Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #28
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #28 marks the debut of Ninjara — the humanoid fox warrior and eventual romantic partner of Raphael — alongside her employer, the dog-man crime lord Chien Khan, and the street youth Oyuki Mamisha, making it among the single most character-dense introductory issues in the Archie run. Ninjara's willingness to turn against Chien Khan and stand alongside the Turtles gave the series one of its only sustained romantic subplots in any TMNT continuity of the era, a rarity that distinguished the Archie title from both the Mirage line and the animated series. The issue also marks the handoff of penciling duties from Ken Mitchroney to Chris Allan, whose cleaner, more expressive style would define the book's look through the rest of its run. Ninjara's cultural footprint proved durable enough that IDW Publishing created Alopex — a fox mutant with a parallel origin and a similar bond with Raphael — as a direct homage decades later.
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By early 1992 the Archie series, steered since issue #5 by Mirage staffers Stephen Murphy (writing as Dean Clarrain) and Ryan Brown, had fully shed its cartoon-adaptation roots in favor of original serialized storytelling with strong social and environmental undercurrents. Issue #28 launched the three-part 'Midnight Sun' arc, continuing threads woven through April O'Neil backup stories in issues #24–27 and sending the Turtles stowing away on a cargo plane to Japan. Murphy co-created Ninjara and Chien Khan with incoming penciler Chris Allan, whose debut on the title coincided precisely with this story arc; the creative partnership between Murphy and Allan would carry the book through its most ambitious material. Because Ninjara was the invention of Murphy and Allan rather than Eastman or Laird, the creators retained the right to use her after the Archie series ended, and she later starred in her own serial in the furry-fandom magazine Furrlough.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Ninjara (real name Umeko), a humanoid fox warrior and — after her heel-face turn — Raphael's live-in girlfriend from issue #29 onward through issue #70.
- First appearance of Chien Khan (Yoshi Chen), a sorcerer-samurai fused with his own dog who leads the Dog Star Gang crime syndicate in Japan; his name blends the French word for 'dog' with a Mongol/Turkish title meaning 'great ruler.'
- First appearance of Oyuki Mamisha, a Japanese street youth who later becomes April O'Neil's sidekick in the spin-off April O'Neil comic series.
- Issue #28 is 'Midnight Sun, Part 1,' scripted by Stephen Murphy (credited as Dean Clarrain) and drawn by Chris Allan — Allan's debut as the series' regular penciler, replacing Ken Mitchroney who had handled most of the book since its early issues.
- The issue is the opening chapter of the three-part 'Midnight Sun' arc (issues #28–30), in which the Turtles travel to Hiroshima, Japan, to rescue Fu Sheng and Chu Hsi from Chien Khan's ninjas.
- Ninjara was co-created by Stephen Murphy and Chris Allan; because neither Kevin Eastman nor Peter Laird had a hand in her creation, Murphy and Allan retained the rights to use her independently after the Archie series concluded.
- Ninjara's legacy extended into IDW Publishing's ongoing TMNT series, where the character Alopex — a fox mutant who begins as an enemy and develops a special relationship with Raphael — was explicitly designed as a nod to Ninjara.
- The issue was later collected in IDW Publishing's TMNT Adventures Volume 8 (issues #28–31) and is also included in IDW's TMNT Adventures Compendium, Vol. 3, which gathers issues #27–35 alongside related specials in recommended reading order.
Reprints
Reprinted in Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles Adventures #51 (1991), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #8
Key issues in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures
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