The term influential is used a lot, and sometimes wrongly. Sometimes it's used as a pseudonym for popular but “influential” means it influenced others. A list of the most influential comics would probably include Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, The Jack Kirby era of Fantastic Four, Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury and some more obscure comics like Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg or Will Eisner’s Mission from God (The first Graphic Novel). But Eastman and Laird’s Turtles is often overlooked, and I’m going to explain why it’s one of the most influential comic series.
Simply put the original Ninja Turtles was Punk rock. Like Punk it wasn’t about professionalism, in fact that's part of why it worked. A couple of art school rejects just sat down and drew their comic, giving it a DIY feeling like Punk. The Ramones or the Sex Pistols weren’t virtusos but they had passion and energy. Nobody would confuse Peter Laird or Kevin Eastman’s art for John Byrne’s in fact a common criticism of their work is that it's “amateurish” but that’s part of the appeal. Some fans probably picked up their self published comic and thought “I can draw better than these dudes” but that’s ok, from the drones of The Ramones came more mainstream music like Blondie so the same applies to comics. Without the massive success of the Turtles would Ben Edlund have self published The tick? Not to mention other self published comics like; Xenozoic tales, or Mike Allred’s Madman or The Crow. Would the Image comics founders have left Marvel without knowing that there was a market for comics not made by Marvel or DC? Not to mention the amount of knock offs like Solson publications “Sultry Teenage Super Foxes” or “Cold blooded Chameleon Commandos'', “Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils”, “Pre-Teen Dirty Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos”, “Bucky O’Hare”, “Samurai Cop” (which is the first comic published with art by Jim Lee) or “Reagan’s Raiders” and that’s just from self published comics. Knock off cartoons trying to get a toy license The Toxic Avenger (a trashy and ultra-violent B-movie by Troma) was reworked into a cartoon called Toxic Crusaders, Street Sharks, Biker Mice from Mars, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce go!, Butt Ugly Martians and more. To try and capitalise on this craze Dic entertainment did a butchered dub Kyatto Ninden Teyandee renaming it “Samurai Pizza Cats”, it was so blatant an attempt to copy the TMNT that it even had “They’ve got more fur than any Turtle ever had” sung in the theme tune.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn’t the first self published comic to find an audience and longevity, (that would be Cerebus the Aardvark which we don’t talk about for obvious reasons) but it was the first to have a mainstream crossover appeal. Almost from the beginning they had merchandising offers for merchandise, the famous one is The Playmates toys who made the action figures, but earlier deals they made were with Palladium to make a Tabletop RPG and Solson publications with Martial Arts training manuals. But more interesting and relevant is mini figures for the Tabletop game made by Dark Horse, yes the same Dark Horse known for Usagi Yojimbo and Hellboy.
Comic book art in the 80’s started to change, the default art style for Marvel was John Buscema’s and DC’s was very similar, but suddenly these elongated hunky characters were changing. Now comic heroes were more muscular and squat, Eastman and Laird weren’t shy about talking about their love of Jack Kirby, going so far as to give Kirby a cameo in the Donatello one-shot and drawing him a Birthday card. But Kirby had fallen out of favour, his art was now seen as more crude like Eastman and Laird’s. Jack Kirby was also now infamous for his failures, like Thundarr the barbarian, Devil Dinosaur and The Eternals. His projects at DC all under performed and were hated by the publisher, but now The Fourth World Saga is considered a classic, Kamandi and Etrigan the demon are also now cult favourites. DC probably thought Jack Kirby’s work for them would replicate his successful Marvel work but I don’t think anything could because when Jack created Captain America,The Fantastic Four or The Mighty Thor for Marvel that was fresh. Even though his work at Marvel wasn’t all hits, Incredible Hulk was cancelled after 6 issues. But the narrative around Jack had changed by 1992 that Image Comics asked Jack to be their figurehead (like Stan Lee is for Marvel).
Not a bad legacy for a comic that Pawn Stars only valued the first 5 issues of at $250. (note issue one usually sells for about $2000).
