Turtle Fighters by Isaac Lenkiewicz and Benjamin Wright

IF THE legend is true that Eastman and Laird's cult comic classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first came to life on diner napkins during caffeine-fuelled late night comic jam sessions, then my first thought reading Isaac Lenkiewicz and Benjamin Wright's gloriously weird homage, Turtle Fighters, is that it was surely created amid a full-scale Hunter S Thompson-style drug and alcohol rampage ... in a padded room with crayons ...

As part of the generation weened on the Turtles, my reaction to this summer's 'blockbuster' movie was perhaps surprising ... I had no interest in seeing it. 

I knew they wouldn't be MY ninja turtles, because they haven't been for a long, long time, and with that in mind I saw no point in parting with hard-earned cash just to be disappointed. 

You might well question then, my decision to pick up Turtle Fighters at Thought Bubble this year, but honestly, I would have been hard pressed to walk away. 

The second the book caught my eye and I started to flick through it I was reminded me of Turtle Soup, the compendium series that accompanied the main Ninja Turtles title briefly in the late 80s, where an incredible line up of alternative comic artists and writers briefly turned their hand to the heroes on a half shell, resulting in some of the most bizarre stories I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Even then, as their franchise was snowballing out of control, the Turtle's creators exhibited a healthy ability to laugh at themselves, realising perhaps that embracing the ever-so-slightly ridiculous nature of their creations was necessary to sustain their business in the long term.

One thing that almost certainly helped was that it was always clear that the parodies of the turtles, whether it was the Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, the Pre-Teen Dirty Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos or the best of the lot, the Green-Grey Sponge-Suit Sushi Turtles, were done out of genuine love for the originals.

Turtle Fighters has that in spades, and in the comic jam format it takes - with Lenkiewicz and Wright taking turns to draw a panel each - it echoes the creation of the originals by Eastman and Laird.

The resulting series of stand-alone strips are an increasingly weird and achingly funny collection of stories, which sees the sparring by the two talented cartoonists gather pace, page after page, with each seemingly absolutely intent on outdoing the other in weirdness.

Books like this, to me, are mini comics at their very finest, imbued with an anarchic, alternative, underground spirit, creative, unique and filled with love for the medium and its history, but with a healthy dose of irreverence for anyone who takes it too seriously.

Lenkiewicz and Wright slide effortlessly from surreal, to action packed, from playful and stylish to dark and thoughtful.

In the strip New Jeans a gang of turtles trucking down the street, talking jive, fresh from stealing some new threads, come across a dark creature who slides theatrically across the page to confront them, before singing his greeting like something from Little Shop of Horrors.

In the brilliant Tank, the pair play on traditions of Saturday morning cartoons, depicting their Turtle Fighters doing what they do best, in a full-on two-page battle spread, which features more than one wry nod to the tropes of the genre.

From there the pace only quickens, with each story growing increasingly surreal as the book progresses, and the occasional panel or two, interspersed to perfectly punctuate the tone - moments that cut through the humour, often in the most brutal fashion - as the pair rush to finish each strip and start the next. 

If Turtle Fighters was a series, I would have added it to my pull list by now.

I love the playful edge of the humour so deftly mixing with the grotesque. 

I love the 'anything goes' nature of the format and the freestyle way it was created, like some kind of comics rap battle. 

I'll be interested to see what either cartoonist can do in something longer and will certainly make a beeline for their table at the next available opportunity. 

As for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they may have once been the world's most fearsome fighting teens, but times have moved on, and the Turtle Fighters are positively rabid ... Let's hope they target Michael Bay first. 

You can find Isaac Lenkiewicz and Benjamin Wright on Twitter @isaaclenkiewicz and @benjaminography or on Tumblr at http://isaaclenkiewicz.tumblr.com/ and online at http://www.benjaminography.com/.