Stranger Things X TMNT is still an underrated crossover event

The kids from Hawkins work surprisingly well with another group of 1980s teens

In a couple of days, Stranger Things will be all over, bringing an end to Netflix’s epic, 1980s-nostalgia-steeped sci-fi story about tween nerds saving their town, and the world, from apocalyptic destruction. But whether you’re catching up on everything before the finale, or just trying to fill the void after it’s already aired, there’s one chapter of Stranger Things history that went under the radar in 2023. It was a crossover comic where the Stranger Things kids teamed up with another group of iconic teens from the 1980s: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

While comics publisher IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Stranger Things might, at first, seem like a random pairing of disparate properties designed to sell toys — which, admittedly, Playmates Toys did do — the series overdelivered on what might have been just a cynical cash grab. The writing displays a deep understanding of both properties and cleverly finds areas of overlap to make use of in the tight storytelling, and while not “canon” to either universe, it does, mostly, fit into both. Finally, the artwork by Fero Pe is nothing short of spectacular.

First, it's important to note which Turtles the series uses to tell this story. IDW comics and Nickelodeon, which owns the Ninja Turtles, could have paired the Stranger Things teens with any of the dozens of versions of the Turtles, or made up an entirely new iteration, which they’d done with success for for Boom! Comics' Power Rangers crossover. Instead, Nickelodeon and IDW cleverly chose to use the original Turtles, the red-mask-wearing, gritty teens created and drawn by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird beginning back in 1984.

This choice works really well for two major reasons. The first is simple timing, as writer Cameron Chittock very deliberately placed this crossover in between the events of seasons 2 and 3 of Stranger Things, putting it in early 1985. At that time, in the real world, the only Ninja Turtles that existed were Eastman and Laird’s originals. But more importantly, those original Turtles were a good deal more serious and edgy than many of their later incarnations, making them a better tonal match for Stranger Things. (The colors, done by Sofie Dodgson, also make good use of the red Turtle masks along with the red hues of Strangers Things’ look.)

Getting into the story itself, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Stranger Things doesn’t go through any complicated dimension-hopping somersaults to get the Hawkins crew to meet the Turtles. Instead, the kids are simply on a field trip to New York City where they encounter the sewer-dwelling heroes. They've always occupied the same universe, this is just the first time they meet. The field trip setup also does something the Netflix series struggles to do in later seasons: It pares down the Stranger Things cast to something more manageable by only featuring the four boys, Max, and Eleven (Hopper makes an appearance, but only in Eleven's mind).

While the Stranger Things kids ride the subway, they get separated from their class and then hear the familiar hiss of what they believe is a demodog (the season 2 creatures, which are just juvenile demogorgons). So they venture down the tunnels and discover the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles battling… not exactly demodogs, but demodogs with robotic parts which resemble mousers (the little robotic rat-catchers created by Baxter Stockman that the Ninja Turtles battle in most of their incarnations). Later we learn Stockman had found demodogs roaming the city sewer system, so he decided to create mouser/demodog cyborgs to study them.

The use of Stockman as the main villain in this miniseries is especially clever. Whereas Shredder would have been the obvious choice, he was dead by this point in the original series (this crossover takes place somewhere in the first 10 issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles volume one, and Shredder died in the first issue of that comic). More importantly, Stockman is an evil scientist, which is a nice match for the evil scientist vibes of Stranger Things. The miniseries even builds in some history between Stockman and Dr. Brenner (Papa) that works surprisingly well.

It’s worth noting here that, despite the trouble Chittock put into figuring out precisely where these two events take place in each property’s timeline, there is a continuity issue that has developed as future seasons of Stranger Things have gone on. In season 5, we learn the Upside Down isn’t an alternate dimension, but merely a bridge to an alternate dimension called The Abyss (referred to internally as Dimension X in a nod to TMNT lore) and that bridge only exists under Hawkins. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Stranger Things however, the Upside Down is under everything and we even see an Upside Down version of New York City. It’s something that wasn’t known by anyone except the show’s creators and a few Netflix executives back in 2023 and is a forgivable issue, but it is the one thing that doesn’t quite “fit” within Stranger Things canon. That said, it's fortunate this part of the Stranger Things lore wasn’t known at the time, because some of Fero Pe’s best art comes in the Upside Down, like the image of the Mind Flayer wrapped around the Empire State Building or a wonderful spread where a fight goes on in simultaneously in New York City and the Upside Down. Pe faithfully recreates Eastman and Laird’s style and finds excellent and simple-yet-clear designs for the Stranger Things kids, but his interpretation of the dark Upside Down shines brighter than anything else.

Finally, despite its use of the darkest version of the TMNT, the series has plenty of fun with the crossover. Getting to see the Stranger Things kids use the Turtles’ ninja weapons, particularly when Lucas wields Michelangelo’s nunchucks. It’s also cool to see Donatello find some kinship with the nerdy teens from Hawkins A.V. Club. Best of all, in preparation for the big final fight, Raphael gifts Eleven with a red bandana of her own to wear, which looks pretty rad.

While the comic is certainly not “required reading” in terms of getting all the Stranger Things canon before the finale, it is a limited series that is both well-contained into just four issues and a lot of fun for those who dig both franchises. The back of the trade paperback promises an “epic crossover graphic novel event that no one saw coming.” That’s all true, but it’s a lot of fun and a far more natural fit than you might think.