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FOR the AWESOME Peter Laird, without whom there would be no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! AND to our fans, who gave us the GREATEST job on the planet, to write and draw our own COMIC BOOK stories!
Ted Adams, CEO & Publisher Greg Goldstein, President & COO Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer Alan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: ARTOBIOGRAPHY. JUNE 2013. FIRST PRINTING. 2013 Kevin Eastman. 2013 Viacom International Inc. All Rights Reserved. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and all related titles, logos and characters are trademarks of Viacom International Inc. CEREBUS and all related characters are & 2013 Dave Sim. All Rights Reserved. IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Editorial offices: 5080 Santa Fe St., San Diego, CA 92109. The IDW logo is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Printed in Korea. IDW Publishing does not read or accept unsolicited submissions of ideas, stories, or artwork.

ISBN: 978-1-61377-661-2 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4
IDW founded by Ted Adams, Alex Garner, Kris Oprisko, and Robbie Robbins

Originally published in 2002 by Heavy Metal.

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H I S T O R Y
I always felt my artistic interest and skill was inherited, but I never knew to what depth until recently. I had seen many of my grandmother Eastmans watercolor paintings, and had traced over many car and motorcycle drawings of my Dads when I was younger. My mother was always doing something creative, and today paints better with oils and pastels than I ever will. It seems both sides of the family brought a piece to the table. It wasnt until George Eastman contacted me through the Ninja Turtles web site in the late 90s to confirm some facts for the Eastman family genealogy web site that he was building, did I get the full picture. It was there I first discovered Seth Eastman. Here are some of my favorite drawings, and the man himself.

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PHOTO BY SYDNEY ONE OF MY FIRST COVERS FOR CLAY GEERDES HIGH SCHOOL MURAL

MISTER DARK AND MOODY

MY NEW HERO

Arguably the foremost pictorialist of the American Indian, Seth Eastman was born in Brunswick, Maine on January 24, 1808. Thomas Jefferson was finishing his second term as president of the United States there were seventeen states. The eldest of thirteen children of Robert and Sarah Lee Eastman, Seth Eastman descended directly from Roger Eastman, the first Eastman in the colonies. An adventurous young man from Wiltshire (the southern country of England wherein lies Stonehenge), Roger boarded the ship Confidence in Southampton harbor, bound for Massachusetts Bay Colony, in April 1638. Upon graduation from West Point, Second Lieutenant Seth Eastman was assigned to the First Infantry and sent halfway across the continent to the edge of civilization at Prairie du Chien, where Colonel Zachary Taylor was rebuilding old log Fort Crawford from native rock. Like many of his fellow officers, Eastman had taken an Indian wife in 1831. The third daughter of Chief Cloudman of the Lake Calhoun village, her name was Stands Like A Spirit. Largely unbeknownst to the outside world, besides keeping peace on the frontier, Captain Eastman was also amassing an amazing portfolio of paintings of Indian life. Consumed by an unquenchable passion to preserve for posterity the customs of a race he thought to be dying, Eastman was assembling a pictorial history of The Dakota that would be second to none. Seths mixed-blood daughter, Nancy, had grown to bewitching young womanhood. She was said to be the most beautiful of all Dakota maidens, and Indian tradition insists that she was as good and virtuous as she was comely of face and figure. Eastmans final commission in 1870, also for the government, specified seventeen paintings of American forts for the House Committee on Military Affairs. After completing nearly all of his paintings, on August 31, 1875, Seth slumped over at his easel and died. The Washington National Republican carried a brief obituary on Thursday, September 2nd.

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THE FIRST TURTLE

BIRTH PLACE OF THE TURTLES

MY FIRST SKETCH

PETES TWEAK THE FIRST EASTMAN AND LAIRD DRAWING

As for me, I was born May 30, 1962 in Portland, Maine to parents Kim and Sandra Eastman. I grew up in the tiny country town of Groville, Maine with sisters Marlene, Judy, and Maryann. Did all that normal kid stuff, and I liked to draw.

MY ROUGH SKETCH FOR THE FIRST GROUP DRAWING

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 All my earliest submissions to publishers were Underground ones, like Last Gasp, Rip Off Press, and Kitchen Sink. One of my biggest supporters, high school art teacher Jane Hawkes, found my interest in the edgier content of these comics disheartening, but still encouraged me to practice drawing everything I see as I would need to if I intended to draw comics for a living. She was pretty special.

My mother says I drew all the time, especially when I was supposed to be doing homework. I still clearly remember the day I decided what my calling would be, it was right after I read the first issue of Jack Kirbys Kamandi I wanted to write and draw my own stories. This was pushed to the next level of intensity when I discovered Heavy Metal magazine, and the artwork of Richard Corben. In pursuit of more Corben, I found underground comics and self-publishers. I loved the freedom of expression they had, while most mainstream comics were restricted by a ratings board.
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PRE-ISSUE ONE GROUP SHOT

CHARACTER SHEETS

THE FINAL SHREDDER CONCEPT

Although I was rejected by most of the Underground publishers, one of the smallest took a chance. Clay Geerdes Comix Wave was my first publisher, and it was an incredible feeling. I had tasted blood, and now needed more. After graduation from high school THE FIRST ISSUE in 1980, and a brief visit to the Portland School of Art, I spent the summer cooking lobsters THE FIRST CONVENTION before moving to Amherst, Massachusetts with a friend. There I found a comic magazine called Scat and took the bus to their office in Northampton to sell them some of my work. They werent interested, but said I should meet this local artist with similar interests named Peter Laird. With a mutual love of comics and Jack Kirby, we became fast friends, and began working on short stories together right away.

H I STORY
THE FIRST CONVENTION AD

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 After another summer of cooking lobsters, Pete and I made a studio out of his living room and called it Mirage Studios. Our plan was to join forces and sell our skills. It was there in Dover, New Hampshire after some late night joking around, the first finished sketch of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles evolved. Tired of rejection letters, and inspired by the newest self-publishing movement, especially Dave Sims Cerebus comic, we pooled our money and borrowed some more from my Uncle Quentin to come up with enough to print 3,000 black and white comics we were sure would never sell. May 5, 1984 we premiered the HOME TOWN PRESS first issue at a local comic book convention. It was incredibly exciting, but I was back cooking lobsters in June. In early 1985, the sales for book two exceeded 15,000 copies, and by mid 1986, Turtles book number eight shipped more than 125,000 copies. I was drawing comics all day, and supporting myself the dream had come true.

THE FIRST PRESS RELEASE

ONE OF THE FIRST ADS

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 Throughout the eighties we traveled a lot for promotional events, and met lots of other creators, and began to expand our publishing. We also began to do some licensing deals like the Palladium Books Role Playing Game. Through its publication we met an agent named Mark Freedman, who had savvy, and a lot of the same kind of luck we had-- Good Luck. Mark worked the right deals with the right toy and animation studios, but would Mutant Turtles sell?

THE ART OF BED DIVING

Fortunately we were wearing our seat belts when we found out. By 1990, in addition to the number one toy and cartoon show status we had, New Line Cinema, Golden Harvest, Jim Henson, and director Steve Barron added a big screen smash hit to the list.

CHARACTER ARTALSO T-SHIRT IRON ONS

We had now accomplished what no other comic industry individuals had, not only did we write, draw, and publish our own characters, we had reached a major level of success in the entertainment business by making specific decisions for characters we fully owned and fully controlled. Im very proud, but very respectful to all those who struggled before me who created an environment that allowed the turtles accomplishments to be possible.

FIRST SAN DIEGO CON

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H I STORY
A TRUE MIRAGE STUDIO
The licensing program that launched in 1988, and dwindled to a trickle by 1998, was an amazing adventure. Although Peter and I nearly completely stopped drawing to handle the business of the turtles, we never stopped being creative. Together we worked on close to 300 of the cartoon shows, three live action films, a dozen video games, a live action TV series, a touring stage show, and over 3,000 other licenses worldwide. Every success story seems to come with a personal cost, and although Pete and I had, and still have a strong bond, there certainly were times it seemed we were married, and only staying together for the kids. Regardless of the bumps, we couldnt have done it without each other. Besides, the journey more than exceeded any of my wildest dreams, and allowed me to see and do things that could fill a couple of lifetimes.

TOY PROTOTYPES FROM 1988 THE FIRST TOY FAIR WITH OUR AGENT
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