Blast from the Past #59 repost: "The Unknown"

(Note -- alert palblog readers [really, are there any other kind?!) will notice that I am skipping a reposting of the original BftP #58. This was the one about the Will Vinton "Claymation" Turtles, something I accidentally duplicated already in one of my early palblog posts. -- PL)

I did these sketches back in -- I think -- 1988 or 1989. Playmates was looking for ideas to expand the TMNT action figure line, and I thought this guy -- who I was calling "The Unknown" -- would make a cool villain. Basically, the idea was that he was the result of a failed experiment to combine two species in one mutant. Because the procedure only partly worked, The Unknown had to keep most of his internal organs inside a protective artificial shell. I thought it would be neat to have a toy with guts and eyeballs and stuff that would be floating around inside a clear helmet. Playmates actually made a spiffy figure based on this idea, and I think they ended up calling him "Mutagen Man". (The top drawing is my first version, the bottom my second.)





As for which two types of creatures were used in the creation of this miserable mutant, I'm pretty sure I intended his left side to be some kind of primate like a gorilla or orangutan, but his right side... hmm... looks like a giant insect of some type. I guess that must have come from some other nefarious experiment with the mutagen. -- PL