Peter Laird

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.

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.

One of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the history of our planet is the question of what killed the dinosaurs. There is, of course, the leading theory that the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event was the result of a massive asteroid impact, something that's supported by a layer of sediment in the fossil record that includes high traces of iridium, and by the discovery of the massive Chicxulub crater, all of which amounts to a pretty compelling batch of scientific evidence. Personally, though, I don't buy it, and not just because of noted scientist Dr. Victor Fries and his assertion that the mass extinction was the result of the onset of an ice age. No, my doubts come from the fact that, like everyone else who read Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in 1989, I already know what killed the dinosaurs: It was the Ninja Turtles. Specifically, Leonardo. I know, I was surprised, too.

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?

For over four years, IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been one of the best comics on the stands, hands down. It's a blend of everything that TMNT has ever been, a synthesis that combines action, sci-fi and ninja mysticism into one sprawling, epic story that has spilled out from an ongoing series into a string of miniseries and one-shots that have built something genuinely incredible. Now, the series is closing in on its biggest story yet with the release of #50 and the ultimate battle between the Ninja Turtles and Shredder's Foot Clan. To mark the occasion, ComicsAlliance spoke to co-writer Tom Waltz, TMNT co-creator and series co-writer Kevin Eastman, and series editor Bobby Curnow about the history of the series, covering the process of rebuilding TMNT for comics from the ground up, the happy accidents that led to some of their favorite new characters, and the surprising, heartbreaking challenge of coming up with something horrible to do to a party dude like Michelangelo.

Q: Why do you think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has survived and thrived for 30 years? -- @ballsmonkey A: I have a whole lot of affection for the TMNT, and I don't think that's just because I was the perfect age to drag my parents to Pizza Hut so that I could get (and subsequently wear out) a VHS tape of the one where they fought the giant robot rats. Don't get me wrong, the nostalgia's a huge part of it, but it's not something that's unique to my age group. The fact is, if you've been a kid at any time in the past three decades, you've more than likely grown up loving those characters just as much as I did. And that in itself, the staying power that this strange franchise created by two dudes in a kitchen, is interesting. The thing is, even though I tend to think of TMNT as the archetypical unlikely success, the more I think about it the less I think that it actually was all that unlikely.

Thursday's links await, after the jump.

The man who co-created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Peter Laird is set for perhaps his weirdest voice acting gig yet this weekend's latest CG animated episode entitled, "Ice Cream Kitty," on Nickelodeon. Kevin Eastman will meow it up as April's cat, who accidentally ingests a flawed retromutagen experiment -- flawed because Mikey just dropped a scoop from his drippy ice cream co

Turning 30 isn't everyone's favorite, but when it comes to Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it's nothing but a cause for celebration. To commemorate this mutant milestone, in May IDW will release its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 30th Anniversary Special, an anthology bursting with all-new content from a selection of the comic series' most influential creative teams. If