Sitting for a “shell”: An AIPT x TMNT round table

Every week, we present to you TMNT Tuesday. It’s a chance to connect with the writers, artists, editors, and other stakeholders responsible for telling your favorite Turtle tales at IDW. But since TMNT is like good pizza (there’s always room for more), we opted to extend the festivities to this Thursday. Cow-a-freakin-bunga, yeah?

The following is a round table conversation between three long-time TMNT pros:

• Erik Burnham: Writer behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures, among other titles.
• Jake Thomas: TMNT group editor, including all ongoing series and crossovers.
• Sarah Myer: Artist on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures; colorist for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Street Fighter; and cover artist for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: WhereWhen, among other titles/projects.

While these three are only a drop in the bucket of the great creators attached to TMNT, they nonetheless offer vital insight. Whether they’re sharing their personal connections to the series/canon, why the Turtles have lasted this long, their favorite projects line-wide, and other topics and tidbits, this round table is just another chance to delve into and uplift all that is TMNT.

And we’ll back next Tuesday (3/24) for even more tasty TMNT treats.

AIPT: I’d love to maybe start with your respective “relationships” with TMNT – are they pillars of your early pop culture consumption? And how did that connection influence your work now?

Erik Burnham: Well, the cartoon certainly grabbed my attention in a big way. It solidified a real love for reading/watching and, later, working on characters that can work at any part of the action/comedy spectrum. With the Turtles, one side has dark ninja adventure and the other is filled with slapstick and puns. I like that stories at either extreme or at any point in between make sense as TMNT stories, and I like writing other characters equally at home anywhere on the spectrum. The 1987 show and both Mirage and Archie comics helped that mindset stick.

Jake Thomas: I was a huge fan of the cartoons and movies when I was a kid. I had some of the action figures, and I used to stage big fight scenes in my bedroom, I drew them all the time in notebooks. I loved the Turtles. I have a very vivid memory of the first time I saw the comics. We lived out in the boonies of Georgia and Florida for a chunk of my childhood and never made it into town all that often. So on one of those rare trips into the city, I was scouring a bookstore, one of my favorite things to do, when I saw a collection of the first Mirage comics.

I was maybe six or seven at the time, and I picked it up and read the first few pages, and when I got to the part where one of the toughs says, “Even freaks can bleed! CUT ‘EM!” and then Leonardo has these thought captions, “Yes, we can bleed…and so can you!” ending on a panel of blood splatter…I was so freaked out I immediately put the book back on the shelf and went to look at some Jack Handy books or Calvin and Hobbes collections to calm my nerves.

When IDW reached out to me about possibly editing TMNT, I went and grabbed a collection of the Mirage comics and was shocked that over 30 years later I could still remember exactly how that moment was laid out. It had made quite the impression! Now that I’m working with the Turtles, I think my goal is to combine those two experiences, the love and joy I felt from the cartoons and movies, along with a bit of the danger, excitement, and high stakes that short circuited my brain when I read Mirage #1.

Sarah Myer: Absolutely! My earliest memories in the ’80s and early ’90s are of watching the 1987 TMNT cartoon on TV, which inspired many a rambunctious playground adventure, taping my fingers together for Friday Pizza Night, and preferring to watch stories about non-human cartoon characters (Disney Afternoon and Sonic soon joined TMNT as my favorite TV). The 1990 TMNT movies got a lot of replay on VHS at daycare. Watching animation and a love of those characters is what started me drawing and wanting to be an artist and storyteller at age three, so it is very much a full-circle experience for me to illustrate TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures comics, and an opportunity that I’m so grateful for!

AIPT: Why do you think TMNT remains so vitally important, and do these newer stories change/alter the value of these wacky karate enthusiasts?

EB: Going back to what I said, the Turtles remain vital partly because they are malleable enough to work across tones and genres, but the themes of family, otherness, and coming-of-age are universal and can’t be killed by mere mortals. They’re relatable despite being so fantastical.

JT: Don’t know that I can say it any better than Erik. There’s always going to be a hunger for stories about families outside of societal power structures who fight to make a home for themselves and others.

SM: The Turtles and the rest of the cast have such distinct, likeable, and relatable personalities that everyone’s got their favorite Turtle or maybe they can think of someone close to them who reminds them of Mikey, etc. The ways we relate to the characters can change over time. I really enjoy talking with fellow TMNT fans at conventions about who they related to more as a kid, or ways in which those characters were a source of comfort and inspiration throughout their lives. I think those core themes of found family and those distinct, four personalities working together as a team – friction, arguments and love all inclusive – is what keeps the stories so relatable. For me as a transracial adoptee, certainly, the otherness and adoptive nature of the TMNT family was relatable and fascinating. But there are elements throughout every iteration of escapism and/or comedy, drama, and grittiness that give the stories such a universal appeal whether you became a fan as a six-year-old or whether you’re nearing 65.

Feeling like having a slightly melancholy read about the KING? Kirby and the Warp Crystal. Do you want to just forget about your worries for a while and laugh your head off? Check out the cartoon episode, “Cowabunga, Shredhead,” or countless other episodes for that matter. When the 2012 TMNT cartoon came out, and I finally watched it all the way through, it was like reuniting with old friends, and I have a lot of respect for the ways that the show combined an updated sensibility built upon a clear love for the Mirage comics and the cartoons and films that came before it. The Last Ronin was such a perfect story that I think it can fit with any version of the Turtles that you most prefer. I got emotional watching Mutant Mayhem in theaters and seeing the Turtles go to school. (Did I feel old? Yes.) I could go on, but the Turtles are always there for you!

AIPT: Is there a storyline or creator in the IDW line that influenced your own efforts, or maybe acts as a kind of North Star for meaningful TMNT storytelling?

EB: As far as the IDWverse, I was there at the beginning and just tried to match the tone Tom [Waltz], Kevin [Eastman], and [original series editor] Bobby Curnow set. It got ingrained at some point.

JT: Again, can’t beat Erik’s answer; Tom, Kevin, and Bobby did such extraordinary work setting up this universe, it was really incredible. And honestly, the really beautiful drama Sophie Campbell brought, the drilling down to the book’s core that Jason Aaron accomplished, all the miniseries and one-shots by folks like Erik, Alex Paknadel, and Dan Watters, along with names like Paul Allor, Mariko Tamaki, Juni Ba, Mateus Santolouco, so many others…the entire IDW run of Turtles is really just an embarrassment of riches.

SM: The Last Ronin and the work that Eastman, Waltz, and team put into it can’t ever be overstated. When TLR came out and I was reading it, I was inspired to try to expand my portfolio in terms of TMNT art as I had previously been writing and illustrating graphic novels but had not done any monthly comics. I did not have an official TMNT illustration job at that time, but the additional portfolio work I produced as a result of it eventually did result in working with IDW. Eventually, that further led to the opportunity to draw crossover events in Saturday Morning Adventures and Battle Nexus, where I had an absolute blast drawing Mirage, IDW, 2k12, 2k3, and Rise Turtles. It was this turtle fan’s dream come true to draw The Last Ronin in one of the Battle Nexus comic strips directly alongside ‘87 cartoon, etc. versions!

I also really enjoyed Lynch and Waltz’s Donatello story in TMNT Micro-Series #3 and love Valerio Schiti’s art, and my now-teammates’ Erik Burnham, Dan Schoening, and Luis Delgado’s TMNT Ghostbusters crossover. I’ve had Erik and Luis sign my trade paperback, but I’ve got to meet Dan at a show so it’s complete. I say this to illustrate what a joy it has been to work with people whose work I admire as a fan! Lastly, I know this is Mirage and not specifically IDW, but Kirby and the Warp Crystal will always be a huge source of inspiration as a comic artist. If I need a little reminder about what my goals in comics are all about, I think about Donatello meeting Jack Kirby and marveling at Kirby’s creations come to life. That keeps me going!

AIPT: Jake, is there a certain line-wide edict for this “expanded universe?” A theme or connective material or messaging that maybe sets it apart from other TMNT books (at IDW or elsewhere)?

JT: I don’t know that there are any overt edicts or anything, but with Kevin Eastman being so fundamental to the IDW era, I do think it retains a pretty healthy dose of the grit and the grounded storytelling that made up so much of the original run’s classic stories like “Return to New York” and “City at War.” But, look, we also have a giant ox man named Papa Beng who uses his surname as his own sound effect, so, you know, we’re grounded with a healthy dose of flights of fancy.

AIPT: There’s been reviews and discussions around books like Casey Jones and Shredder as harkening back to the “Mirage days.” Are those specific stories important or even a foundation for what’s happening with the expanded universe stuff?

JT: With Kevin being such an integral part of both the Mirage and IDW eras, you can’t really extract the Mirage DNA from the IDW run. Maybe even more so than the Turtles themselves, Casey Jones and Shredder both feel very much like characters from that 1984 comics scene and have both retained that original character blueprint stronger than pretty much any other characters in the canon, IMHO. And as a fan of that era of storytelling in general, that’s extremely complimentary. I think their specificity of character and design have made them iconic, and whose gonna mess with an icon?

AIPT: To me, the thread that connects your respective books is how easy enough it is to jump in despite the franchise’s robust history. How do you fully balance that accessibility given the sheer size of Turtle-dom?

JT: The great thing about TMNT is it’s always growing and finding new avenues to reach fans. With streaming, all the incredible animated series of every era are immediately available to folks, there are new movies and animated shorts, video games, toys, it’s really astounding. What that also means is there are dozens of avenues that can lead people to these comics as well. So who really knows what kind of TMNT fan is picking up Casey Jones or Shredder? And while we want to build our big, interconnected IDW continuity with its deep lore and character work, we also want to be well aware that fans come from all sorts of different places, and we want them all to feel as welcome as possible.

AIPT: What goals or objectives did you set out in telling or shaping these stories, and do you feel like you’ve accomplished them or are in line to achieve them?

EB: I aim to give a little distraction and (usually) bring some fun. I think, on balance, I’ve been more successful than not.

JT: As someone who laughs out loud at pretty much every issue of TMNT: SMA Erik writes, let me say he has been extremely successful. For myself, I will only feel like I have reached my goals on TMNT when the heads on Mount Rushmore are changed to Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael, and the national anthem is the theme song to the 1987 cartoon. I’m not there yet, but I’m only a few months into my tenure here. Give me time. Let me cook.

AIPT: I feel like the TMNT audience is diverse but also very, very devoted. Do you have a sense of who exactly you’re writing for, and does that change with these newer books?

EB: On a personal level, I think most of us try to write for the fan we were/are. You can’t please every reader; throw a stick and you’ll hit someone that might want a different facet of the Turtles brought to the forefront. (More violent or less violent, more soap opera or less, etc.) All you can do is write for the fan you are and know there are enough folks out there who feel close to the same way about the parts of the world you love most. On a professional level, I just look to make sure the editors and the people at Nickelodeon don’t see anything that warrants a big “no.” I don’t think that changes whether I’m working on an all-ages version of the Turtles, the IDW version, or something more mature.

AIPT: Erik, you’ve done a ton with/for TMNT over the years. How does that history shape Battle Nexus and what that event/story is trying to accomplish?

EB: It gave me a comfort with all the characters I had to write, that’s for sure. But there was the tiniest frustration that I couldn’t take another couple dozen pages to do everything I would’ve loved to when I had everyone in one place. Still, I was giddy to get to have some moments with characters from so many corners of the universe. The more I think about it, it was probably a good thing that I had the page count to rein me in!

AIPT: I feel like The Last Ronin wasn’t just huge for IDW, but in the entirety of TMNT. Do you feel like you’re/working under that shadow, and how does that huge leap forward inform (or not inform?) what this expanded universe is all about?

EB: It’s positioned itself as one of the classic, evergreen stories of the franchise and, more and more, of comics… so yeah, there’s a shadow there. And it’s one more piece of proof of the Turtles’ versatility.

JT: For me, it’s just shown what a TMNT story can really do. It raised the bar. It’s a great reminder of the rewards you can get for really following a strong vision and taking a big swing.

AIPT: Do any of you have any standout moments from your work on these books? Maybe something that feels like it’s extra novel or pushed TMNT forward?

JT: There’s some stuff coming up, some new storylines and titles we’re putting together, that I am overwhelmed with excitement about. Stay tuned, Shell-heads! Lots more great Turtles action coming your way!

AIPT: One of my favorite “developments” in recent years are the many and varied TMNT crossovers. What’s one you’d like to see and why?

EB: I keep pitching them, and sometimes I’m beaten to the punch on the ones I’d love to do. But I have a couple of ideas I keep coming back to; I pitched Star Trek/Turtles more than once. And then… man, can I mix the SMA Turtles with Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends? (Or the X-Men? C’monnnnn). Gimme gimme gimme. (Why? Because I’d have a blast, that’s why! I think that’s reason enough.)

JT: I’m a huge horror nut and have been loudly crowing to anyone who will listen (and a few who would rather not!) that I think the Turtles are ripe for the horror treatment, so there’s a few horror icons I’d love to see the Turtles mix it up with.

AIPT: Is there anything else you’d like to add about TMNT, the expanded universe, turtles and ninjas in general, comics, etc..?

JT: When I was at Marvel, there was a conversation that would pop up every now and then about what book or character had the best “batting average,” which is to say across all the main titles headlining that character or team, who had the best hits-to-misses ratio. Having now read all the issues of the flagship TMNT title since its beginning (and a pretty healthy chunk of all the ancillary titles as well), I have to say, the standard of quality for the TMNT line has been extraordinarily high. They’ve done so many big swings, there’s so much incredible variety, wild ideas, crazy characters, and by and large it all works so well, it’s really hard to explain to folks who haven’t been a part of the sausage getting made what an incredible achievement that is.

The TMNT fans have been some of the nicest, sweetest, happiest fans I’ve met, and I think part of that must be that they’ve just been so incredibly well served by these books. It’s a hell of a legacy to be a part of, and I truly do hope I live up to the incredible work that has come before me.