Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #23
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #23 — titled 'Search and Destroy' — is the comic-book debut of Slash, an alien anthropomorphic snapping turtle who would go on to appear in the 2012 Nickelodeon animated series, the IDW ongoing, and multiple video games, making this issue his creative point of origin across all media. The issue simultaneously introduces Bellybomb, a wildly designed cosmic outlaw whose pairing with Krang on the toxic prison-planet Morbus launches the three-part 'Slash Trilogy,' which writers Ryan Brown and Stephen Murphy (writing as Dean Clarrain) used to formally phase out the Fred Wolf cartoon's main villain roster — Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady — and push the Archie series decisively into its own original continuity. It also marks the first full issue penciled by Chris Allan, who would become the defining visual voice of the Archie run through its remaining years. As such, #23 sits at a genuine creative crossroads: the moment the book stopped looking back at the cartoon and committed to standing on its own.
In "Search and Destroy," the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are on the move, intercepting a high-stakes armored car heist beneath the city streets. Meanwhile, on the harsh, polluted world of Morbus, Krang crosses paths with the notorious Slash and Bellybomb, and the trio makes a daring escape in a stolen spacecraft. Written by Dean Clarrain and illustrated by Chris Allan, with inks by Brian Thomas, colors by Barry Grossman, and letters by Gary Fields, this 1991 adventure blends urban action with interstellar intrigue—cover by Ken Mitchroney and Ryan Brown.
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By mid-1991, the Archie Adventures series had been operating under the creative stewardship of Mirage Studios staffers Stephen Murphy and Ryan Brown since issue #5, where they inherited a book that had been adapting the Fred Wolf cartoon and immediately pivoted it toward serialized original storytelling. For #23, Murphy — working under his Dean Clarrain pseudonym — co-plotted with Brown and handed scripting duties to Clarrain alone, while longtime penciler Ken Mitchroney stepped back from interiors; Chris Allan stepped in beginning with this issue and would remain the series' primary penciler through issue #28 and well beyond. The cover, however, was produced by the prior art team of Mitchroney, Ryan Brown, and Steve Lavigne, creating a brief transitional moment where the cover aesthetic and interior art style briefly diverged. The character of Bellybomb was co-created by Murphy with artist Stephen Bissette, though Bissette did not draw the issue itself.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First comic-book appearance of Slash (alien anthropomorphic snapping turtle), who had debuted roughly a year earlier in the Fred Wolf animated series' fourth-season episode 'Slash — The Evil Turtle from Dimension X' but had no prior comics existence.
- First appearance of Bellybomb, a cosmic alien outlaw co-created by Stephen Murphy (Dean Clarrain) and Stephen Bissette, who is banished to the toxic prison planet Morbus serving seventeen life sentences for offenses including extortion, armed robbery, man-eating, brain poaching, soul thievery, and impersonating a deity.
- Story title: 'Search and Destroy.' Full creative credits — Script: Dean Clarrain (Stephen Murphy); Plot: Ryan Brown & Dean Clarrain; Pencils: Chris Allan; Inks: Brian Thomas; Colors: Barry Grossman; Letters: Gary Fields; Edits: Scott Fulop & Victor Gorelick.
- Issue #23 is Chris Allan's debut as series penciler, replacing Ken Mitchroney on interiors; Allan would become the most closely associated artist with the Archie TMNT Adventures run.
- The cover was produced by the prior art team — Ken Mitchroney, Ryan Brown, and Steve Lavigne — creating a one-issue gap between cover artist and interior artist at this creative handoff.
- The 'Slash Trilogy' beginning here (issues #23–25) served as a deliberate farewell for the cartoon's main villain roster: Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady are written out of the Archie continuity by the trilogy's conclusion, marking the series' clean break from the Fred Wolf animated series.
- In the Archie continuity, Slash is an alien — not a mutated Earth turtle — whose backstory involves exile from his palm-tree paradise (Palmadise) and a sentence to Morbus, giving him an entirely different origin from his animated counterpart.
- Reprinted in: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles Adventures (Fleetway, UK) #41 (August 1991); Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics Digest (Archie) #7 (November 1994); and IDW Publishing's TMNT Adventures trade paperback Volume 7 (collecting issues #23–27).
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Reprints
Reprinted in Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles Adventures #41 (1991), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics Digest #7 (1994), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #7 (2014)
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