As April draws to a close, so does our month-long 8 year anniversary celebration for the blog. So to round out our roster of guest bloggers, here’s a contribution from friend-of-the-ferret Caleb Mozzocco, journalist, blogger, and small press comix creator. Take it away, Caleb:
Dara asked me if I might like to contribute to the regular “7 Covers” feature as part of this blog’s anniversary celebration, and I jumped at the chance—partly because it was an honor to contribute something to the work of this gang of creators I’ve watched develop over the course of the ten years or so we shared a city, but mostly because I am vain, and like nothing more than to see my name and my words reflected back at me from as many angles as possible every morning when I fire up my computer.
I wrote a super-long introduction of myself and the entire history of my relationship with Dara, Ferret Press and the Panel people, followed by another 500 words or so about how I decided on this particular theme for my installment of “7 Covers,” followed by another 800 words telling a story about how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles helped get me into comics (Dara already featured the very first comic book that sent me to a comic shop on a regular basis, my own personal gateway drug comic, in a previous installment) and was just getting into a couple hundred words about why I liked the first of the seven when I remembered this isn’t my blog, and instead of just pounding away at the keyboard for a few thousand words about whatever popped into my head until bed time, maybe the polite thing to do on someone else’s blog would be to try to keep it short and sweet.
Well, I don’t know about sweet, but this is definitely short.
Short for me, anyway.
Here then are seven covers from Mirage Comics’ original volume of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, from back when the phrase “Eastman and Laird’s” still preceded the title, and almost every new issue featured a strange but inspired choice of contributors doing pretty much whatever the hell they felt like with the characters and concept.
They’re not necessarily my favorite, nor are they the seven best, but I think they’re seven of the most striking, and emblematic of how daring that book seemed at the time, and the creative risks it seemed to take with each issue:
The artists responsible for each of the above covers are Eric Talbot, Mark Martin, Rick Veitch, Michael Dooney, Micahel Zulli, Rick McCollum and Bill Anderson and Matt Howarth.
-Caleb
Thanks, Caleb. Be sure to check out Caleb’s wonderful blog, Every Day is Like Wednesday, where he just celebrated his 2000th post. And while you’re there, ask him how you can purchase a copy of his first full-length indy comic, My Pet Halfling.
Oh, and for you TMNT fans who may have missed it, check out this edition of our regular Splash Wednesday feature, showcasing a Simon Bisley turtle.
