To Be Five Again
Gluing Ninja Turtles back together and critiquing The Little Mermaid
THIS WEEK:
Revisiting 1989!
The year. Not the album. Sorry.
Back to the Drawing Board: Ninja Turtle pictures
“Where Are They Now?” Our cartoon in Gag Recap and this week’s CartoonStock collection
BEHIND THE PAY WALL: Book update
Last week we looked back five years to the quarantine. This week, let’s look back at being five — that is, if you were five in 1989.
1989 was a banner year for me (DiPerri) — March being the most defining of all.
In March 1989, my little sister was born; the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers primetime TV movie kicked off the series; and on Easter Sunday, Super DuckTales introduced me (and the world) to Gizmoduck and a second season of my favorite television show.
In November 1989, my aunt took my older sister and I to Friendly’s for lunch and ice cream, then to the movies to see The Little Mermaid, and then Bradlees department store (she bought me a DuckTales sticker/coloring book and a Mickey Mouse paddle ball). It was while watching The Little Mermaid, I decided I wanted to be an artist. Man! Frega and I and the rest of our generation lucked out. We were the target audience for the famed Disney Renaissance as it played out in real time and we didn’t know any different! Actually — everyone reading this who was alive in the late 80s/early 90s was the target audience because those films were made for all ages. We were just lucky to have been kids and fully entranced in the films and the accompanying merchandise bonanza!
In December 1989, my cousin was born and Santa brought me all of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures (four turtles, April, Splinter, Shredder, Bebop, Rocksteady, and Foot Soldier). The figures were paired up and taped together back to back. I still remember unwrapping them in pairs.
Years later, I’d also come to appreciate that Back to the Future Part II and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in theatres and Taylor Swift was born. But I didn’t know that yet.
This past weekend, I revisited two of the defining pop culture aspects of my fifth year of life.
On Sunday, I reopened my toy boxes for a look at my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys and attended a live presentation of Disney’s The Little Mermaid musical.
See the Ninja Turtle on the highway Romeo drew? That’s Donatello. He’s my favorite — because he’s the smart one. Frega’s favorite is Michaelangelo. I used to love drawing Ninja Turtles on the driveway. Still do. Here’s one from last week:
More on Ninja Turtle drawings later. Let’s get back to toys.
I didn’t look at everything but in some of the boxes I opened, I encountered some broken figures or vehicles, damaged either from age, storage, or (typically) action-packed narratives from my youth. I intend to spend some time gluing them back together soon.
Last year, when I exhumed my Ghostbuster toys for the first time in decades, I came across a series of knots in the grappling hook cable rope of a helicopter (ghostcopter?) As I worked to unknot them, it occurred to me that the four-year-old boy who put the knots into the rope had to wait 35 years to grow up and become the dad who could unknot them. Then I started crying.
Have you ever seen the stage version of The Little Mermaid? I think there are some interesting character development expansions with Triton as much of his arc is devoted to his mourning the loss of his wife/Ariel’s mother (unaddressed in the movie) and his estranged relationship with his sister (apparently?!) Ursula. There’s also a weird character motivation given to Flounder that he’s in love with Ariel and flirts with her and then when Eric comes into the picture a quarter of the way in, Flounder throws a song and stomp-his-foot-tantrum dance and then is essentially out of the musical for remainder of the runtime. Ariel, Sebastian, and Tritan are written to be the three leads. Most surprising of all, Disney has no idea what to do with Ursula in the stage version. She’s hardly in Act I and barely gets more stage time in Act II. In still another surprise twist, in the musical, Ariel is a killer, as she murders Ursula for talking and singing too much. In the movie, Prince Eric positions the the boat to steer towards her and she leans onto it herself after causing a storm that would kill everyone and taking control of the sea. In the musical, Ursula is killed for daring to have a few lines of dialogue and more than one song. There’s no action or fight sequence. They are literally just a brother, sister, and niece talking to each other in the lead up to Ariel killing her. Ariel and Tritan postulate that Ursula killed Tritan’s wife and then Ariel offs Ursula. There’s no proof and no further question.
A considerable amount of stage time (dialogue, song, and dance) is given to Ariel’s sisters but it seems like a transparent showcase of the actresses that were all in contention to play Ariel. This then puts the audience in the awkward position of determining whether or not the director made the right casting choices. That is, if they’re aware that all of this is happening. They have one song with Flounder halfway through Act II just so that the audience can say “Oh yeah! Remember Flounder? Why isn’t Flounder in this musical?” Then Flounder disappears again until the curtain call.
After “Under the Sea” and “Pour Unfortunate Souls” bring us to the crescendo before intermission, there’s nothing really to look forward to in the stage script and Act II is a drag. Every musical I’ve ever seen positions intermission at center, the halfway point. This show would have benefitted from a three act play structure, which after all is how the story was crafted anyhow. Were it a play, intermission would have come after Act II, which always sends the audience off into the lobby with a wow moment they’ll be eager to talk about. Then Act III brings the cooling off period; the falling action and the resolution. Cutting Mermaid into equal halves instead of placing the intermission at the two-thirds mark leaves the audience sitting through half a show’s worth of falling action. For the first half of the musical, the lead character doesn’t have legs and can’t stand. For the second half, she can’t talk. But that doesn’t stop her from still singing two songs! I said to Frega, “You know what they should’ve done? They shoulda had the orchestra play the number and had Ariel up their mouthing all the lyrics in silence.”
Disney is always desperate to franchise their stories. That’s no secret. It’s been that way from the beginning. Early on, Walt Disney pushed back on the demand for sequels (especially for a sequel to 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), saying “I can’t top pigs with pigs!” This was in reference to the massive success of The Three Little Pigs in 1933. In that case, he gave into pressure for more shorts featuring the pigs and wolf and produced two more even though he didn’t want to. Neither received the same acclaim or financial rewards as the original. As is often the case, Disney would have been better off to leave well-enough alone and move on to create something original. Instead of the stage musical, last year’s live action remake, the current Disney junior animated series, the 1990s Disney Afternoon animated series, the two direct-to-video movie sequels (Little Mermaid II in 2000; Little Mermaid III in 2008), Disney should have let the original 1989 film stand alone as the singular masterpiece that it is. Instead of watching any of the remakes, sequels, or adaptations, stick with the original.
“Such wonderful things surround you
What more is you looking for?”
“Under the sea! Under the sea!
Darling it’s better
Down where it’s wetter
Take it from me.”
-Sebastian from the song “Under the Sea”
Bring your friends!
I drew these when I was five in 1989. They may be my oldest surviving drawings.
These two pages are part of a stack of papers that were stapled into a book that I made our kids’ Fisher-Price table in the kitchen (still remember sitting there and drawing these!!). The “book” tells the origin story of the Ninja Turtles. It’s essentially my unauthorized book adaptation of the 1987 television series pilot episode.
Things to note:
I realized I wasn’t going to have room to spell “turtles” because the sidewalk was cutting down the center of the page and crossed it out after three letters in. I agree with the choice my five-year-old self made in putting the text at the top instead.
f.h.e. stands for “Family Home Entertainment,” which was the company that distributed the Ninja Turtle VHS tapes.
Apparently the boy is walking along a street that includes a map of the turtles’ New York. Channel 6 News (employer of April O’Neil) is in the top left, April’s apartment building is in the top right, and the turtles’ future home (the sewer) is in the bottom center.
Is that our house in the middle? It can’t be — our house was gray! Who’s house is that? Is it yours? Do you have a chimney and a tree on your roof?
There’s a truck coming down the road on the left. Shockingly, the tires are in perspective.
I’m kind of happy with how I drew him walking
I traced the baby turtles in the second image (this was part of the book’s cover). They were from my Colorforms set. Once the turtle silhouettes were on there, I drew the interior. I copied the sewer pipe from a picture.
One of our cartoons was selected for the cover page of the February issue of The Gag Recap, a monthly newsletter that recaps the single panel cartoons that were published in the previous month’s issues of various magazines. Thank you to publisher Ron Coleman.
Can you spot kindergarten Buddy and Romeo in this cartoon?
If you’re a cartoonist and you’re not already subscribed to The Gag Recap, we highly recommend it. In addition to recaps, the newsletter also features industry news and contact info for art directors and editors and how to submit your cartoons. We’ve been subscribed since January 2020 and many of the cartoons we’ve sold were thanks to the tireless efforts of former publisher Van Scott in putting The Gag Recap out. We’re grateful to Van and now Ron for providing this valuable industry resource.
Subscribe to The Gag Recap here.
This was a surprise. Our cartoon is featured in CartoonStock’s latest editor’s choice collection. We’ve had a couple cartoons in their themed collections in the past but this is only the second time we made the marketing email that goes out to their entire customer mailing list (the first one was the vaccine cartoon from 2021 that we mentioned last week). Golly!
This cartoon was first published in Kappan and was then republished in School Administrator.
If you’re enjoying yourself at Buddy and Romeo’s expense so far, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get exclusive comics and commentaries; behind-the-scenes drawings and project developments; and access to this entire Substack archive. Plus, the more coffee we drink, the more we’ll create.
Oh, I almost forgot. I washed my hands 37 times on Thursday, March 13, 2025. Less than I expected and less than the previous two times I counted (in 2004 and 2019). Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. 37 times in one day sounds low to me. I’ll try to do better.
Join us behind the paywall for an update on our forthcoming book, Buddy and Romeo: Alone for the Holidays.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Buddy and Romeo Cartoon Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.