kartooner

From illuminatedlatern.com:

“In 1984, really at the height of the Amer­i­can ninja craze, inde­pen­dent comic book writ­ers and artists Kevin East­man and Peter Laird came up with an idea for a spoof of the new type of dark, gritty comics that had been the lat­est trend — comics such as Dare­devil, in which the blind avenger was fight­ing off a ninja clan called “The Hand,” and fac­ing Elek­tra, a ninja assas­sin. They wrote and self pub­lished their comic book, called Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles, about exactly what the title says, and that’s pretty much when all hell broke loose. It became a run­away suc­cess, prompt­ing four re-printings of the first issue by the time the sec­ond one came out. I still remem­ber the excite­ment sur­round­ing the comic at that time.

Stores couldn’t keep it in stock. I man­aged to pick up the sec­ond print­ing of the first issue and the first print­ing of the sec­ond issue, then watched in amaze­ment as the value of both of them shot through the roof. I held on to them, think­ing that, as time went on, they would be more and more valu­able. The comics were dark, bloody, but a lit­tle funny, as well. If noth­ing else, they were unique. Or at least, they were unique at first. But almost imme­di­ately, other inde­pen­dent comics jumped on the band­wagon, and had some suc­cess rid­ing their coat­tails. Comics like Ado­les­cent Radioac­tive Black Belt Hamp­sters and Cold Blooded Chameleon Commandoes.

But there was only so far such a par­ody could go, and by the eighth issue, I was pretty bored with the whole thing. The knock-offs faded away, and it seemed that TMNT would do the same. My comic books, once val­ued in the mid-fifties to one hun­dred dol­lars each, could now barely com­mand ten. But where the orig­i­nal con­cept fiz­zled, the over­all idea, about four ninja tur­tles, blos­somed. With just a lit­tle re-tooling, a lighter tone, some more fun added to the sto­ries, the Tur­tles went on to kids car­toon fame. The licens­ing dol­lars started pour­ing in for cre­ators East­man and Laird, for action fig­ures, bed­spreads, hats, T-shirts, cos­tumes, books, and every­thing else under the sun.

Archie comics started pub­lish­ing a series of TMNT comic books, based on the new look of the car­toon series. By the time Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles: The Movie was released, the cre­ators were mil­lion­aires sev­eral times over. The rest of East­man and Laird’s comic book his­tory plays like penance done for their sin of suc­cess, form­ing their own comic com­pany and pro­mot­ing and print­ing only the high­est qual­ity alter­na­tive and inde­pen­dent writ­ers and artists.“

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