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Hey, remember the Street Sharks? Well they're back, in comic form, over 30 years after their initial debut.
IDW, who also publishes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, have announced the return of the Street Sharks in a five issue limited series by writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Ariel Medel, via IGN.
If you grew up in the Ninja Turtle dominated '90s, there were plenty of radical, tubular, bodacious, awesome knock-off lines that took the TMNT's anthropomorphic-animals-as-superheroes concept and ran with it. But none of those subsequent franchises was quite like Street Sharks, which became the Turtles' heir apparent in the mid-'90s.
Here's a gallery of covers for Street Sharks #1 by Philip Murphy, Elizabeth Beals, Kevin Anthony Catalan, and Khary Randolph:
The Street Sharks franchise centered on a line of delightfully colorful and carnivorous toys in an oversized scale that put an emphasis on the characters' massive mouths full of razor sharp teeth which they use to literally chew up the very streets they protect. The main cast consisted of heroic brothers Ripster, Jab, Streex, and Big Slammu, who are all humanized sharks (see how it kinda sounds a lot like TMNT, but also kinda different?).
I was solidly a Ninja Turtles kid, growing up through most of the '80s and all of the '90s. By the time Street Sharks came around I had seen my fair share of Samurai Pizza Cats, Biker Mice From Mars, Wild West Cowboys of Moo Mesa, and many other cartoons and toylines that took that mold as far as it could go.
That said, Street Sharks has always stood out among fans and collectors as one of the best toylines of its era, and a concept that managed to have some teeth at a time when mainstream animated shows were becoming more and more homogenized. I have very fond memories of the action figures in particular, so this seems like a great opportunity to help the cult favorite Street Sharks rise above their 'TMNT clone' reputation.
There's a new line of Street Sharks toys that kicked off back in 2024, and are now available through Mattel. Street Sharks #1 is scheduled for release in September.
The Street Sharks comic is brand new, but the TMNT have been in comics since the '80s. Here are the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics of all time.
