It’s one of the biggest multimedia franchises in the world, but the creation of theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtleswas ultimately a happy accident. The story of how Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the Turtles in their living room is now the stuff of legend, but hearing the creators talk about it firsthand highlights just how unlikely it truly was.
In a 1998 interview withThe Comics Journal,Eastman explains how the TMNT formed in the living room of Laird. “I worked in a restaurant, and we drew every night,” Eastman explains, describing how he would hang out at Laird’s house. “I’d get off work and we’d hang out and draw.”
As Eastman tells it, the pair were working on another project, their early sci-fi effortFugitoid. Wanting to make his friend laugh, Eastman did a quick, goofy sketch:
While we were working on that one night, I did a drawing to make Pete laugh, of a turtle standing upright. He had a mask on. He had nunchucks strapped to his arms, and I put this Ninja Turtle logo on the top and flung it over to his desk.
Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesStarted Out as a Joke Between Friends
The Full First Issue Launched Under Mirage Studios in 1984
According to Eastman, Laird found the concept hilarious, and the two began trading sketches back and forth to make each other laugh:
He laughed, thought it was funny, and did a drawing to top my drawing, changed some things, fixed some things, and then I had to top his drawing. So, I did four of them all standing together with different weapons, and when he inked it, he added “Teenage Mutant” to the “Ninja Turtle” part, and we had this one drawing.
It’s a fairly innocuous beginning that could have been nothing more than a joke between friends, but Eastman and Laird found something in that sketch that made them want to revisit the idea. According to Eastman, both creators were intrigued to find out the backstory of these“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”:
Literally the next day we get up and we said … at the time we didn’t have any distracting paying work going on … “Let’s write a story to tell how they got to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” So we did.
Sorry to Ruin Your Childhood, But the OG Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Were Darker Than You Realize
Those who grew up with the TMNT will be shocked to learn that the turtles were hardened assassins with an affinity for violence in the classic comics.
Eastman and Laird started putting together a comic book built around their new concept. The two had already formed their own company to make comics: Mirage Studios, so called because, in the words of Eastman, “it was amiragebecause it wasn’t a studio, it was our living room.” The duo had begun self-publishing their own black-and-white comics, most notably the anthology seriesGobbledygook, where theirFugitoidstrip first appeared. But they didn’texperience their first success until the publication ofTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles#1 in 1984, which sold out of its small print run almost immediately and took the comics world by storm.
Eastman and Laird’s OriginalTeenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesSketches Are Now Iconic
Beloved by Fans the World Over
Eastman explains how he and Laird kept working on the first issue ofTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesinto 1984, eventually producing an over-sized, black-and-white comic:
We started working on that. And around February or March we’d finished 40 pages of a fleshed-out story, trying to justify why they got to be these mutant turtles. We borrowed some bits from Daredevil’s origin, and we created the rest.
Using money from a tax refund and a loan from Eastman’s uncle, thetwo were able to scrape together enough to put together a print-run of a little over three-thousand copies. Thanks to an ad in the Comics Buyer’s Guide and overall word-of-mouth, the TMNTfound their audience, kicking off a black-and-white boom that saw severalsmall-press publishers attempt to cash-in onTurtles’ success.
The original sketches done by Eastman and Laird have been widely circulated in the decades since, becoming iconic pieces of franchise lore. They’ve become so iconic that they’ve even been merchandised themselves, withPlaymates and NECA producing action figures based on Eastman and Laird’s very first TMNT sketch.NECA has even released a two-pack of figures based off of the original “joke” sketches done by both Eastman and Laird, meaning the origin of the Turtles is well-chronicled in pop culture.
Looking for a more contemporary Turtles story that still honors Eastman and Laird’s original? Check out the new arc of IDW’sTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesby Jason Aaron and Juan Ferreyra, which begins with issue #6.
It’s almost unbelievable that one of the world’s biggest franchises started out as a joke sketch between two friends in their living room, but that’s often how it happens. Eastman discussing howTMNTcame about recalls the moment in the Beatles documentaryGet Backwhere Paul McCartney is playing around on his guitar and winds up stumbling upon the unforgettable opening guitar riff of the title song. Fans may have an idea in their heads that these iconic pieces of pop culture are created in a certain way, but oftentimes the creators wind up creating ideas like theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesby accident.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a multi-media franchise that began with Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s comics in the 1980s. Throughout the years, their comic books expanded to movies, TV shows, video games, and toys. Most notably, the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ran for nearly a decade and has become a nostalgic staple of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Several other movies have featured the four anthropomorphic turtle brothers (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael), including the trilogy of live-action films in the ‘90s and the more recent movies Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
