“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” turns 30 this month, making it officially older than many of our Multiversity staff. To celebrate, this week we are featuring a lot of Turtles content, including interviews from many of the creators who have made the Turtles what they are over the past 30 years of comics, all of whom are featured in the brand new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 30th Anniversary Special,” on sale on Wednesday from IDW. Today, we are focusing on the Turtles comics published by Image Comics, written by Gary Carlson, and illustrated by Frank Fosco. The Image series brought along major changes to the Turtles as characters, and also brought the book back to its black and white roots. We also have two pieces of exclusive unlettered art from Fosco – in color for the first time!
Before coming onto the book, what were your relationships like with the property?
Gary Carlson: I was just a casual fan. I had picked up a second pressing of issue #1 back in the day and my son was a fan of the movies and television cartoons.
Was the return to black and white comics a decision you guys made, or was that dictated from above? What did you think of making black and white Turtle comics?
GC: If that was the plan all along I’m not sure that we were aware of it. I think at least the first issue was drawn with color in mind. However, the plan all along was to take the book back to its independent
roots like Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Ronin, and to distance it from the cartoons.
Of all of the incredible TMNT comic runs, your run took the most chances, allowing the characters to undergo some major changes. What inspired you guys to take such risks with your storytelling?
GC: Our run took place in Erik Larsen’s universe, where time passes normally and the characters age every year. Characters there die and get injured. I bought copies of all the Mirage back issues and took my cue from the “Return to New York” storyline. We were just trying to tell fun, exciting stories.
When we started our run, everyone knew the cartoony show and movies and toys. When Frank and I told people we were working on the property, our comics friends mostly said “I’m sorry to hear that”. They considered it a fad that had passed. One of my best friends didn’t read our run until a few years later and told me then how much he enjoyed it. We just couldn’t attract new readers and seemed to piss off the old readers.
Of all of those major shake-ups (Leonardo losing a hand, Raphael assuming the title of Shredder, Cyborg Donatello), which is the one you look back on most fondly now?
GC: I still like them all. We weren’t planning to use Casey Jones much and I enjoyed having a reason for Raph to wear the hockey mask. How did the theme song go – “Donatello does Machines”? We made him a machine. Leo lost his hand because it was the first step in showing that the mutation or something would allow them to regenerate lost parts, and that the nano-technology armor was actually stopping that from happening with Donny.
Your run came out on Image, with some involvement from Erik Larsen, both on covers and with the intermingling of the Savage Dragon universe with the Turtles. What did Erik’s leadership bring to the book?
GC: It was all possible thanks to Erik. The TMNT guest-starred in one of the first issues of “The Savage Dragon” and it was lots of fun. I guess Mirage asked him to do the new series, but he was too busy establishing Dragon and recommended Frank and I. His initial directive was to physically differentiate the four turtles because we were going back to the red masks, not the color ID’d ones from the cartoons.
Continued belowWhat is especially interesting about your era of Turtles stories was that it was the first time the machinations of the book happened without steady input of the Mirage team. Were you operating in a bubble, or was there still input from the core Turtles creators?
GC: Everything I wrote was submitted to Peter Laird and Mirage first. Peter offered suggestions and gave the okay to proceed. When we first started, he suggested starting the series off with a bang by killing
off Splinter to more or less signify that the TMNT were grown up and on their own. As I recall, the main rule was NO FEMALE TURTLES.
What was it like to come back to the Turtles after an extended hiatus? Was there some unfinished business you wanted to address in this story, or was it just fun to play around in that world again?
GC: It was just a very fun experience and Bobby at IDW was great. It was just a story that took place some time after our series. There has been talk that if they reprint our run that we may get the chance to do
another issue or two to tie up all the loose ends, which would be nice.
What made you guys decide to color this new story, breaking with the look of your original run?
GC: I never gave it a thought. It was either Frank’s or IDW’s decision.
Imagine for a moment that after your run, the changes you put in place became canon – where do you think the Turtles would be today?
GC: Older and wiser, hopefully. At least one of them would probably have ended up living in Erik’s Chicago
where being a super freak is normal, possibly working with the police.
