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Peter Alan Laird (born January 27, 1954) is an American comic book writer and artist. He is best known for co-creating the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with writer and artist Kevin Eastman.
Laird's newspaper experience led to the duo creating "a four-page press kit",Pages from the Press Kit can be seen here on Eastman's Heavy Metal website. that, according to Flaming Carrot creator Bob Burden's own Mystery Men Press kit, included "a story outline and artwork that they sent to 180 TV and radio stations," as well as both the Associated Press and United Press International. This led to widespread press coverage of both the TMNT property and Mirage Studios itself, creating "a demand for the interestingly-titled comic that caught everyone by surprise." With the solicitation of their second issue, Eastman and Laird's Turtles comic began a meteoric rise to success, bringing in advance orders of 15,000 copies. This, Eastman has been quoted as saying, "basically ended up with us clearing a profit of two thousand dollars apiece. Which allowed us to write and draw stories full-time: it was enough to pay the rent, pay the bills, and buy enough macaroni and cheese and pencils to live on."
The Turtles phenomenon saw the duo invited to their first comics convention at the tenth annual Atlanta Fantasy Fair in 1984, where they mingled with the likes of Larry Niven, Forrest J Ackerman and Fred Hembeck (among others). David Merrill "The Atlanta Fantasy Fair" . Accessed April 22, 2008 With their (November 1985) fifth issue, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles downsized to the more common American comics format and size, and the previous four issues were also reprinted in this size and format with new color covers. Also in 1985, Solson Publications released How To Draw Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Solson would follow this up with the six issue Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Authorized Martial Arts Training Manual as well as one issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Teach Karate volume in 1987.
…starting the Turtles…was a goof; it was not anything we envisioned directing our lives in any way, shape, or form. It was like, ‘Hey, this looks like fun! Let's self-publish it! Let's see what happens!’...Suddenly, and just completely out of the blue, this Turtles phenomenon emerged. And really – from day one – just took over. It was a rapidly accelerating process which culminated in essentially taking over our lives. Completely.
This led to increased pressures on the two creators (and the team which they formed to help them), including a prolonged period (about a year) of artist's block in Laird. The "incredible growth and complexity of the business" that sprang up around their instantly-successful Turtles properties led to Laird's "suddenly discovering to my horror that I no longer enjoyed drawing. It was a real shock, because if I ever had anything that I could rely on... it was that I loved to draw."
Laird and Eastman's creations went on to become a popular cultural phenomenon, forcing both of them to take regular sabbaticals from the comic to deal with the day to day pressures of running what had become a multimedia franchise. Eastman sold his share of the franchise, with the exception of a small continuing income participation, to Laird and the Mirage Group on June 1, 2000. Daniel Robert Epstein interview with Peter Laird, c2002/2003 . Accessed April 22, 2008 On March 1, 2008, Laird and Mirage bought out Eastman's remaining rights and interest and the two went their separate ways. Concerning Eastman's departure, Laird stated his belief that Eastman "was just tired of it." On October 19, 2009, Laird sold the franchise to Viacom, the parent company of Nickelodeon, but still retains the rights to create and publish up to eighteen black-and-white comics based on the franchise per year.
Following a successful deal to revive the Turtles theatrically, Laird put Volume Four on hold to develop the new film, leaving several plot lines unresolved. Tales of the TMNT was thought to go on hiatus in 2008, and the franchise's future beyond its on-screen presence was uncertain, but staff confirmed that this was not the case. It was confirmed on Steve Murphy's blog that Peter Laird was intending to return to Volume 4 and that the title would return, distributed digitally by Mirage. "CCJ" interviews Steve Murphy, July 10, 2007. Accessed June 27, 2008
In 1985, Eastman and Laird hired Cleveland artist Ryan Brown to assist them as an inker, and a year later penciler Jim Lawson and cover painter Michael Dooney joined the studio. These six individuals would allow Mirage to expand into a number of spin-off and companion titles, starting with Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, designed to fill in continuity gaps in the main title. Operating from a renovated factory space in Florence, Massachusetts, the Mirage team produced most of their work in-house, including the Playmates Toys toy designs and the Archie TMNT comic series, until Tundra Publishing took over the building.
Eastman and Laird along with Brown, Dooney, Lavigne and Lawson toured extensively over the years, making personal appearances and attending many comic book conventions. As the Turtles' popularity increased, further people were added to the studio, including Eric Talbot (who attended Eastman and Lavigne's old high school), writer Stephen Murphy, and Brown's friend, Dan Berger, who was brought in from Ohio to ink the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures title from Archie Comics. Aside from Eastman (whose creative differences and other pursuits saw him leave and sell his interest to Laird and Mirage), these individuals have remained with Mirage to the present. Stephen Murphy stepped down from his position as the managing editor in the middle of 2007 in favor of Dan Berger; Murphy remained as the creative director. "Outgoing editor Steve Murphy on the Turtles past, present and future" by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean at Newsarama, July 9, 2007 . Accessed June 27, 2008. In 1988, Mirage Studios participated in the drafting of the Creator's Bill of Rights for comic book creators.
Indeed, when asked in an interview Project Fanboy interview with Peter Laird on the Project Fanboy website, Laird was quoted as saying:
The initial impetus for creating the Xeric Foundation was frustration – when the Turtle thing started getting really huge, people started coming out of the woodwork to ask for money. Many of them were legitimate charitable organizations or creators needing funding, but there were also quite a few ridiculous things – like the total stranger who asked me for a quarter of a million dollars to fund his general store. It got to the point where I was getting overwhelmed with making these kinds of decisions, and it was suggested to me that a foundation might be a good way to "separate the wheat from the chaff", providing official and clearly delineated channels through which people looking for money had to make their way.
Laird recalled that the publication of the first issue of his and Eastman's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic came about thanks to a loan the two secured from Quentin Eastman, Kevin Eastman's uncle. Although the two were able to pay him back swiftly, it led Laird to speculate about what could have been: "if we hadn't gotten that loan from him at that point in our lives, it might have taken us a couple more months to raise that money from other sources, and who knows what might have happened differently as a result of that delay?" It occurred to him that "there must be so many times where a self-publishing venture can sink or float on the strength of" a relatively small amount of money, so he felt a desire to use some of his "good fortune, in the financial sense, to help people out" (and, in addition to the creators, the foundation also aids those "involved in charitable organizations").
Moreover, he cites "a big difference" between his and Eastman's personal Turtles situation and the charitable foundation as being "that the Xeric grants are not loans, which have to be paid back, but actual grants, which do not." He "credits Kendall Clark, who has run the foundation for me from the beginning, as one of the main reasons it has worked as well as it has... she's done a wonderful job."
The creative side of the foundation involves the usual application process, but in addition, the foundation began with "an advisory committee made up of three... people working in the industry" whose input is sought on how best to proceed with each application. Submissions are evaluated prior to Laird's involvement, and then he makes the ultimate decisions based on their recommendations. Laird stated in 1993 that: "...knock on wood, God willing, and the creek don't rise, if we go on for another couple of decades, and I'm able to put more money into the basic funding of the Xeric Foundation, then the amount of money that can be given out can really be raised significantly." He hoped that ultimately the figure can be raised from "thousands of dollars" to "hundreds of thousands of dollars," to support an increasing number of large and small projects.
Since that time, Laird has been able to find time to pursue some other comic book work, including publishing Stupid Heroes, and the graphic novel trilogy Planet Racers, with Jim Lawson. Even this ties into the TMNT, however, since the 2003 TMNT series has episodes based on the theme of Planet Racers.
In December 2019, issue #100 of IDW Publishing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic series featured a teaser ad for an upcoming comic project titled in which the prospect of a possible reunion and cooperation between Laird and Eastman was held out."City at War: The End". Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #100 (IDW Publishing) The project was confirmed in April 2020, but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately manifested in the fall of that year.
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