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The characters were the brainchildren of two underemployed, New Hampshirebased art-school grads: Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
Laird countered with his own version.
Then they co-drew a group shot featuring four such creatures.
Icons were quietly born.
The two decided to take a leap of faith and do a full comic about these little doodle-dudes.
It would be calledTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a title intended to parody comic-book trends of the day.
They also sent out about 180 press releases to niche and mainstream news outlets.
Buyers scooped up the copies Eastman and Laird put out through comics shops and in individual sales at conventions.
In three weeks, they were sold out.
Word of mouth grew, and so did print runs and sales for subsequent issues.
In that crazy whirlwind of enthusiasm for this newly arrived hit, the bubble began to form.
First came the consumers.
It was a perfect recipe for quick wealth.
Publishers proliferated at a rate no one had seen in decades.
There were more run-of-the-mill superhero and fantasy comics, too, most of them crudely drawn and poorly plotted.
In 1986, at the height of the craze, one businessman secretlyfinancedfour competing publishers.
Those huge print runs, of course, should have been a red flag for anyone watching the industry.
Americans are nothing if not bored easily, Groth wrote.
At some point my guess is around September or October of 86 they got bored.
In late 1986 and 1987, the bottom fell out.
Collectors stopped paying top dollar for new number-one issues.
Dissatisfied readers stopped buying the new wave of black-and-white comics.
Publishers couldnt convince retailers to get back onboard and they started going under.
The era of black-and-white excitement was over.
Marvel and DC had never really invested in the Black and White Boom, so their sales remained steady.
But the crash reverberated in comics shops and reader conversations.
Retailers, collectors, and publishers should have learned an important lesson about frenzied comics fads.
Unfortunately for the industry, they didnt.
What salvaged the comics industry after that second boom-and-bust cycle?
In many ways, it was the game-changing success of superhero movies likeX-Men,Spider-Man, andBatman Begins.
Movies adapted from comics have since become the financial pillars of not just comics publishing, but modern filmmaking.
Perhaps thats something Paramount should keep in mind as it mulls the future of theTurtlesfranchise.
