Awesome Turtle Pictures #41

 Artist Eric Canete (creator of Arc Athena, storyboarder on Teen Titans, Men in Black, Godzilla: The Series, etc.) recently offered to draw me something for my birthday. I asked if he could do a version of the Krang/Shredder hybrid from TMNT Adventures #24:

Eric exceeded every expectation I could have had:

Thanks for the birthday gift, Eric!

Awesome Turtle Pictures #40

Here's a nice, hi res pic of the TMNT IV: Turtles in Time video game box art:

Well, it's the European version, "Hero Turtles", but close enough.

For the life of me, I do not know who is responsible for that particular piece.  I really like it, though; it has that look of Mirage about it and I doubt it was one of Konami's in-house Japanese artists.  If you know who to credit, give me a heads up.

Awesome Turtle Picture #39

Here's something very rare that was only just recently shared publicly.

TMNT art collector "Metropoliskid41" acquired these pages from artist Gordon Purcell and was kind enough to post them on The Technodrome Forums and give me permission to repost them here.

These are pages 9 and 10 of Image's TMNT Volume 3 #12:

You might be wondering why there are pages of TMNT Vol. 3 #12 drawn by anybody other than Frank Fosco.

As Purcell explained, his work at Topps (on The X-Files) got him noticed by Erik Larsen at Image Comics.  Larsen asked him to do a sample submission based on 2-pages of a completed script by Gary Carlson for TMNT #12.  Evidently, the idea was that if Fosco ever fell behind on his work and a fill-in artist was needed, Purcell would be up for the job.  (And if you're wondering about the DC Comics logo, Purcell reused some paper he had with DC letterhead on them leftover from his work on Star Trek.)

As we all know, Fosco got his pages in on time and drew the entire 23-issue series.  As such, there never came a need for a fill-in artist and these pages promptly went into Purcell's files as he moved on to numerous other projects in the comics industry.

For comparison's sake, here are Fosco's pages 9 and 10 from TMNT #12:

Both wound up looking very good.  I do kind of wonder if there'd have been enough room on Purcell's pages for all the lettering, though.  In the end, you can see the similarities on how both artists interpreted the same script and where they deviated in their visuals.  I rather like how Purcell overlaid the panels on page 9 atop the outer space background rather than confining the establishing shot to its own panel as Fosco did.

Anyway, thanks once again go to Metropoliskid41 of The Technodrome Forums for sharing these with us, as we'd have never even known they existed, otherwise.

Awesome Turtle Picture #38

Realized that it's been a long time since I posted any Eastman or Laird TMNT artwork for an Awesome Turtle Picture installment.  Kind of unfair, seeing as how they created the characters and all.  So...

Here's Leonardo and the Shredder having a lightsaber duel.  Art is by Peter Laird, done as a commission for a fan in 2005, published in TMNT (Vol. 4) #24 as a bonus pin-up.

Awesome Turtle Picture #37

A.C. Farley's cover to TMNT Collected Book Vol. 4, published by Mirage.  This one containing "Return to New York" (obviously).

Farley's covers for the old Mirage trades make them worth the (unfortunately) high asking prices they tend to go for.  Some of his all-time best work.

His best cover is probably the one he did for Veitch's "The River" trilogy.  I'd post it, but I can't find a scan in decent enough quality, and alas, that particular volume is the hardest to find.

Awesome Turtle Picture #36

I'm not sure where this photo came from.

I'm just glad it exists.

Andre the Giant posing with four guys in some positively awful/awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costumes.

Nothing today stands a chance of topping this.

Awesome Turtle Picture #35

In this installment of Awesome Turtle Pictures, I want to go back to one of my favorite wells: Playmates action figure production artwork!

But specifically, I want to highlight the amazing work of Errol McCarthy.  He's perhaps best known for his contributions to the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe line and his continuous work on the Star Wars line, but he shaped much of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures from the '80s.

Here are some of my faves.  Sorry for the watermarks, but I had to snag these pics from eBay (the first time I'd ever seen any of them made public).

First up are his designs for Ace Duck (alternatively named Smilin' Quack and Steve "Quackup" Quacken).  Ace Duck actually began as a concept from Peter Laird, but it looks like McCarthy fleshed him out.  Love the cigarette, even if it never stood a chance of making it to the toy sculpt.

Here's one I don't care all that much for, but figured I'd include because it's such a bizarre deviation: McCarthy's rendition of Casey Jones.  Evidently Playmates didn't dig it much, either, as you can tell from the red inked note saying "go back to comic".  Playmates did so and went with the Eastman-designed action figure we all remember.

Here's Dump, likely a precursor to Muck Man:

and here are my favorites: McCarthy's early designs for the fly mutant who would become Baxter Stockman.  You'll notice he isn't identified as Baxter in any of the notes, but rather by the unimaginative name "Fly Guy".  As pointed out in an earlier ATP, the fly-mutant concept originated with Peter Laird as a separate character before getting fused with Baxter Stockman somewhere along the way.

I've got lots of other toy art from McCarthy, but this seems like a good selection.  I love it when pieces like these pop up online as I'm rather fascinated with the whole action figure production process that went on behind the scenes at Playmates.

Awesome Turtle Picture #34

It seems like Europe got a lot of beautiful painted covers for their trade paperback reprint collections of the Mirage TMNT series.  I posted the covers by Glenn Fabry before, now here is a beautiful piece by Tanino Liberatore:

It's a pretty stunning depiction of the events of Rick Veitch's "The River" trilogy.  You've got the demutated Raphael perched on Michelagelo's shoulder and a pretty intimidating rendition of Bloodsucker (with some great water effects; all done the old fashioned way) duking it out with Leonardo and Donatello.

Special thanks to user "Nortock Diab" of The Technodrome Forums for sharing this piece with me!

Awesome Turtle Picture #33

The Shredder, by Michael Dooney.  Taken from TMNT Magazine (Welsh Publishing) #7.

Nothing weird or random or rare with this one.  Just enjoy a bitching' pin-up by Michael Dooney.

Das goooood shtuff.

Awesome Turtle Picture #32

With Halloween a week away, let's bask in the glory of one of the TMNT's more obscure, and frightening, adversaries: The Terror Bears!

Pain Bear (vines), Fear Bear (the scream), Nightmare Bear (demon) and Doom Bear (mushroom cloud) escaped from the laboratory where they were created with the singular goal of worldwide Armageddon.  And depending on how well you played the RPG TMNT & Other Strangeness, they may have succeeded.

The Terror Bears only received one piece of merchandise I know of: Pewter miniatures from Dark Horse (not to be confused with the comic book publisher).

I love these little guys; a shame they never appeared in any comics.  There may be muddy rights issues involved with the characters, since they only appeared in the RPG sourcebooks by Palladium and I don't know who retained ownership over characters created exclusively for those things (be it Mirage or Palladium).  Whatever the legal case may be, we eventually received spiritual successors to the Terror Bears in the Nickelodeon TMNT cartoon for the third season.

Meet the Dream Beavers:

They're Dave Beaver (blue), Dark Beaver (red), Dire Beaver (purple) and Dread Beaver (orange).  Appearing in the episode "In Dreams", they were pretty awesome.

And voiced by Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) and John Kassir (the Crypt Keeper), too!  Bill Moseley  (Chop Top from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) also played a character in the episode, because for some reason the people at Nickelodeon decided to make a TMNT episode especially for me.

Awesome Turtle Picture #31

In retrospect, this probably should've been Awesome Turtle Picture #30, but unfortunately I couldn't see into the future when I did that one.

So IDW's TMNT 30th Anniversary Special is still a few months away, but they've released a look at all 12 variant covers (because at IDW, it's ALWAYS 1994!).  There are some familiar faces in there, such as Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Chris Allan, Dario Brizuela and more.  But who takes the cake?

Ozzy Fernandez and Tony Kordos with their Heroes' Haven exclusive cover:

I'm a sucker for Playmates action figure goodness and this right here as about as good as it gets.

Well, that's not 100% true.  It lacks Pizzaface.  Though I think Fernandez and Kordos were limiting themselves to characters who appeared in the Fred Wolf cartoon, but using their Playmates character designs.  So I can excuse the omission of Pizzaface on that account.

Awesome Turtle Picture #30

This one's qualifying as an Awesome Turtle Picture because 1) I like it, and 2) it was a cool surprise for me.

My buddy Bob went to a comic convention here in Little Rock at the Clear Channel Metroplex (which is decidedly less awesome than the Autobot Metroplex) and met artist Buster Moody.  Moody drew a fancomic I gushed about in the past, so it was an awesome surprise when Bob brought me back a print of the cover art:

I love how Michelangelo all on his lonesome is inexplicably wearing the "Space Cadet" outfit from the classic Playmates TMNT toyline.  Though wasn't it Raph who had the Space Cadet toy?  Aw, I don't know.  I never owned the variants, back then.

And if you're wondering about the crease in the middle, the piece was originally done in a sketchbook (no, my buddy didn't fold the print in half like some sort of barbarian).

Awesome Turtle Picture #29

After previously discussing how difficult it was for characters from the Mirage TMNT comic to get action figures in the Playmates toyline, I thought I'd spend this Awesome Turtle Pictures looking back at one of the more obscure characters to actually GET a toy: Chote.  Or as Playmates called him, "Shogun Shoate".

Chote originally appeared in TMNT (Vol. 1) #46 and #47, published in May of 1992, as an honorable but villainous hench-mutant under the command of recurring antagonist Savanti Romero (who didn't get an action figure until the 2003 toyline).  He was created by Mirage staffer Michael Dooney.

By the end of the "Masks" story arc, Savanti Romero was once again defeated and Chote was banished to the future by supporting character Renet.  Upon arriving in the future, he wound up sharing panel-space with a familiar face:

That koala-looking guy is Fluffy Brockleton from Dooney's "Gizmo" series.  The opening editorial from Eastman and Laird in TMNT #47 even assures readers that Dooney had plans to continue using Chote, with that ending implying he'd be showing up in some "Gizmo" comics.  Alas, Dooney never acted on those plans and Chote was never seen nor heard from again.

Well, Chote was never heard from again because he changed his name to Shoate for some reason.

In 1994, Chote beat the odds and actually received an action figure from Playmates, albeit under the name Shogun Shoate (I'm guessing the alliteration just rolled off the tongue better in the marketing boardroom).  In all honesty, it was a pretty dead-on recreation of Chote's comic book likeness and the origins of the character fit right in with the "Shogun" subline the series was going through that year (he was certainly a better fit than Shogun Triceraton).

The bio on the back of his card changes up his back story a bit.  He's still a villain to the Ninja Turtles, but now he's apparently a subordinate of the Shredder's.  His bio also says that his favorite film is "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III", which was loosely (LOOSELY) based on the "Masks" storyline the character originated from.

Beyond the rather sweet toy and a two-issue arc, Chote/Shoate hasn't gotten much play.  Michael Dooney hasn't forgotten about him, though, and continues to draw the character for fans:

On an apocryphal note, another time-displaced dinosaur-man with sweet shoulder pads was set to appear in the proposed Mighty Mutanimals animated series: Deinotor.

Obviously, that show never happened.  The Mighty Mutanimals cartoon was pitched in 1993, a year after Chote was introduced in the comics, but a year before Shoate got his toy from Playmates, so if Deinotor was an evolution/variation of Chote as Shoate was, I really don't know.

Anyhow, that's your history lesson on obscure TMNT villain Chote.  Well, he's more obscure than, um, Tattoo, but less obscure than... uh...  Muckman?  Yeah, sure, let's go with that.

Awesome Turtle Picture #28

I've made fun of those EXTREEEME '90s advertisements for Image's TMNT Volume 3 series before, but I think this one deserves some bonus chortling.

This particular ad was published in the back of TMNT (Vol. 3) #14 and was apparently editor Erik Larsen's catchall means of telling readers that Girl Turtles would never, EVER be appearing in this comic:  

For a smidgen of context, Image's TMNT comic was published at the same time Saban's live-action Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation series was airing on television.  Fans were so appalled by that show's inclusion of Venus de Milo, the female Fifth Turtle, that they wrote in with their concerns about the character potentially appearing in the comic.  Every.  Single.  Month.

So as you can see, Larsen was getting a little sick of it.

What I find REALLY amusing about this ad, though, is the tagline at the bottom: "Turtles as God intended them".  Seeing so bold a statement attached to a piece of art that includes Raphael with an eyepatch and Donatello as a cyborg, made without a shred of irony, just encapsulates '90s comics perfectly for me.

Awesome Turtle Picture #27

Today, let's look at another discarded action figure concept for the original Playmates 80s/90s TMNT toyline.  In this case, it's a guy named Junk Man.

Junk Man actually began life as a comic book character created by Michael Dooney in 1989.  He made his first (and only) appearance in the short strip "Junk Man" published in the Shell Shock anthology.

In 1990, Dooney pitched the character to Playmates as a potential action figure, adapting his comic book design more or less precisely.  Personally, I like the addition of his little buddy, K-9 the Junkyard Dog.  Those small, unpainted "partner" toys were one of the coolest things about the classic Playmates TMNT toyline and they made for a more imaginative accessory than any generic weapon.

That same year, Jim Lawson also pitched his own rendition of Junk Man to Playmates.  This version deviates considerably from Dooney's incarnation, who was in an alien made of pure energy that possessed spare parts at a junkyard, instead being a guy dressed in crudely fashioned scrap metal armor and calling himself the "Superhero of the Junkyard".

This human version of Junk Man didn't seem to catch on.  A third and final pitch (artist uncredited; possibly Steve Lavigne or Ryan Brown) was sent to Playmates, this time whittling Junk Man's spare parts down to just leftover stereo and boombox paraphernalia.

Well, third time's the charm.  Playmates seemed to dig this incarnation of Junk Man and even went so far as to create a toy sculpt.  The toy, despite receiving a sculpt, never made it to production.

If you've seen this guy before (he haunted eBay for years), he's often identified as "Radio Boy" (Stephen at The Turtle Van blog talks all about him).  According to Brown and Lavigne, though, the name "Radio Boy" doesn't appear on any of their paperwork and he was always intended to be an incarnation of Junk Man.

So there you have it.  Junk Man, an obscure Mirage comics character if there ever was one, came this close to getting his own toy, but wound up by the wayside.  If I had to guess why he was passed on, it might be that Playmates found him redundant with a certain other character...

Muckman was released in the 1990 assortment of the TMNT toyline, meaning he was already on the shelves while Dooney and co. were still trying to pitch the "original" concept of a character assembled entirely from garbage.  Yes, I know there's a distinction between  a junkyard (where Junk Man comes from) and a dump (where Muckman comes from), but it probably wasn't unique enough to warrant another go around with the concept (which may explain why Playmates moved away from the "random junk" idea toward the "stereo parts" idea near the end).

Anyhow, I love taking a look at the evolution of these Playmates toy characters; those who made it to the endzone and those who got tackled at the 1 yard line.  It might give you an idea of how close we probably got to getting a lot of characters in toy form, only for fate to prove unkind.

Awesome Turtle Picture #26

 

 

I've posted it before, but not as an Awesome Turtle Picture, so I'm postin' it again.

 

I don't think anything better sums up the Image Comics TMNT Volume 3 series than this advertisement, published in Bodycount #2 (April, 1996).



 

Mocking elements related to the cartoon series, promising that this series is "grown up", mild swearing, incentive to buy the comic as a collectable because it will most assuredly sell out quickly, Erik Larsen artwork...

All this thing needs is a can of Surge and a cross-promotion with the X Games and it'll be Terminally '90s.

FUCK YOU, CARTOONS!  FUCK YOU, PIZZA!  FUCK YOU, EVERYTHING!  THE TURTLES HAVE GONE EXTREEEEEEEEEEME!

Awesome Turtle Picture #25

I've spent most of these Awesome Turtle Picture features looking back at the classics.  It's time to highlight one of my favorite pieces of recent TMNT art.  Ross Campbell's variant cover for TMNT (IDW) #16 featuring Slash:

Man, I love it.

Campbell renders Slash in his more classic design rather than the Tokka-esque appearance Slash sports in the IDW comics.  I've got to say, I like this look quite a bit more (not that I don't dig his Tokka-look, either).

It's a superb composition that fluidly encapsulates all the distinct personalities of each Turtle in a single image.  Mikey is spastically hanging on for dear life, Raph is angrily stabbing away, Don is strategically trying to strike where he thinks Slash might be vulnerable and Leo is calmly and coolly poising for a decisive blow.  The circle of white light in the background frames the characters so they aren't lost in a black mess while also establishing the sewer tunnel setting.  The shuriken sticking out of Slash's body along with all the debris on the ground give the impression that this battle has been going on for a while.  And to top it all off, Slash has his binky.  Aww.

Just an all-around great piece of work.

But not Campbell's best piece of work.  That honor goes to his Critters fanart:

Because holy shit someone actually took the time out of their day to draw Critters fanart I can't believe it.

Awesome Turtle Picture #24

In past installments of Awesome Turtles Pictures, we looked at some character evolutions, such as how "Terrorpin the Terrible" became Tokka, or how Baxter Stockman got fused with a character called "The Fly" to become Baxter-Fly. Today, we're going to look at how some toy design pitches evolved into the recognizable characters we ended up getting.

First up is Peter Laird's initial sketch for "rhino mutant".  Guess who he wound up becoming?

So yes, contrary to popular belief, Eastman and Laird did do the original design and creative work for Fred Wolf/Playmates characters such as Bebop and Rocksteady (think about that next time you accuse them of hating the Fred Wolf/Playmates characters and concepts).  Interestingly, a LOT of these action figure pitch sketches I've got stored away are credited to Peter Laird; I'm having a hard time finding any by Kevin Eastman.  Seems either Laird pitched a lot more toys than Eastman did, or Eastman simply hasn't shared his sketches online like Laird has.

Here's another one labeled simply "duck".  This guy dropped the flight suit, put on a bomber jacket and became Ace Duck by the time his toy was molded (though in the case of the Archie comics, he dropped the flight suit and slipped on a revealing speedo, but the less said about that the better).

Here's a character named "Scalien".  His robotic exoskeleton brace giving him mechanical limbs reminds me a bit of Fishface from the Nickelodeon TMNT cartoon and toyline.  Being a mutant cobra, however, he may be a predecessor to the Playmates character Scale Tail, who dropped the robotic limbs in exchage for, like, snake limbs.  On a snake.  That 80s toyline was weird, man.

These next two sketches are for a character called "The Unknown" (love the name), who is described as being a failed attempt to combine two animals into a single mutation.  He wound up evolving into Mutagen Man, who it seems will be making a comeback in the Nickelodeon TMNT cartoon.

Some wild stuff.  And those are the ones that actually MADE it to the shelves in some form or another.  Believe it or not, but there were design pitches considered too weird for the 80s toyline.