﻿Great ideas don’t appear in a vacuum.
Even the most bizzare, out-there concepts come from somewhere,
and when it comes to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
they wear their influences proudly on their shells.
What kinda world is this?
Grim. Gritty. My kinda place!
When Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the turtles in 1984,
they weren’t trying to build a multimedia empire,
they just wanted to parody the current trends in some of their favorite comic books.
Four of them to be precise,
each one of which contributed key elements to the Turtles mythos.
I’m Moose and these are
The Comics that Inspired the Ninja Turtles
We’ll start with by far the most important,
Frank Miller’s 'Daredevil.'
Stan Lee and Bill Everett’s 1964 creation took a while to find his own identity.
For decades, he was more-or-less Spider-Man with a grad school diploma,
but when a rising artist named Frank Miller took over the writing duties in 1981,
he transformed the character with a gritty film-noir aesthetic,
and oodles of mysticism and martial-arts action.
Miller’s 'Daredevil' helped bring the japanese mercenaries known as ninjas out of the shadows and into the pop culture spotlight,
and the resulting shinobi craze had a huge impact on Eastman and Laird.
But the connection goes much deeper than sais and shuriken.
Their original ‘Turtles’ comics borrow heavily from Miller’s aesthetic,
the heavy linework and impossibly filthy rooftops, back alleys,
and yes, sewers of 1980s NYC.
There are plenty of more overt references too,
like how the evil ninja cult called the Hand were reworked into the Foot,
and Matt’s grizzled mentor Stick became the more diminutive Splinter.
The connection goes deeper than names, too,
because Daredevil and Donatello share the exact same origin.
When Matt Murdock saves a blind man from a speeding truck,
a canister of radioactive ooze cracks him in the face,
robbing him of his sight but giving him superpowered senses.
According to Eastman and Laird,
the exact same container bounced into a bowl of tiny turtles,
knocked them in the sewer,
and mutated them into the heroes in a halfshell we all know today.
Obviously, this extremely unofficial tie-in can’t be considered Marvel canon,
but it’s a great example of how closely the Turtles are tied to Frank Miller’s work,
and not just Daredevil.
The TMNT also borrowed from another Miller masterpiece called
'Ronin'
Miller’s fascination with feudal Japan didn’t end with 'Daredevil.'
After he left Marvel, he headed across town to the Distinguished Competition,
where he released ‘Ronin,’
a four part miniseries about an ancient Samurai seemingly resurrected in a cyberpunk New York City.
While it didn’t have quite the same impact as his Daredevil run,
the intense, impressionistic comic book still left its mark on pop culture.
Let’s put it this way:
If you like ‘Samurai Jack,’
you can thank ‘Ronin’ and Frank Miller.
And if you’re a Turtles fan, ‘Ronin’ played a part in their early development, too.
Eastman and Laird’s original TMNT logo is lifted straight from Miller’s title, for one,
and the awesome duels and swordfights are clearly reflected in the Turtle’s clashes with the Foot,
but beyond that,
‘Ronin’ might also responsible for the TMNT’s fixation with science fiction.
After the somewhat down-to-earth first issue,
the first Turtles series takes a sharp turn into sci-fi
and pretty soon they’re hopping dimensions,
battling anthropomorphic Triceratons,
and hanging out with fugitive androids in a world that looks a lot like Miller’s future dystopia.
So, we’ve pretty much established where the ‘Ninja’ part of the equation came from,
but what about the whole ‘Teenage Mutant’ deal?
That comes from number three on our list,
'The New Mutants'
This one is a little more on the nose.
Marvel’s ‘X-Men’ weren’t the biggest hit when they debuted,
but after a reboot in the ‘70s and a legendary run by Chris Claremont and John Byrne,
Mutants were all the rage in comics,
so Marvel commissioned a spinoff with a new class of gifted youngsters that were a little closer to Lee and Kirby’s original concept:
A secret team of teenage mutants who fought evil under the watchful eye of their wise old mentor.
Sound familiar?
The similarities pretty much end there, though,
Eastman and Laird just wanted to poke fun at mainstream comics’ obsession with milking mutants for all they were worth,
because they had no intention of bringing their creation to any of the bigger publishers.
That’s because they had their own independent path to success,
that was paved by a comic called
'Cerberus'
Dave Sim’s 30-year, 300-issue epic is one of the most impressive storytelling feats in the history of comics.
What started as a simple parody of Conan the Barbarian as an aardvark,
evolved into a complex, philosophical odyssey packed into dense, phonebook-sized volumes.
I can’t really recommend reading it today, however,
since it also became openly misogynistic, homophobic, and utterly insane as it went on.
It didn’t start out that way though,
and beyond the whole “talking animals in serious situations” conceit,
Cerberus’s true influence on the Turtles was on the publishing side.
In 1977, Sim decided to produce and release his Aardvark epic all on his own,
without any help from the larger comic book companies or distributors.
Along with other titles like Wendy and Richard Pini’s ‘ElfQuest,’
the self-publishing revolution transformed the underground comix scene intro a true independent industry.
Creator-owned indie comics were thriving, and as the collectors’ market kicked into gear,
everyone was looking for the next big thing,
and Eastman and Laird had it.
With funding from their tax returns and a $1,000 loan from Eastman’s uncle,
The pair released the first issue of Ninja Turtles under their Mirage Comics label,
so named because they had no offices or anything else you’d expect from a real company,
but they sold the illusion because they talked a big game.
They advertised 'TMNT' #1 in trade magazines and comic conventions,
and sent a four-page press kit to 180 different TV and radio stations.
Between the buzz, the intriguing concept and tantalizingly small print run,
buyers immediately snapped up all 3,275 copies of the cheaply-printed, black-and-white comic,
and when toy licensors came calling,
the Turtles were transformed into a global phenomenon nearly overnight.
Hey, Michelangelo! What's happening with the Turtles?
Well, us toon turtles, y'know, from the Turtles cartoon show, spent the day fighting Shredder and the Foot, using the Turtle Toon Cycle!
Today, it’s easy to think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as cartoon characters, movie stars, and action figures,
but before anything else,
they were a comic book, about other comic books,
and Eastman and Laird’s obsession with the artform,
is the true source of turtle power.