Kevin Eastman doesn't think Ninja Turtles could be produced today

Creative Bloq says Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman doesn't think it would be possible to get it created today. Some of the parts in discussion include:

Kevin says that when he meets fans at events like MCM Comic Con, he likes to ask them who their favourite Turtle is – “you can tell a lot about someone's personality,” he says.

That's part of what's made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles such an enduring success. The tone of the franchise has varied: the family-friendly animated series feels a world away from the edgy black-and-white comics that Kevin and Peter Laird began with ("there's a lot less murder and vengeance kind of stuff”), but the core concept remains: the team.

I guess that's the rather odd thing not everyone brings up - the comics were more adult, in contrast to the animated adaptations, and perhaps the live action movies too. But even if the more recent comics from IDW follow the playbook of the original comics, that still doesn't excuse how woke the new ones are.

Another key to the Turtles' legacy is that Kevin and Peter kept creative control. They self-published the comics, and they were personally involved in the first three movies and the first 300 cartoon episodes. That was intentional after learning from the artists who came before them.

“Pete and I were specifically influenced by Jack [Kirby] and his work at Marvel. He was doing work for hire, so he didn't get to participate in creative input or profit participation. We self-published Turtles with the full knowledge of what had happened to those giants that we stood on the shoulders of”.

In that case, why did they sell off the rights years later to companies like Viacom almost 2 decades ago? Seriously, do they really, all of a sudden, no longer care about their creations and what poor changes resulted? Come to think of it, why don't they try to buy them back? Now, about what Eastman thinks of the time when they originally created the Ninja Turtles 42 years ago:

The comics industry has changed massively since Turtles Issue 1, which was placed in comic stores via small number of sub distributors on a non-returnable basis. At that time, trade magazines like the Comic Buyer's Guide were the place to get word out, but it then depended on word of mouth.

Even the first issue did better than Peter and Kevin had hoped for, with its run of 3,000 copies allowing them to return the $1,200 loan they took from Kevin's uncle and also to pay rent for a couple of months. Would they have had such an instant success today?

“I think the Turtles would not at all have had the success it had then. The landscape has changed too much. It would be a completely different set of challenges.

“We were coming off a time in 1984 where you had the mainstream comics like Marvel and DC, the emergence of new publishers like Pacific Comics and Capital Comics, and this whole other foundation that started in the late 60s of underground comics – stuff you found mostly in head shops and intended for adults. It was a perfect storm of opportunity that gave us that foot in the door to find an audience.”

Today, there are more platforms, and Kevin welcomes the likes of Kickstarter and Indiegogo to allow self publishing both digitally and physically. But there's also more competition from other mediums.

That said, Kevin's very hopeful about the industry in general. The Last Ronin tapped into a shift towards prestige comics with mature legacy stories, and it drew a new audience not only to the Turtles but other comics too.

But what about the woke ingredients in the past number of years? What about the woke change to Splinter in a more recent film? That the old/new comics are more adult themselves is no excuse. If they're going to let the conglomerates who acquired the copyrights get away with this, and make no effort to buy back their creations, they've really let down the fandom they've had. And then Eastman actually cites Kirby as an inspiration, when here, the former, along with Peter Laird, later sold off much of the franchise? I'm sorry, it's just no use. By the way, does Eastman know Capital Comics only lasted a few years, and some of the comics they initially published, like Mike Baron's Nexus and Badger, were later transferred to First Comics for continuation?

Eastman is right there's far more competition today, and no telling if Ninja Turtles would be noticed as easily by Hollywood as it was in the late 80s. But he and Laird still made a big mistake selling off their properties to conglomeracy, and if Kirby made the same mistake with any creator-owned properties he had, that wouldn't reflect well on him either. If Eastman/Laird won't address any misuse of Ninja Turtles in the years since they sold it off, what's the point of these observations? And while it's great they got as far as they did back in the day, do they realize 3000 copies is still a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of units published in other mediums? Ninja Turtles is a great creation. But let's not delude ourselves by thinking a mere few thousand copies for a debut pamphlet is something to celebrate compared to millions for other mediums' output.