History of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"The Turtles do have parents. They are Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, who put up their last $2,000 to create the comic book of their dreams.

KE: "Peter and I came up with the Ninja Turtles in a lot of ways out of a love of comics, and some silliness. Late one night after watching some bad TV, and feeling really silly, I did a drawing of a turtle with a mask on and nunchucks strapped to his arms, to make Peter laugh."

PL: "So then I had to do my own version of it, and change a few things, tweaked it a little bit, threw it back at Kevin -- kinda dueling sketches. And, ended up Kevin made a drawing of four turtles, each with a different martial arts weapon and in pencil, which I inked, and added to his 'Ninja Turtles', 'Teenage Mutant.' So then we had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that was the beginning of it."

"I wanna stress that we were laughing to kill ourselves at the time. Sort of chucked the drawing aside, and the next morning we get up and looked at the drawing and said, "Geeze, we should really come up with a story to tell how they got to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that's when we began working on the first issue."

Thus began a whirlwind of merchandising, tv series offers, movie deals, video games, and on and on and on.

Kevin and Peter only worked on a dozen or so issues of TMNT together before the "business" end of it all totally consumed them. In addition, both creators were expanding their horizons... finding new and wonderful things to create.

After the hugely popular TMNT cartoon ended it's 10 season run, in 1996, Eastman and Laird once again teamed up for a sort of TMNT renaissance. They'd struck a deal with Fox Kids for a live action series, and went to work collaborating on ideas. As popular as the series was, the network cancelled it in the first season, and the TMNT franchise faded for a few years.

The TMNT lived on in the hearts of the fans, and gained a niche following on the Internet through fan sites, fan art and fan fiction.

In 2001, after Kevin Eastman sold his share of the TMNT to Peter Laird, who was insistant on reviving an interest in the heroes, a new comic book was drawn up for Mirage Publishing. Plans immediately went underway for a new CGI movie. Unfortunately, those plans fell through. Undaunted, Peter got the media interested in the property once again.

2002 saw Playmates faithfully sign on as the exclusive toy manufacturer, and the line has been extremely successful. A new television series deal for Fox was signed by 4Kids Entertainment, and Konami returned to create cross-platform video games for 2003.

The new cartoon series has been going strong for four seasons now (2006), there are several new video games, and in 2007 an all new, all CGI feature film will be released. It is being developed by Mirage Studios, Imagi Entertainment, with Kevin Munroe writing and directing, and distributed by Warner Bros. and the Weinstein Bros.

Once again the Turtles are a hot property.