my favorite thing about the title ‘teenage mutant ninja turtles’ is how every word throws you a new curveball
like, teenage? Solid starting point. Popular protagonist demographic. I can understand that. Suddenly hard left into ‘mutant’ and oh shit that’s wild are we going into xmen territory here? How are they gonna play this? Let’s wait and s- ninjas? Yo this can’t possibly get cooler ninjas are wild right? And then suddenly they end with ‘turtles’ and your hopes and dreams don’t know what to do anymore and your entire worldview has been shattered. Good title.
Fun Fact: this was intentional! The original one-shot comic that kickstarted the franchise was a satire on the state of comics at the time, with every word in the title being a tongue-in-cheek reference to the trends at the time!
“Teenage” due to the prevalence of Teen Protags, “Mutant” due to the huge amount of different X-Men series (in particular intense popularity of the “New Mutants” series,) “Ninja” because ninjas were everywhere (including in the X-Men Wolverine comics, whose evil ninja clan “The Hand” is directly mocked with TMNT’s evil ninja clan, “The Foot,”) and then “Turtles” is the punchline!
To put it in modern context, it’d be like if there was a new movie called “CG Comic Hero Dolphins,” just take three buzzwords that build on each other and then add something silly at the end
