Peter Laird was born in 1954 in North Adams, Massachusetts, attended the University of Massachusetts, and got his BA. He then settled down to make a meager living selling comics and sci-fi novels to patrons of his used bookshop and selling drawings to newspapers and magazines in Northampton. Kevin Eastman was born in 1962 in Portland, Maine, and briefly attended the Portland School of Art and the University of Southern Maine. One day, on the bus from Amherst to Northampton, Kevin poked through a discarded copy of Scat, which happened to contain some of Peter's work. Checking into Scat as a possible market for his own work, Kevin was told that his style was very like to Peter's, and was directed to Peter's apartment. Discovering that they had common idols and circumstances, they began to work together.

Years later, Eastman and Laird had split up, moved away, and moved back in together. One memorable day in 1983, likely in November, the two played a game of "dueling sketches," during which Kevin sketched out a turtle with a mask and nunchucks. Peter elaborated on the warrior turtle concept, then Kevin wondered, "Why not four turtles?" He sketched them out, dubbing them "Ninja Turtles." Then Peter disagreed, "No....Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

It was May of 1984 when the two artists, armed with a $1,000 loan from Kevin's uncle, and $700 of their own hard-earned bucks, produced the first TMNT comic. 40 page, black and white, 2-color cover, newsprint. Many artists and writers in the industry thought it was a sort of joke. A neat joke, but a joke nonetheless. And that was what the creators had in mind. But the readers didn't. The comic quickly developed a cult following, as well as causing a black and white comic frenzy.

In 1986, the two met Mark Freedman, a toy licensing agent who convinced the toy company Playmates not only to create toys based on the comic book, but to fund the first 5 episodes of the TMNT cartoon. The action figures debuted in June of 1988, and had instant sucess. Playmates still makes them, and they still sell like crazy today. And the cartoons have by no means died.

The TMNT gave rise to all the traditional merchandise: shirts, hats, coffee mugs, posters, and the like. They also spawned more than one role-playing game, including the new one from Palladium Books. And then there were the movies. Starting in 1989, with the first live-action TMNT movie ever, ads boasted "This is no cartoon, dude!" And indeed it wasn't. With a revised version of TMNT, the foursome hit the movie theaters...Not once, but 2 more times! Even though the Turtle frenzy had died down by the mid-90s, when the third movie came out, it was still a success. Now a fourth movie may be in the works, tis told.

And today, the Turtles have moved back to the little screen, with the new live-action show, Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. Ratings for the first few shows are extremely high, and a busy season appears to lie ahead.

But the big one, of course, was always the comic book. With Mirage Publishing, the comic book began its trek into popularity. Mirage took it through volume one in total black and white with 60+ comics, not to mention numerous specials. Then came volume 2, with around 13 books. At the same time, Archie Comics was also licensed to produce the comics. Their books were always in color, and they produced at least 70 books that I know about, plus numerous miniseries based on or inspired by the Turtles. And all the time, Kevin and Peter were there, drawing, writing, supervising. Until the day when they decided that it was time to pass it on. And in the fall of 1996, Image Comics took up the reins. They have taken over the Turtles, although Kevin and Peter are still on the job in a supervisory capacity, and have produced some 11 issues.

To sum it all up, the Turtles have gone through a lot of changes. Cartoons, movies, comics, live-action shows, they've done it all. But through all that, they've managed to hang on. And no matter how many times the details are changed, they will always be the same. They will always be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

(Feel free to speak out if anything on here looks wrong! After all, I didn't have all the sources I would have liked, and I certainly do not want to carry inaccurate information!)

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