Mirage Studios

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mirage Studios is an independent American comic book company founded in 1983 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. They are currently based out of Northampton, Massachusetts. Mirage Studios are known primarily for their creation and publication of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book series.

With the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Eastman and Laird surrounded themselves with a core group of artists. The first addition to the studio roster was Eastman's high school best friend Steve Lavigne. Lavigne was brought on in 1984 to do the lettering of the books, thus giving Peter and Kevin more time.

In 1985, Eastman and Laird hired a Cleveland artist by the name of Ryan Brown to ink a story for one of the many role-playing game books that had begun to be published. Brown would be the first in a long line of artists, other than Eastman and Laird, that would work on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. In the following year, two new members were added, penciler Jim Lawson from Connecticut and New Jersey's Michael Dooney who would paint a number of covers. With the addition of these four core artists along with Peter and Kevin, Mirage's Ninja Turtles output would expand over the next couple of years to include numerous Mirage Studio spin-off titles, as well as a companion comic book entitled Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The Mirage artists operated out of a renovated factory space in Florence, Massachusetts. This is where the bulk of the creative output was done, such as the Playmates toy designs and the Archie TMNT comic series, until Tundra Publishing took over the building.

Eastman and Laird along with Lavigne, Lawson, Brown and Dooney toured extensively over the years, attending comic book shows in Detroit, Chicago, Hawaii, San Diego, Ohio, Boston, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire among many others. As the TMNT went mainstream, later additions to the studio would include Eric Talbot from Eastman's 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 Adventure title from Archie Comics. With the exception of Kevin Eastman, all the original artists are still with Mirage today and contribute to the TMNT.

In 1988 Mirage Studios participated in the drafting of the Creator's Bill of Rights. This document was intended to protect the rights of comic book creators and keep them from being exploited by the industry.

[edit] Comics published

NOTE: Many titles have been published by Mirage Studios, although most were not successful enough to remain in publication for more than a few issues.