What follows is not a critique of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Street Fighter #1, an IDW comic by writer Paul Allor, artist Ariel Medel, colorist Sarah Myer and letterer Ed Dukeshire. At its core it is a silly comic about a group of turtles fighting a group of colorfully costumed humans created in the same manner that a child bangs together his action figures, and in that the book succeeds.
What this essay concerns itself with is the book’s setting of Atlantic City, a place I have lived near for more than half my life and whose exploits I have followed closely in my day job as an editor for the regional newspaper.
Atlantic City doesn’t have a ton of representation in comics. Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino is washed away by a tsunami in Infinity Gauntlet #2 (the actual casino closed in 2014 and was demolished in 2021, the last physical reminder of its namesake’s presence in the resort, removed about a month after he left the White House). DC’s Royal Flush Gang has a headquarters there. The Vertigo series 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso set some of its events there. The android Human Torch and Toro fought a weird puppet guy there once in the Golden Age.
I don’t purport this to be a full accounting, but the point is, it’s not New York or Gotham or Metropolis.
What it is, is a seaside casino town that turned to gambling in 1978 to pull itself out of poverty, enjoyed about 25+ years as the gaming capital of the East Coast while creating a clear dividing line between the haves (the casinos) and the have-nots (everyone else), found itself on the brink of bankruptcy after a number of casinos closed because other states legalized non-tribal gaming, and in the past five or so years has desperately tried to diversify its portfolio through education (Stockton University opened a campus there in 2018), health care (AtlantiCare has expanded its hospital campus there) and aviation (though the airport that bears Atlantic City’s name is actually based in nearby Egg Harbor Township and the city’s own airfield closed in 2006).
In many ways, Atlantic City is a gambler in one of its casinos, down on its luck but truly convinced it just needs one win to turn its fortunes around.
It’s a fascinating story, but not one for which there’s a ton of room in a comic about whether Raphael or Guile would win in a fight.
It makes sense why this comic is set in Atlantic City. The Turtles live in New York, and if they were looking to test their mettle in a fighting tournament, Atlantic City was once famous for its boxing.
Once.
Atlantic City was where Mike Tyson beat Michael Spinks in 1988 in 91 seconds. Where a 40-something-year-old George Foreman sought to prove he still had it by challenging Evander Holyfield in 1991. Where Sugar Ray Leonard hung up his gloves after losing his final fight to Hector “Macho” Camacho in 1997. But Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall hasn’t seen a big fight since Sergey Kovalev dominated Bernard Hopkins on Nov. 8, 2014.
Sure, the city still hosts the occasional boxing event, along with MMA, UFC and WWE, but the days of Atlantic City as a star-studded haven for the sweet science have long since faded.
(That said, if they’re Street Fighters, why are they indoors in a ring, sans the presence of traditional boxers from the franchise like Balrog and Dudley?)
Like any good comic artist, Medel clearly used Google to find reference photos of the city from which to draw. The skyline and street scenes are accurate, down to the unique architecture of the main entrance of Bally’s Atlantic City. The interior casino shots could be any of the city’s nine gaming halls — no windows; tacky, clashing colors; ridiculous flooring and ceiling patterns worthy of a Dan Flashes shirt; a preponderance of old people in visors — but the exteriors understand the assignment. All the glitz and glamor of Pacific Avenue with none of the shootings, fentanyl and prostitution.
After Raphael and Guile’s bout is ended by disqualification, the turtles find themselves roaming said generic casino floor, where they run afoul of a security guard who refers to them collectively as “youse” (rhymes with moose). This one jarred me a bit. Of course I’ve heard people around here say “youse” as the second person plural. But it’s not as common here as it is in, say, Philadelphia and its surrounding towns (and Ireland, and New Zealand, and South Africa — it’s a lot more global than you’d think).
If you really want to hear some “youse,” wait till summer, when the entire cast of Mare of Easttown goes “down the shore” to line up for “wooder ice” and “beggels.” Maybe this security guard’s from DelCo.
After this exchange, and in a bid to delay his upcoming fight with Chun-Li, Michelangelo says he wants to ride the 16-story-tall Ferris wheel. He’s referring to the Observation Wheel at Steel Pier, a 227-foot-tall attraction with 40 climate-controlled gondolas that opened in 2017. At a cost of $14 million, it is the third largest Ferris wheel in the country. And the COVID-19 pandemic messed with the pier’s ability to make loan payments on it, such that it had to seek forgiveness from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.
That’s about the extent of the local references in this issue. Perhaps future issues of TMNT vs. Street Fighter will make further use of their setting, throwing in local hotspots like White House Sub Shop, The Pool at Harrah’s or the big Nike store in Tanger Outlets The Walk. Perhaps not. Again, this is primarily about two brands of well-known IP fighting to settle an arcade debate from 30 years ago. Either way, I’ll be watching.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
