Buy One Of The First Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Drawings Ever!
While the kids of the 80s and 90s are terrified that Michael Bay is going to rape their childhood, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird are giving them a chance to hang on a bit longer, with one of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle drawings ever!
According to Worst Previews, Eastman and Laird, the original creators of the tubular bunch, are auctioning off the drawing. Eastman also explained how the Turtles originally came to be:
“Late in November 1983, Peter Laird and I were sharing a studio (our living room) in Dover, New Hampshire. One work night, in an effort to make Peter laugh, I drew a sketch of this character I called a ‘Ninja Turtle’ and threw it onto Peter’s desk. He did laugh, and did a version of his own — to which I needed to take it one step further, and did a pencil sketch of four different Turtles, each holding a different weapon — and gave it to Peter, who wanted to ink it in — and when he did, he added ‘Teenage Mutant’ to the ‘Ninja Turtle’ part of the logo, and we both fell off our chairs!
The next day, we both looked at the drawing, and decided that we really needed to come up with a story about how these characters came to be — and began to hammer out the story details. Deciding to make it an homage/parody to some of our heroes and inspirations (and dedicating it to them) we worked through the winter of 1983-84 and, after finding a local New England printer, we borrowed money from my Uncle Quentin and we printed the first 3,000 copies — premiering the book at a local Portsmouth comic convention May 5th, 1984.
From that day forward, and for the next 30 years, the TMNTs became a worldwide phenomenon (cartoons, toys, and movies) that even to this day we still try to completely understand — and it all started with this drawing.”
