Summary
- The plan of Superfly in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem takes inspiration from an old TMNT comic book villain, Old Hob.
- Superfly’s plan is to unleash the ooze and turn every animal into a mutant to enslave humanity, similar to Old Hob’s plan in the IDW TMNT comics.
- Superfly’s backstory and his hatred for humans make his plan more sympathetic and effective than Old Hob’s comic book story in Mutant Mayhem.
The plan concocted by the villain of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Superfly, took inspiration from an old TMNT comic book villain. Despite the franchise’s main source of popularity in recent years stemming from several mainstream TV shows and movies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles originated as a comic book series. Due to the more expansive nature of comics, a handful of original characters who were created for the initial stories have not appeared in the various other iterations of the franchise.
One of the comic book characters often used in most TMNT iterations is Baxter Stockman. The character is regularly presented as a scientist who transforms into a mutant fly. Despite this, Baxter Stockman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem story was somewhat different, with the villain Superfly being a creation of the scientist rather than Stockman himself. These creative liberties with TMNT lore allowed Mutant Mayhem to make other additions to the film, one being Superfly’s plan that takes inspiration from an obscure comic book character.
Mutant Mayhem’s Villain Plan Clones 1 TMNT Storyline
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Superfly’s plan is to unleash the ooze that created him, his mutant family, and the titular turtles on the world. Superfly wishes to do this in order to turn every animal on Earth into a sentient mutant so that his species can rise and enslave humanity after not being accepted by humans. This storyline may seem familiar to those knowledgeable with smaller TMNT stories, as it is a very similar plan to that of a comic book character named Old Hob.
In the IDW Comics TMNT run, Old Hob was introduced as a sentient, mutant cat. In issue #99 of the IDW TMNT comics, Old Hob succeeded in enacting a similar plan to that of Superfly’s from TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. A bomb was detonated in New York that transformed a large group of humans into mutant animals, enough to create Mutant Town which was the size of a New York borough. In creating more mutants and taking an entire section of New York from humans, Old Hob succeeded where Superfly failed in Mutant Mayhem.
Superfly’s Backstory Makes Old Hob’s Plan Even Better
Despite the similarities in each respective plot, Superfly’s backstory in TMNT: Mutant Mayhem makes his plan even better than Old Hob’s. While Old Hob was a good villain, his backstory was not as fleshed out as Superfly’s was in TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. In the film, Superfly saw Baxter Stockman as his father with his hatred for humans coming after TCRI soldiers murdered Stockman.
This extra incentive for Superfly to hate humans, as well as the prejudice shown throughout the movie against mutants, goes to make the character more sympathetic than many were expecting. In this sense, Superfly’s TMNT: Mutant Mayhem plan was much more effective than Old Hob’s comic book story. While the film received controversy for changing elements of TMNT lore, it is interesting to know that other, more obscure elements from wider TMNT stories were adapted in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
