Thirty Days of Turtles: Roadkill Rodneys

Recently I decided that if I want to keep having new content on this blog, I'm going to have to branch out beyond Marvel and DC. They'll always bring in new content, and I'm sure I'll continue to find old ones I've missed, but it's time to move toward more unfamiliar territory. With that in mind, and because they have a new movie out, I thought I'd kick this new era off with Thirty Days of Turtles!

That's right: From June 3 to July 2, there'll be a post each day highlighting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles canon immigrants. Now, because TMNT canon is a little confusing, it can be hard to tell what counts as a canon immigrant and what doesn't. So for the purposes of this blog, a TMNT canon immigrant is anything (a) from the movies, cartoons, video games, toy lines, or tie-in comic series that later appeared in (b) TMNT volumes 1, 2, or 4 [because they're by the original creators] or TMNT volume 5 [because the original creators are involved, it's the new official continuity, and its goal is to use as much of the diverse TMNT lore as possible].

With that in mind, let's look at today's entry: Roadkill Rodneys!

Roadkill Rodneys were a creation of the animated series, and first appeared in the episode "Enter the Shredder" (December 1987), where they were used to kidnap the rhino and warthog that were used to make Bebop and Rocksteady. But there was a hitch: they didn't have a name. They were just random one-wheeled worker bots.

The name came in 1990 when, as best I can tell, it appeared in the NES strategy guide for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, which was a home version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tirtles: The Arcade Game (1989). The "II" is there because Nintendo positioned it as a sequel to the movie.

Since they were on the show, they of course featured in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures series, but their first real comics appearance was in IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutanimals #4 (June 2015), where they were guarding Null's base.