Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #45

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began being published by Mirage Studios in May of 1984 until August of 1993. While originally intended to be a parody of the popular mutant comics at the time, it quickly became something that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird never realized it would be: a merchandising empire. But somewhere between the movie, the Archie comics, the toys, the cereal, and the animated series the original canonical series lost a step. Issue #45, titled "Leatherhead, Too" (First Printing: March, 1992), tries to return the Turtles to their original, more action oriented, roots.

This issue was written and illustrated by Dan Berger, who does a decent job to replicating the tone of the early Eastman and Laird written and illustrated issues. His art is very reminiscent of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns but with a nod towards the animated series, and while that sounds awful, it actually works pretty well.

The issue starts with two splash pages that seem to be lifted directly from issue #1, and then a brief introduction to the turtles and their characteristics. The plot centers on the re-emergence of a leaderless Footclan in New York. This plot point would seem to set up the 13-issue "City at War" arc that concluded Volume 1. The Foot were last seen in the "Return to New York" story arc (issues #19-21) which concluded with the second death of the Shredder, Oroku Saki.

It seems that members of the Foot want revenge for the death of the Shredder and begin using Leatherhead (first appearance Tales of the TMNT #6) as a means to achieve that revenge. Leatherhead is trying to return to the Ultron planet, the planet calls home, when members of the Foot befriend him and secretly ruin the transporter device he was working on (this isn't the dumb wrestling obsessed Leatherhead of the Archie series and cartoon, Leatherhead here is portrayed as being highly intelligent.) This leads Leatherhead to question who are his real friends and his real enemies. After two very brutal battles, with the Turtles and the Foot respectively, the issue ends on somewhat of a sour and depressing note.

While issue #45 seems to be nothing more then a stand alone issue, it may be important to collectors trying to carve out the Turtles versus Foot relationship. This issue directly bridges the events from the second death of Shredder and the return of the Foot in "City at War", which allows the reader to cut out the numerous stand alone and zany dream-like adventures the Turtles have from issues #21-#44.