That Horrible Pen

My personal relationship with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brand is a weird one: On the one hand, I closely associate them with my childhood thanks to the 2003 animated series, which felt/feels like a staple of my Saturday morning TV-watching—and I more routinely than one might think remember an episode that I hope actually exists where the Turtles employed meditation while adrift in space to prevent themselves from using up their oxygen—but, on the other hand, I don’t think I could call myself a fan given my overall lack of contact/interest, despite the fact that I was one of the eight or so people who enjoyed the 2016 Mutants in Manhattan video game (and played the shell out of it). (And give or take the 2007 TMNT film and the video game based on it.) The 2023 Mutant Mayhem caught my attention when I saw a clip of Splinter’s solo fight from late in the movie posted on Twitter . Although somewhat visually reminiscent of the influential Spider-Verse movies (2018/2023), which I have...