Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Cartoonist Kayfabe, kevin eastman, peter laird, teenage mutant ninja turtles, tmnt

When Marvel Offered To Publish The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird appeared on Cartoonist Kayfabe and talked about Marvel Comics' offer to publish Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In a recent Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube video, Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird on again, to go through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #5 together, page by page, panel by panel. And they took the opportunity to ask a question missed in a previous video, about Marvel Comics' offer to publish Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Peter Laird: "While we were in Sharon, Connecticut, we actually got approached by Peter David, who was one of the more well-known writers at Marvel I think we saw him at a convention or something and he you know we chatted with him and basically talked business and so forth and then he got back in touch with us and said that he had talked to Archie Goodwin at Marvel and they were interested in possibly taking on the Turtles as an Epic comic book. Do you remember this stuff?"

Kevin Eastman: "100% like yesterday because I remember, the conversation started with Peter David giving us a ride back to the convention to the hotel. Because we had to stop at a convenience store because he liked ho-hos…  they had a spinner rack then I bought one of his comics off the rack. It was funny because I saw one he had just written, he was writing the Hulk at that time and he was very enthusiastic. He'd never seen somebody actually buy one of his comics."

Epic Illustrated Magazine, and the following imprint Epic Comics, were set up by editor Archie Goodwin at Marvel Comics to publish mature readers versions of Marvel comic books, with creators having more control of the output, but also a line of creator-owned comics, such as Groo The Wanderer, Elfquest, Dreadstar, Six From Sirius, Akira, and even some colour Cerebus in Epic Illustrated. The imprint ran from 1982 to 1996, two years before Archie's death.

Peter Laird: "He talked to Archie about maybe bringing the Turtles to Marvel as a possible comic. We took a train down to New York City and met Archie Goodwin, and Peter David was there too, and they took us out to lunch, and it was a bit awkward. Because Archie said to us, so what do you want, what can we do for you? And Kevin and I looked at each other, and we were like, "well, Peter said that you're interested in publishing the Turtles as an Epic book"… and it was a bit of an awkward couple of minutes there, but eventually, we basically moved on with the conversation and Archie was a real nice guy. We really enjoyed talking with them, and he gave us kind of a boilerplate contract that was for us to look at, and we went back to Sharon, and we looked carefully at the contract. And as it as it was written, we would have had to have an editor overseeing our work, we would get paid about half of what we were making for the comic books that we were publishing, and we would have to have given up 50% of the licensing revenue that the property could generate. And we looked it over and thought about it for a while and then realized, no way, you know? Let's just keep doing what we're doing"

Kevin Eastman: "That's exactly right because, look Pete, you know, growing up, you had a dream of working for DC Comics or being part of the Marvel Bullpen and so when the opportunity came, the young person inside you, sort of jumped up and said "oh my goodness this is exciting to have this opportunity" and the conversation everything went exactly as Pete said, and when we finally looked at it, we said, "you know man, we're pretty lucky that we're doing what we're doing and how we're doing it. Because we also had a pretty decent perspective on things that were going on in the comic market at that time, which is part of why Archie started Epic Comics,  but a lot of artists wanted to protect their rights and their creation. The giants we stood on the shoulders of, like Jack,  that was creator/co-creator of most of the Marvel Universe and were not able to profit from or have any control over characters that he either created or co-created, even to the point where they weren't giving him his artwork back and things like that. We had had a conversation with Jack about it, and he's like, well, that it was the nature of the business at the time. We were aware enough and careful enough and knew that we were lucky enough to be doing what we wanted to do with our characters because it wasn't more than a year or two later, we were having very serious conversations that Mark Friedman brought to the table, to do other things with our characters that we had control over.

Peter Laird: "This is not to say that we didn't for at least a few minutes think, wow, this might be really cool to have our book published by Marvel Comics."

Kevin Eastman: "100%. It just didn't add up."

Watch the whole video here as well as previous episodes in their extensive comic book talk-through videos with the boys.

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