Dimension III - "Elfquest and Cerebus"

Thus far, we've looked at mainstream comics and how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles acted as a response to them, but how do those early comics fit in with their contemporary neighbors in independent publishing? As previously mentioned, as with all eras, the era of fringe independent comics is not something that is easy to map, but if you had to put a starting point for it, it would be between late 1977 and early 1978 with the successes of Wendy Pini, Richard Pini and Dave Sim.

Again, it's not that cut and dry, independent publishing technically existed in some form or another since the underground comix of the 1960s, or actually as far back as the 1920s with pornographic comics/Tijuana bibles. For our purposes, the fringe independents was an era that began with a desire to release non-mainstream content with a level of mainstream quality. Content alternative to superheroes, but with the same quality of paper, ink, printing and overall quality control as that from DC Comics and Marvel. The best underground comix had to offer was Bud Plant Inc, which was largely a mail-order distribution service, and Star*Reach, which focused mostly on more adult versions of typical comic book genre stories, and and even they were not adventurous enough to give a Quest for Fire meets Chariot of the Gods meets Star Wars manga-influenced alternative fantasy yarn a chance.

Which is kind of a surprise, because the actual story within Wendy and Richard Pini's Elfquest is not all that out there. The establishing story is that of a tribe being forced out of their home by a disaster, they have a perilous journey and then join with another tribe, and concluding with a fairly standard love triangle. It's fairly easy to digest in that "three-act structure"/"Joseph Campbell"/"plug and play story" kind of way. What actually made it stand out in 1978 was its Eastern-influenced storybook visuals and complicated lore involving a lot of fantasy and sci-fi genre mashing.

At best, Wendy and Richard could be called casual readers of American comics, and with no serious experience in the field, they largely drew from alternative sources for inspiration, in this case mostly the anime works of Osamu Tezuka (creator of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion) and various manga like Sanpei Shirato's Kamui series and Kyoko Mizuki's Candy Candy, which had been imported to the western United States almost entirely untranslated. Wendy, who did all the art and co-wrote the story, was (and still is) a huge geek (in the good way) and spent a lot of time pouring over these works and trying to understand the visual language of these Japanese productions, even if she couldn't actually follow the story.

Once again, it's Western reappropriation of Eastern imagery, but unlike Frank Miller just seeing things like ninjas and samurais and thinking they looked cool, Wendy made an honest effort to try and work out why things were drawn this way, and what advantages adopting these styles might give to a story. She recognized manga's general feminine sensibility and the stretches of time created with silent panels and lingering moments. Elfquest flows more like animation than a typical comic book, and the large-eyed androgynous look of characters in manga lent themselves well the sensual other-worldly quality of the titular elves, who appear to be the exact midpoint between Tolkien's elves and Keebler's. All in all, Elfquest is pretty damn gorgeous.

Unfortunately, all the style and visual language in the world doesn't mean anything if you have a crappy printing on newsprint, as was the case with Elfquest's first issue, printing under Fantasy Quarterly by Independent Publishers Syndicate, and if you needed any evidence as to the poor state of independent publishing at this time, IPS folded after just printing one single comic book issue. By all accounts the physical quality of the issue was pretty much crap, the entire thing was printed on newsprint, including the cover, meaning heavy discoloration over time and the chance for disintegration if caught out in a light drizzle for a few seconds. It was about the most horrible first experience any comic creator could have, and many might be disheartened to the point of quitting and getting a job as a file clerk. Wendy and Richard Pini didn't do that. They started their own publishing company.

WaRP Graphics, like all small companies, was a huge gamble. Elfquest had yet to prove itself a success, but the Pinis poured as much money as they could into quality publications, with magazine-sized issues and glossy covers that wouldn't look out place next to a DC or Marvel book. It paid off though, and Elfquest was a runaway hit that still has a significant fanbase through seemingly continues rediscovery (from what I've read, it seems Elfquest is a common fixture in public libraries). Over time, WaRP Graphics expanded to other alternative fantasy titles, including Martin Greim's superhero parody Thunderbunny, comic book adaptations of Robert Asprin's fantasy farce novels MythAdventures, and most notably Colleen Doran's New Age pro-gay space opera A Distant Soil (That didn't turn out well for either party, but that's a story for another entry).

WaRP Graphics was not the only model for independent publishing being created at the time. In almost parallel step with the Pinis, Dave Sim and his partner Deni Loubert founded Aardvark-Vanaheim in 1977 to publish Sim's sword-and-sorcery pastiche Cerebus. The main difference between WaRP and Aardvark-Vanaheim is largely that of attitude. Both were created for a singular creator-driven fantasy title when said creators became disillusioned with publication practices, and both strove for the quality of major publications, but while WaRP at least attempted to look the part of a legit publication house (and eventually became one, warts and all), self-publication was a significant part of Cerebus's and Sim's identity.

We presently have a rather odd inconsistency in our attitudes towards self-publication. There's little respect for self-published novels and albums, while Internet video production has become a viable alternative to televisions for many, independent films are popular if rarely seen in the mainstream, and performance art is often a source of mockery. Self-published comics in the late 1970s all the way through to the 1990s fit a bit uneasily on the positive side of the spectrum, largely due to the majority of comic book consumers and creators being part of the same fandom community. Self-publication in comic fandom was often an extension of the resources already present in fandom, with printing experience from producing fanzines and the connections made at conventions. It was a largely self-fed self-congratulatory market.

But even as that scene changed, and even after getting offers from major publishers, and later Hollywood types like George Lucas, Dave Sim insisted on keeping Cerebus self-published and self-distributed, sometimes to the point of alienation (more on that in another article. Believe me, we're going to talk a lot about Sim as this project progresses, and this isn't the time to cover his more... esoteric behaviors). Even during a brief period in which Aardvark-Vanaheim extended itself to publish other titles, the focus remained creator-driven content and control over publication. For Sim, control over your own product was a badge of honor, one that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird would quickly learn and lose.

As for Cerebus itself, which is the fourth and final comic credited as inspiration by Eastman, we have an even simpler and tried form of genre collision, that of "funny animal" cartoon character in a realistic and serious human-based setting. Howard the Duck had defined that genre collision five years prior. The main difference between those two properties, outside of Howard the Duck's modern Marvel superheroes setting vs. Cerebus' swords-and-sorcery setting, was how little Cerebus actually drew attention to the contrast. The titular character, a cartoon aardvark, maintained the attitude and swagger of a Robert E. Howard anti-hero, and while other characters may comment on his unusual appearance upon first meeting him, they none the less recognize Cerebus' abilities as a killer, thief and strategist.

The actual humor of the series does not come from Cerebus himself, but from the various parodies and celebrity caricatures that fill out each issue, with Cerebus always playing the straight man. Micheal Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné is given the personality and dialog of Foghorn Leghorn. Prince Valiant becomes a whiny man-child whose dad is Groucho Marx. Red Sonja became hyper-sexualized eye-candy whose only... actually, wait, no, she pretty much just stayed Red Sonja. Not to mention medieval parodies of Batman and the X-Men running around.

And yet Cerebus shouldn't be mistaken as a gag comic, as all the jokes and parodies hang on a frame of real conflict and forward momentum. Cerebus is constantly gaining and losing, there is never a "status quo" for longer than a couple of issues, and there's a new complication around every corner. In a span of thirty issues, Cerebus could be a wandering barbarian, looking for the next job, only to wind up worshiped by a cult, than made leader of an entire army, which is then defeated, so then he saves a prince and becomes a noble's chief of security, only then to get roped in with a bunch of savages who want to overthrow the noble, but is chemically put under a coma by a secret order only to wake up months later halfway across the globe fending off assassins. Not to mention all the one-off stories with Cerebus encountering wizards, monsters, would-be adventurers and various drunken antics.

There is a lot to say about Cerebus (A LOT), and we'll cover more of it in time, but it's this progression, this outright refusal to get comfortable with itself, that was the most important lesson learned for those early years of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not the first issue, mind you. Eastman and Laird also used the cartoon animal in realistic human setting, and WaRP and Aardvark-Vanaheim certainty laid out the groundwork on which Mirage and all the other 1980s independent publishers would build up from, but the first issue is completely lacking that forward momentum. It wasn't until they adopted Cerebus' fervor for never sticking to one idea for too long that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was allowed to be immortal.

Out of the four main influences, Cerebus is the most important. The New Mutants was representative of then-current comic book trends to which the Ninja Turtles was a response to. Frank Miller's Daredevil was the comic the Ninja Turtles was a less-than-direct parody of. Ronin gave the Ninja Turtles an art style to aspire to and a how-to guide for cultural reappropriation. All just aesthetics. Cerebus gave the Ninja Turtles the structure, the modifications and attitude it would need to continue. It offered the first significant change to the franchise.

Cerebus was the first mutagen.

Dimension II - "Frank Miller's Daredevil, Ronin"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles initially began as a stand alone comic that was, at least in part, a satire of then-current trends in comic books. It accomplished this by pumping up these trends with steroids and playing them out using Hanna Barbera-esque cartoon characters that have no business in stories like this. The parody involved is pretty broad, but if we were to settle on one thing that the Ninja Turtles were directly making fun of, it would almost certainty be Frank Miller's run on Daredevil.

Frank Miller came from the same generation as Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and much like them began his career with little interest in doing superhero comics in a time when comic books were refocusing almost exclusively on superheroes. One story of his early career has coming into a publisher's office with a portfolio of "guys in trench coats and old cars" and being asked "where are the guys in tights?" His earliest credits as an artist including Gold Key Comics' Twilight Zone series and DC's Weird War Tales, before joining Marvel on their John Carter, Warlord of Mars series. Eventually, being a comic book artist meant drawing the guys in tights, and so Miller found himself doing a few issues of Spectacular Spider-Man and eventually becoming the main artist for Daredevil in 1979.

At this point, Daredevil was doing very poorly in sales largely due to the terribly uninspired writing of Roger McKenzie. His writing wasn't exactly bad, but he kept things pretty straight-laced and uneventful, and with a character as limited in ability and personality as Matt Murdock, you can't afford to play it safe. The worst you could say about McKenzie's run was that all the secondary characters revolve around Murdock despite the character being too boring to justify it. This included a large cast of attractive white women all madly in love with Murdock, rather shockingly resembling a harem anime.

This extended to the villains as well, resulting in repetitive plots. When Frank Miller came on board as artist, the first two story lines he worked on involved older villains, Death-Stalker and Bullseye, hiring minor criminals to stage a trap for Daredevil for revenge for a past defeat. Alright, but if you want to want to keep readers interested, you probably don't want to run the same story twice in a row. Speaking of reruns, this was also a period in which McKenzie was retelling Daredevil's origins through the character of reporter Ben Urich, who spends half a dozen issues uncovering what led Matt Murdock to become Daredevil, with no changes to the original origin story all the way back in 1964. McKenzie brought nothing new to the table.

Frank Miller, on the other hand, infused the pages he was given with darkness and detail. It's often been refereed to as a film noir style, with characters obscured in deep shadow and sharp contrasts. He also added a level of detail to the New York City that set it apart from the New York City seen in other Marvel titles, giving the oft-traveled rooftops water towers, piping and cracked stonework that ground the setting with its real-life counterpart. He also had a tendency towards long vertical panels, emphasizing the dizzying heights of buildings rather than flat cityscapes. Visually, Daredevil was about rising and falling, fitting for one of Marvel's more acrobatic characters.

Miller disliked McKenzie's scripts and asked to be taken off the title, but after a change in editor, McKenzie was canned and Miller took over as writer. One of the first things he did was take advantage of McKenzie's "origin story rerun" by following it up with Daredevil's "secret history," new details about Murdock's life between being blinded and actually becoming Daredevil. The first of these was the introduction of Elektra, an old college flame who, after her father was killed after a hostage situation gone bad, became a ninja assassin. In many ways, this was a redo of McKenzie's Black Widow arch, who just before Miller took over was part of Daredevil's "harem." Both were independent heroines struggling to reconcile their chosen career paths with their feelings towards Murdock. Where Elektra differed was that she wasn't defined by her longing for Murdock, but rather that her feelings for him were getting in the way of her being a professional killer. She was a career woman first, a love interest second.

The other secret history was the introduction of Stick, Daredevil's old mentor who trained him in using his other senses. Not the first elderly blind Asian mentor/martial arts teacher in comics, that would go to I Ching in Wonder Woman, though Stick is far less of a stereotype. Elektra and Stick were just two of several Japanese elements Frank Miller brought into the comic, ranging from small details like Bullseye using shurikens to new enemies like the Hand, a ninja clan moving into the city. There is a concern about how much Miller actually understood these elements (Elektra murders a lot of people with sais, even though they are traditionally a blunt weapon or a tool for disarming), but never goes so far as to turn things into a nasty 1980s "yellow peril."

These are the elements that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 is often cited to be parodying. The Hand wound up becoming the Foot Clan, and Stick became Splinter. That's pretty much it, the names are the extent of the jokes. Stick and Splinter have very little in common, and the Foot Clan actually has more detail and character than the Hand ever had. In reality, Daredevil's influence on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles runs a lot deeper than the initial parody. Frank Miller's focus on street-level crime set the stage for much of the conflicts in the Mirage-era of the Turtles, include his "Gangwar" arc which would serve as one of the building blocks for Eastman and Laird's "City at War" arc. Meanwhile, on the Archie Comics side of things, a lot of Elektra would wind up going into the secondary character Ninjara.

But Frank Miller's influence on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the 1980s independent comic book scene run even deeper. Miller is often associated as one of the leading mouth pieces for creator rights in comic books, though importantly not on of the leading movers and shakers. By the time Miller made his keynote speech for the 1994 Diamond Comic Distributors Retailers Seminar (in which he ripped up a copy of Comics Code publication Americana in Four Colors), we already had Jack Kirby and Neal Adams starting the practice of reclaiming original artwork from publishers, the Comic Creators Guild, the rise of independent publishers, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Dave Sims bypassing Diamond Comics' distribution model, the Northampton Summit and the signing of the Creator's Bill of Rights, the creation of Image Comics and the publication of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, events that Miller at best gave some comment on but mostly had little to nothing to do with.

(In fairness, most of the people involved with all that have largely tapped out, and with the exception of McCloud, Miller remains the most vocal of them today.)

Miller's actual impact for comic book creators and creator rights was through a heightened lionization of comic celebrity. There had been popular comic creators before, but no one that had gotten this big this fast. The reason for this was two-fold. First, Miller saving Daredevil was seen as nothing short of a Christmas miracle by Marvel, making him the first must-have of his generation. Second, Miller came in when major publishers began to sell shorter-form comics. The rise of the limited series and graphic novel started in 1979, when the major publishers began to realize that running dozens of titles non-stop forever might not be the easiest thing to manage. At one point, DC Comics was juggling sixty monthly ongoing titles, which became too financially unsound and resulted in what has become known as the DC Implosion, which saw over half of those titles suddenly taken off the market over a six-month period.

With a lot of freed resources, DC Comics began to experiment with shorter four-to-six issues series. These proved to be both profitable and pretty low-risk, since there was no obligation to expand any characters or ideas into a years long soap opera. This opened the door for more experimental, artist-driven works in DC, and one of the first people to be swept up in it was Frank Miller and his 1983 six-issue series, Ronin. What was most important about Ronin was that it was made by Frank Miller. His name was in big letters above the title on the cover, it was always the first thing you read on every issue, much like Eastman and Laird would wind up doing. The back cover included quotes from other big names in comics, like Will Eisner and Harlan Ellison, praising the work and Miller as something new and revolutionary.

It was a scale of creator promotion that had only been seen in Hollywood. It was a level of self-branding that many young creators might strive for, and here's one of their own doing just that. For Frank Miller, that led to The Dark Knight Returns, which led to the "grimdark" period for comic books, which led the Image Comics stable of creators, which led to the rise and fall of the early 1990s comic book bubble. It's funny what a strong declaration of "HEY EVERYBODY, PAY ATTENTION TO ME" can do.

Ronin also happens to be of the four comics credited as influence on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and out of the four, it's certainly the one the series most visually resembles. Both share an over-abundance of line shading to give a sense of heavy grit and constant shadow. There isn't a single human face that isn't subtly grotesque, and both series are in love with their sewers and large establishing shots of New York City.

Ronin also cranked up Miller's interest in reappropriation of Eastern imagery that started with Daredevil. The story involved a ronin, a masterless samurai, whose ancient battle with a demon spills into a half post-apocalyptic/half cyberpunk future New York City. Miller spent a lot of time looking into martial arts movies, samurai stories and untranslated volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub, and from that drew what how he assumed a stoic samurai character would act in a mess of American genre excess. There's a lot of surface coolness to it, but reading Ronin over something like Lone Wolf and Cub is like listening to Carl Douglas' "Kung-Fu Fighting" over watching an actual kung-fu action film, you only end up with a very surface understanding of things.

Frank Miller played a major role in changing the comic book landscape in the early 1980s, but he, along with everything else we've covered to the point, is part of the mainstream, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles most certainly did not start that way. To better understand it, we'll have to look at some of its neighbors...

[Yes, I know, I said January 6th, but things in my life keep getting out of hand. For the time being, the blog will be updated whenever I can get it, and hopefully will settle into the original Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule when my personal schedule settles down]

Tonight, we dine.

R.I.P. James Avery

1948-2014