Friday, December 2, 2016

Cowabunga Comics: TMNT Benefit Book for Friends of Children, Inc.


Publication date: March 21 - 24, 1991
Originally published by: Friends of Children, Inc.

Contents:

This 15-page booklet (16 pages if you count the index) is a collection of new and pre-existing TMNT artwork.

*Jim Lawson (new piece, 4 Turtles)
*Steve Lavigne (new piece, Leonardo)
*Ken Mitchroney/Ryan Brown (art from TMNT Adventures #24 cover)
*Mark Bode' (new piece, Donatello)
*Dan Berger (new piece, Raphael)
*A.C. Farley (art from TMNT Vol. 1 #29 interior splash)
*Michael Zulli (art from TMNT Vol. 1 #31, interior page)
*Peter Laird (art from Mirage TMNT Book One trade paperback cover)
*Kevin Eastman (unused cover for TMNT: The Movie, first time in print)
*Peter Laird (art from TMNT Vol. 1 #12 interior splash)
*Eric Talbot (art from 1990 Mirage TMNT portfolio, 4 Turtles)
*Peter Laird (art from TMNT Vol. 1 #1 fifth printing cover)
*Jim Lawson (art from TMNT: The Movie interior splash)


Turtle Tips:

*This artbook from Friends of Children, Inc. was created in conjunction with Mirage for the Cowabunga Weekend charity event in Northampton, Massachusetts.

*The cover is taken from TMNT Adventures Vol. 1, Tundra edition, by Michael Dooney.

*Special thanks to The Technodrome Forum users "Cheesebrush", "Wilddiverse" and "Rich" for cluing me into this thing's existence and providing a contents listing.


Review:

I don't actually own this thing, if the clumsily cropped photos taken from an eBay auction didn't give it away.  But you know how I love to be thorough, right?

The rarity of this thing seems to come and go in waves and I actually don't know what the print run of the booklet was.  It doesn't appear on the secondhand market very often, but when it does you can usually get it at an affordable price.  While most of the artwork featured is strictly reprints, several of the pieces are original and a few I don't recall ever seeing repeated elsewhere.  Like this Lawson pin-up:


Yeah, not his masterwork so far as pin-ups go, but it's fresh content you won't find anyplace else (I think).  Same goes for the original Lavigne and Bode' pieces, though Berger's pin-up looks like he put more than a lunch break into it.

Anyhow, that's one more obscure little oddity I can check off my list of things to catalog.