Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles started as a self-published one-shot comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird but due to its sudden popularity became a self-published comic series and later an entire media franchise. Though it is the most successful indie comic ever made, the story behind Kevin Eastman the co-creator and how he lost millions from his own property as well as the other influences he has had on the indie comic scene. This will be more of a conversation on the effects of TNMT, Its development and Kevin Eastman instead of the comic itself as it's popular enough that most individuals will know about it.

TNMT started as a joke drawing by Eastman to amuse his friend Laird, a turtle with a nunchuck. It was funny to him as the idea of a martial artist version of such a slow animal was weird. Laird later did his own drawing and the two thought it was funny and weird enough to do a one shot comic for adding aspects such as the turtles being teenagers, later creating Mirage Studios
The two were an incredibly collaborative duo both working on the writing, layouts and final art for the comic, later self publishing it and having to take loans from family members and cut into both of their savings to do so and using whatever money they had left to advertise the comic. Due to its weird nature it was picked up by many distributors and all 3000 of the comics were sold out and the duo had to reprint them which also sold out quickly. Eastman and Laird were surprised by its success having to constantly reprint it and caused them to make another issue for the comic which like the one-shot kept selling out despite the fact they kept increasing the numbers of printed comics each time. Printing close to 55,000 copies is an incredible amount for independent comics especially in the mid 80s.

The duo however thought that maybe the comic was a fad as they never spent a lot on materials working for the comic, drawing it small and upscaling it for print as well as using only black and write with some screen tones instead of colouring the comic until issue 5. The series peaked at issue 8 where they sold over 100,000 copies. Around this time they also started licensing the property for merchandise like toys and games. The brand by 1986 was so popular that a licensing agent, Mark Freeman, wanted to work with the license but also let Eastman and Laird keep the creative control of their work. Which led to the cartoon series and the tonal shift in the comics as it was more dark and gritty in the indie comic before becoming kid friendly, which became a hit. Though the duo had mixed opinions on the cartoon but decided to let the cartoon do what it wants while they can do what they want with the comic. The movie released in 1990 was also at the time the most successful independent movie ever created.

However the duo didn’t realize how much work had to go into managing the brand so they didn’t have enough time to create the series especially in their collaborative way which took a lot more time. Deciding to hand the series off to artists and writers they trusted while at least one of the two were editing or co-writing the series. They were busy dealing with other problems such as strike lawsuits and selling the merchandise overseas and the problems that entailed becoming businessmen instead of creators. Eastman reacted to this badly as he was more a creative than a businessman wanting to manage the creative side of the comics instead of managing the brand so he went on to fight for creators rights in comics and focused on allowing their studio artists to create their own properties instead of just working on TMNT. But when he did he wanted to get collaborations with artists that can spin their own unique twists on TMNT such as Simon Bisley. However this wasn’t all positive as many accused Eastman as only saying he wants creators to write instead of acting for them and led some of these old collaborations to not be allowed to be reprinted. Laird decided to step down from managing and go back to work creatively on the comics and Eastman decided to try and make his own publishing company more in line with ideas of creator writers, Tundra comics.

Tundra though a failure could be seen as a predecessor to Image comics having very similar publishing style such as allowing the creators of the comics to keep full rights to their characters as well as giving an 80-20 profit split to the creators. The split wasn’t nearly enough to keep a publishing company running but wasn't changed likely due to Eastman being young and blinded by the TNMT success, even investing and wasting budget on ideas like creating a printing press company and an European office instead of licensing the comics out to European publishers. It also lacked editors making the comic quality mixed and the publisher not having a real identity. He overruled his own company president who made suggestions to invest in editors and a comic to follow current trends, showing that he really didn’t understand how a company should be run. Though it failed quickly it had some successes like The Crow series which was made into a movie duology. Other mistakes like overpaying creators in advance and over printing were other major causes that led to the company closing, it didn’t help that Eastman who was really the actual president of the company slowly stopped managing it to go back to work on TNMT. Which overtime changed so much and had Eastman and Laird having completely different opinions on how it was working on the creative side made them drift apart.

Due to both of these reasons Kevin Eastman felt like he was done with his creation and wanted to move onto other creative endeavours so he sold his shares in mirage and TMNT and sold his shares to Laird in 2000, and moved on to working as a publisher in Heavy Metal magazine. A few years later Liard sold TMNT to Nickelodeon for 60 million dollars and Eastman got none of that profit, who himself lost 14 million on Tundra comics. Eastman would later go back to working as a writer on TMNT again for the comics.
Eastman’s tale is that of an incredibly successful independent creator who obviously loved to work on comics as he was passionate about worker rights and would constantly attend events to talk about comics and his favourite creators. However its also a warning about how everything starts independently before it becomes a media empire and how that can cause you to lose track of what you love, it also warns you about how one massive success can’t allow you to become overconfident as the next project may not be as successful as you hoped. Overall TMNT is an iconic series and is still a beacon of inspiration for independent comic creators hoping that they can make it like them one day and the characters of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael are beloved and would of never been created without Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman’s mutual love for comics.