Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles No. 8

***Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles No. 8*** is an issue of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's comic book series *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* featuring Cerebus.

## Story

### "Team Up with Cerebus"

In other dimension, Renet, who is an apprentice timestress, is attempting to steal a scepter that holds the sacred sands of time, which allows the holder to travel anytime and any place in the known universe by wishing it. She gets the scepter and is found by Lord Simultaneous. She wishes herself somewhere, anywhere to avoid him and ends up in New York City in 1986 with the Turtles.

Lord Simultaneous finds her, and to avoid her she wishes to go "anyplace on this Earth before humans recorded time." We then see some barbarians who know it is Tuesday, but don't know the year because as one of them says "I don't think we record that yet." An asterisk leads us to a footnote that says "yes we do -- it's 1406 - Tarim". The barbarians have woken up Cerebus who requests not to be awoken until sundown.

Then Renet and the Turtles jump into Cerebus' time, and Cerebus takes them for a witch and demons. Cerebus then challenges the turtles to a fight, but Renet stops them and explains what is going on. The group is then attacked, and someone takes the scepter from Renet in the battle. The group then gets some mercenaries and battles the group that took the scepter. Lord Simultaneous shows up just as the battle is drawing to a close, and he gets back his scepter, frees the group and sends everyone back to their proper time and place.

## Story Notes

* Much like the first issue of *Cerebus*, this story did not originally carry a title. "Team Up with Cerebus" was given to it when it was republished in the various TMNT collections.
* Fearing Dave Sim would not give permission to reprint this story in the TMNT collections, Mirage Studios prepared a Cerebus-free alternate version of the story, "The Paradox of Chudnovsky", in order to maintain continuity.

## Publication Notes

* "Team Up with Cerebus" has been reprinted in the original black & white in *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Collected Book - Volume One* (Mirage, 1990/2009), *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Volume 2* (IDW Publishing, 2018), *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles No. 8 - Ashcan* (The Waverly Press/Aardvark-Vanaheim, 2022) and *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles No. 8 - Remastered & Expanded* (The Waverly Press/Aardvark-Vanaheim, 2023).
* The story was reprinted in color in *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Book III* (First Publishing, 1987) and *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Works Volume 2* (IDW Publishing, 2013).

## Dave Sim on *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles No. 8*

* "Iconic", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 8", "(1986) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 8", "n/a", "The year is 1406.", "", "1406"

DISAGREE potentially – Dave Sim – I had forgotten the 1406 reference in Kevin’s script if that’s what you’re quoting. If it’s in there, that would put it in the same category as “Cerebus Dreams” high iconic but capable of being transferred to Canon or NS Canon after the fact depending on the fit. Is there anything about 1406 that would disqualify it? If not, it could be incorporated in the MV (Miscellany Volume) depending on how Pete Laird felt about it or at least designated as Canon with an appropriate footnote.

## References

 1. ↑ "The Paradox of Chudnovsky" on the TMNT wiki
2. ↑ Cerebus Archive Report #4