Stranger Things X TMNT is still an underrated crossover event
While you wait for Stranger Things season 5, check out their iconic team-up with another group of angsty '80s teens: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Published 4 hours ago
The kids from Hawkins work surprisingly well with another group of 1980s teens
Before Stranger Things ends, check out the Netflix show's best comic-book crossover
IDW
In a couple of days, Stranger Things will be all over, bringing an end to Netflix’s epic, 1980s-nostalgia-steeped sci-fi story about tween nerds saving their town, and the world, from apocalyptic destruction. But whether you’re catching up on everything before the finale, or just trying to fill the void after it’s already aired, there’s one chapter of Stranger Things history that went under the radar in 2023. It was a crossover comic where the Stranger Things kids teamed up with another group of iconic teens from the 1980s: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
While comics publisher IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Stranger Things might, at first, seem like a random pairing of disparate properties designed to sell toys — which, admittedly, Playmates Toys did do — the series overdelivered on what might have been just a cynical cash grab. The writing displays a deep understanding of both properties and cleverly finds areas of overlap to make use of in the tight storytelling, and while not “canon” to either universe, it does, mostly, fit into both. Finally, the artwork by Fero Pe is nothing short of spectacular.
IDW
First, it's important to note which Turtles the series uses to tell this story. IDW comics and Nickelodeon, which owns the Ninja Turtles, could have paired the Stranger Things teens with any of the dozens of versions of the Turtles, or made up an entirely new iteration, which they’d done with success for for Boom! Comics' Power Rangers crossover. Instead, Nickelodeon and IDW cleverly chose to use the original Turtles, the red-mask-wearing, gritty teens created and drawn by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird beginning back in 1984.
This choice works really well for two major reasons. The first is simple timing, as writer Cameron Chittock very deliberately placed this crossover in between the events of seasons 2 and 3 of Stranger Things, putting it in early 1985. At that time, in the real world, the only Ninja Turtles that existed were Eastman and Laird’s originals. But more importantly, those original Turtles were a good deal more serious and edgy than many of their later incarnations, making them a better tonal match for . (The colors, done by Sofie Dodgson, also make good use of the red Turtle masks along with the red hues of ’ look.)