Kevin Eastman

In honor of it being Kevin Eastman’s Birthday, a week from today, I would like to share one of my many stories of a time I met up with Kevin.  Today’s story goes back to 1997 at the Words & Pictures Museum.  It was time for the Words & Pictures membership party and a handful of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fans from the TMNT-L mailing list decided to meet up for the event this year.  It was a busy weekend.  On Thursday, Kevin was doing a speech about his life at the museum and we also had the airing of the second episode of the Next Mutation that Friday.

Ever since I became a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I have been asked, why do I like TMNT?  A question people seem most interested in, hoping that I have some strange answer that will bring it all to light.  Every fan has a different answer for this, as there’s so many different reasons to like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, be it their character designs, their weapons, their enemies, their personalities, their friends and so much more.  Though the real truth about this question is there is no real answer.  If I only liked one thing about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, then most likely by now I would have moved into another fandom.  So in this write up I’m going to share the many things I like about the Turtles and why.

Since the first Ninja Turtle comic came out in originally in black and white back in 1984, there has been two different color versions of the comic released.  Well, now we can make that three, as today IDW is releasing the first issue of Mirage TMNT as a color comic.  Though let’s talk a little about each of the releases here starting with the first time the Mirage Turtles were ever colored.

When I first got into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I wanted to learn everything there was to know about them.  The best book was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Treasury.   Though there was another TMNT book that I used to help learn about the TMNT stuff out there.

Over the years many different books, webpages, interviews and stories have come out based on the origin of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Everyone has their favorites, including myself.  In the early 1990’s, I use to pick up everything I could find of Ninja Turtles, to try and learn as much as I could about them.

Throughout the years of being a Ninja Turtle fan, my collection has been growing.  Every year I get something new that joins the collection.  Growing since 1989, I have over 500 Ninja Turtle toys out of package and over 300 in package, as well as books, animation cels, original comic art, scripts and so much more.  To cover all of this on Cowabunga Corner is not something I really think I can do.

IDW Publishing has been doing a great job with keeping us Turtle fans on the edge of our seats.  We’ve got so much coming out that any fan can be excited about.  Though one of the coolest things they’re doing is re-releasing the Mirage Comics as they were in large hardcover books known as the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Ultimate Collection”.

The next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Film...

Throughout Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle history one thing that we’ve seen a lot of is reprints of the early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage Comics.  First Publishing was the first ones to really take up the comics and start putting them together as graphic novels.

One year ago, Nickelodeon released the very first image showing us the design for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  At that time the Turtles still had two toes, though the rest of the design looks a lot like the Turtles we’re seeing now.