here are some options from our latest polls, which you can weigh on in the comments here or head on over to any of our socials for the full list of option names to weigh in over there as well, and stay tuned because these winning options and more may very well appear in an upcoming TMNT deep dive or two...or ten.
There are also some incredibly talented TMNT customizers who are already creating some of those characters who appear on our polls, and it is a beautiful thing to see, here (in our video) are just a few of those absolutely creative folks that you are definitely going to want to keep up with so make sure to follow them on THEIR socials as well.
Finally, we wanted to give you a very brief tease of our brand new TMNT project we've got brewing on the channel that will be featuring some epic and familiar-sounding voice actors, incredible artistic talents, and perhaps an easter egg or two scattered into the mix for good measure. So, seen for the very first time, here is some fresh concept art for our upcoming TMNT X The TICK animation and web comics series, art shown here from the astoundingly talented Cerbero Arte.
If you are digging the original art shown from Cerbero, Sebastian Navas and (TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures Cover Artist) Mista Jonz style shown throughout the character options of this very episode, be sure to show their socials listed in the description some love and check out more of their upcoming art and projects on our Instagram channel as well.
WHERE ELSE CAN YOU FIND MR. GEEK-E IN THE COMING MONTHS?
Even though we are hard at work putting together a handful of geeky new deep dives and interviews together for you this very minute (never YOU mind how we know what time of day you are watching this buster, just trust us, if it's an hour of a day that ends in DAY, we're probably working hard on it), SpeekyGeeky's very own Mr. Geek-E (HEY, that's ME!) is still managing to make the rounds all over the YouTube's to spread his dorkiness far and wide (and yup, that sure DID sound way grosser than we intended didn't it?)
First up, over on our all-ages friendly sister channel GeekyJr, for those of you who appreciate the sound of a voice that can only be described as "if nails on a chalkboard" met Gollum from "Lord of the Rings", you're in luck because Mr. Geek-E tries his best all sorts of nostalgic classic stories with narration and voices for all your little geeklings and adults who are young at heart. We're talking characters from Sesame Street like Ernie, Bert, Grover, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Wonderpets, Daniel Tiger, Thomas the Train, Yo Gabba Gabba, Rubba Dubbers, and soooo much more.
You can also find SpeekyGeeky lending his voice to some upcoming Mirage TMNT comic read-alongs on TeddyGaming Review's bodacious channel here, as the voice of Professor Kaori on the fan-made audio adaptation of the hit fantasy series "The Fourth Wing" over on the astoundingly talented Maddie Moore's channel here, and finally, we'll be geeking out and dishing on all the current TMNT news on Turtle Talk as well as helping some rad figures from their plastic confinement on Grippin and Rippin over on Dave Wonder's channel here.
Alright, Shellheads, that's it for this episode, but don't stray too far from the Turtle Lair, because our SpeekyGeeky Archie TMNT deep dive episode 3 is right around the corner.
We have no doubt you have some characters that make the tippy top of your list as well that you are stoked about seeing, so be sure to make your hopes known and join the discussion in the comments below.
We realize you could have gone anywhere and you chose to nerd out with us... and we appreciate that, so…
As always, I am Mr. Geek-E and Until Next We Archie NECA Turtle Speeky, Keep it Geeky Folks!
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