Monday, May 31, 2010

Blast from the Past #306: "City at War" concepts

I found these while looking though some old sketchbooks for other stuff. They are conceptual musings and doodlings for the three-part "Return to New York" story that Kevin Eastman and I did in Volume 1 of the original TMNT comics, back in the 1980's.

In all honesty, I don't remember if I did these alone, coming up with the ideas in them by myself, or after a brief discussion with Kevin about plans for the three-parter. I kind of think it is the former, but at this late date I can't be sure. However, one of them I'm pretty sure about -- the notes for the concept of the "colony worms" that the Foot employ to ressurect the Shredder. That was all my doing.

First up is a VERY brief overview of the three parts of the story, along with my original doodle conceptualizing the three monstrous resurrection failures -- sometimes referred to as the "Shredder clones" -- that the Turtles have to fight when they invade Foot headquarters.



Next are my notes about the "colony worms".



Next, some rough thumbnail layout sketches done by me for the first part of "Return to New York". I'm not sure why I drew these -- if memory serves, Kevin laid out that issue.



Last, here are some notes I made on the first part of "Return to New York". One little thing that I find interesting is the note about the dividing up of the original pages.



I found a few more things in that sketchbook (not related to "Return to New York") that I will probably post in the coming days or weeks. -- PL

8 comments:

  1. Man, I love seeing this stuff. Those comics have been around for so long and I've read them so many times that seeing sketches like this is like seeing original character sketches for, I dunno, Superman or something.

    Not to overdo it but it's kind of like seeing Michelangelo's layouts for parts of the Sistene Chapel.

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  2. Its great to see the creative process and the mindset.

    If I may ask,where did the idea of mystic wroms revive people angle come from?
    Also,at this point TMNT has a strong following and the cartoon is out,why not instead of beheading keep Shredder around for appearances every few years?

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  3. I think it would be kind of cool if you could have a whole book of stuff like this.

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  4. yes,very interesting.
    To me,especialy the ideas that didn't go through.Like Casey and Splinter being in RTNY or the no central brain thing with the worms.
    wow.mirage shredder couldve stayed around longer.(as a clone made of worms but still)

    RTNY was a near perfect conclusion,and i think in mirage comics,the fact DEATH is,you know,final(like it really is)is a far better policy than DC/Marvel's swinging door one.

    coughplatinumdunes?coughcough
    ..nobody else said anything...

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  5. "mikeandraph87 said...
    Its great to see the creative process and the mindset.

    If I may ask,where did the idea of mystic wroms revive people angle come from?"

    I think that was probably inspired by some science experiment I'd read about where trained tapeworms were ground up and fed to other tapeworms, and some of the training seemed to transfer to the tapeworms who ate their ground-up brethren.

    Or at least that's how I remember it.


    "Also,at this point TMNT has a strong following and the cartoon is out,why not instead of beheading keep Shredder around for appearances every few years?"

    I believe it was partly BECAUSE the Shredder had become known as a popular villain that we decided it might be fun to bring him back for another battle with the Turtles, but as you can see from reading the very first issue of the comic, we never intended him to become the central, iconic, and over-used menace that he became in the first cartoon show. -- PL

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  6. Thanks,Pete! The tapeworm thing was definitely original!

    As for using Shredder twice more after his inital appearance I can see why you would be weary of him being downgraded after being used so much in particular with the cartoon. From Season 2-6 his threat level dropped only to go back up 7,8,10, of course my opinion,but shouldn't have happened. I guess I was hoping for half a dozen more fights in Mirage lore. heh.heh.

    Thanks again!

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  7. I just picked up Tales of the TMNT Issue 70 and this blog is a great tie-in.

    I got emotional seeing the RTNY-esque 1.5 cover.

    Great post Peter, and I'm enjoying the blog, tmnt and non-tmnt-related.

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