Kevin Eastman

When you think about characters that are well-suited for saving Christmas, it's hard to come up with one more perfect for the job than Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle. Not only has he been making some pretty significant appearances under the tree for a solid thirty years, but of the four brothers who make up the team, Mikey's the one who's full of childlike wonder and the sense of fun that allow one to be swept up by Christmas magic. That's probably why he's the character who ended up starring in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Christmas issue back in 1985, in which he befriends a kitty cat, brings joy to a bunch of orphans, and actually Saves Christmas. Which, you know, also involves hijacking a truck and crashing through at least two NYPD roadblocks. Saving Christmas can be complicated, folks.

A while back DC announced plans to revive Jack Kirby's Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth in January in a form that, to say the least, is a little unique. It's called The Kamandi Challenge, and the idea --- loosely inspired by 1985's DC Challenge and its game of storytelling hot potato --- is that the twelve-issue series will feature a new creative team, randomly paired together from a list of twelve writers and twelve artists for each issue, each picking up the story where the previous team leaves off. It's an interesting way to mark the 100th anniversary of Kirby's birth in 2017. In advance of New York Comic-Con, DC has revealed a first look at some of the artwork from the series, plus new details of how the creative teams will approach the story.

Finally. That' really all there is to say about NECA's long "lost" Foot Clan and Shredder figures from its planned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage line. After being shown off at trade shows in 2009, the figures for the Turtles' biggest foes never saw the light of day at retail for reasons many of us will likely never know. For years, the prototypes sat at NECA's New Jersey studio, offering but a glimmer of what could have been but never was. Then at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, NECA finally found a way to get Shredder and some Foot Clan soldiers out to the masses in the TMNT Arcade Set. A companion to the newly minted Turtles, the set was a hit with fans who'd been waiting for ages for these forgotten figures to arrive. Now, NECA has made another miracle happen, and will finally release Shredder and the Foot as originally intended at this year's New York Comic Con.

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the great inexplicable pop phenomenons of our time, a creation that began as a one-note joke between friends, and went on to conquer the world. It's a franchise that's proven to be endlessly adaptable, appearing in endless variations in numerous media, with an appeal that spans generations and a fanbase that continues to expand with each passing year.

Ever since it first launched, IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series has been too big for a single ongoing title. In what has to be one of the most impressive editorial feats of the past few years, the massive story that was being told over the course of the series was spread throughout multiple titles, weaving through the main title and then splitting off to books like the one-shot Micro-Series or minis like Casey and April - and as astounding as it was that it all held together, I'll admit that as a reader, it was a little bit of a pain to flip back and forth through at least two collections while trying to figure out a reading order. It seems like they're going ahead and putting everything into one official second ongoing series: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universe, which kicks off in August with an issue that features Kevin Eastman and Bill Sienkiewicz teaming up for a brand-new backup story.

If, like us, you've spent the past weekend binging on Netflix's second season of Daredevil and reveling in all the superhero exploits, ninja action and all-around punishment, you probably still haven't had your fill. While there are great Daredevil runs from the likes of Frank Miller and Mark Waid that you could read to get more of a hornhead fix, what are you supposed to do if you've read all of them too? We've got five of the best independent comics to try next if you can't get enough of the Man Without Fear.

Back at the start of the Kickstarter campaign for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past --- a new board game designed by Kevin Wilson that follows the continuity of IDW's TMNT comics and features input from TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman --- I mentioned that I was pretty excited about it. I am, after all, a sucker for big campaign-based board games, while Wilson has designed some of the best I've ever played, like the Lovecraftian adventure of Arkham Horror, and the current run of TMNT comics is one of the best things going. Well, it turns out I'm not the only one. In the two weeks since its launch, Shadows of the Past has racked up a staggering half a million dollars, doubling its initial goal and unlocking plenty of stretch goals for the Kickstarter-exclusive "Works" edition, including everyone's favorite mutant warthog in shutter shades, Bebop. Here's your exclusive first look!

There were a lot of great announcements that came out of last year's San Diego Comic-Con, but the one that I was most excited about by far actually wasn't a comic this time. Instead, it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past, a board game from IDW designed by Kevin Wilson, with contributions from TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman, writer Tom Waltz and editor Bobby Curnow. And ever since that announcement, I've been wondering when we'd get to see more. Today, IDW Games launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund production of the game, with the finished product scheduled to deliver in July of this year --- and with 22 days left, they're already halfway to their initial $250,000 goal.

Last summer, ThreeZero and Kevin Eastman unveiled a collaboration to create new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures. In the months since, a number of TMNT developments have gone down, including a crossover with Batman, Mondo's figures all becoming available, a new movie trailer (and figure line), and some potential video game leakage happening, too. But there's been radio silence from ThreeZero about the state of its planned collaboration with one of the Turtles' founding fathers. This week, a new issue of Clutter (a niche toy/collectible magazine) broke that silence. In a new interview with Eastman and ThreeZero's founder/owner Kim Fung Wong, Clutter was able to share some of Eastman's concept art and give us our first look at the painted prototypes. While we've had a lot of different Turtle toys over the years, seeing how Eastman would interpret the characters today gives us a perspective on the characters we'd otherwise never have, even if they only will exist as toys.

This week DC launches Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the unlikely crossover series that brings IDW Publishing's current iteration of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's TMNT characters together with DC's Dark Knight; one of the biggest success stories in creator-owned comics meeting one of the most famous corporate comics brands. Batman and the Turtles have relatively little in common, but the Turtles have been teaming up with comic book characters far beyond their home milieu pretty much since their first appearance. In fact, the characters are so weird at their core that there's really no setting, genre, or comic book character that they can't fit in with. When discordance is in your DNA, you can't clash with anything. So on the week of their team up with the Caped Crusader, what better time to revisit some of the Turtles' greatest comic book crossovers?