Peter Laird

Peter Laird is an American comics artist and writer from North Adams, Massachusetts. His main claim to fame is co-creating the hit series "Teenage Mutants Ninja Turtles" with his then-partner Kevin Eastman. Next to nothing is known about Laird's family background and his early life. Unlike Kevin Eastman, he has rarely spoken about his background in interviews. He was born in 1954, and he was in his early 30s by the time he became a professional comics creator. In the early 1980s, Laird worked as an illustrator for a newspaper located in Dover, New Hampshire. His rates at the time were 10 dollars for each new illustration. To supplement his meager income, Eastman also created illustrations for fanzines. In 1983 or 1984, Laird met aspiring comics artist Kevin Eastman who was searching for a publisher for his work. Laird was also interested in becoming a comics artist, and the two men decided to collaborate on creating their next works. In 1984, Eastman and Laird had a brainstorming session in an effort to find ideas for their own comic book series. They decided to parody elements from four popular comics series of the early 1980s: Marvel Comics' "Daredevil" (about a super-powered mutate with ninja training) and "New Mutants" (about a team of teenage mutants), Dave Sim's "Cerebus the Aardvark" (about an anthropomorphic aardvark who has sword- and-sorcery style adventures), and Frank Miller's Ronin (about a long-dead Japanese ronin who is reincarnated in a dystopian version of New York City). They combined elements from all four series into the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (TMNT for short). Eastman and Laird decided to self-publish the first issue of TMNT, founding the publishing company Mirage Studios to do so. The company was funded through a loan from Eastman's uncle Quentin. They chose the name "mirage", because their company was more an illusion than a reality. The company mostly consisted of its creative duo, and lacked actual offices. The first issue of TMNT was published in May, 1984. It was a black-and-white publication, only 40 pages long, The duo had the idea to advertise their product by sending a four-page press kit to 180 television and radio stations, to the Associated Press and to the United Press International. The result was that the comic book received much publicity, unusually so for a product by a fledgling publisher. The initial print run for the first issue was 3,275 copies, and they were quickly sold out. Due to high demand from market, three additional printings were published the Summer of 1984 and September, 1985. Eastman and Laird had a sales success in their hands. There were advance orders of 15,000 copies for the second issue. Eastman and Laird earned a profit of 2,000 dollars each. They decided to quit their day jobs and to become full-time comic book creators. Eastman and Laird made deals with other companies, granting them the right to create TMNT tie-ins and merchandise. Within a few years, there was a high demand for more TMNT stories and material. Laird has stated in interviews that he did not expect either the TMNT's rapid success, nor the pressures involved in trying to run both a company and a media franchise. For a while, Laird struggled with artist's block. He also realized that he no longer enjoyed drawing. One solution for Laird's problems at the time was to hire more creative staff to help with the workload. Among the early additions to Mirage's staff were letterer Steve Lavigne, inker Ryan Brown, penciler Jim Lawson, and cover artist Michael Dooney. The company gained its first real offices in Florence, Massachusetts, in order to properly house the new staff. The Mirage creative team produced most of their work in-house, instead of relying on freelancers. Further additions to Mirage's staff in the late 1980s included writer and artist Eric Talbot, writer Stephen Murphy, and inker Dan Berger. Murphy would eventually be promoted to managing editor of Mirage, shouldering much of the workload. By 1990, Eastman had grown tired of working exclusively on TMNT and wanted to expand to new projects. Laird refused to either help him or to finance these projects. Eastman founded his own company, Tundra Publishing, while Laird remained at the head of Mirage. From this point on, Laird was de facto Mirage's only publisher, while Eastman progressively distanced himself from the company. In 1992, Laird founded the nonprofit corporation Xeric Foundation, headquartered in Northampton, Massachusetts. The corporation's main goal is to grant funds to comic book creators who want to self-publish new projects. Laird felt that he owed his success as a self-publishing writer and artist to the loan he had received from Quentin Eastman. He felt that other aspiring creators could have a chance at success, if they have sufficient funds. Over the following decades the corporation has helped fund projects by many writers and artists. In 2000, Laird partially bought out Eastman's ownership rights on Mirage and the TMNT franchise. According to the terms of the deal, Eastman was left with a small continuing income participation. In 2008, Laird purchased the remaining rights from Eastman, and briefly became the sole owner of the TMNT franchise. In 2009, Laird sold the rights to the TMNT franchise to media corporation Viacom. Mirage became a subsidiary of Viacom. The rights were mainly handled by Viacom's subsidiary Nickelodeon, which was interested in financing new adaptations of the franchise. By the terms of the deal, Laird maintained the rights to annually create and publish up to eighteen black-and-white comics based on the TMNT franchise. By 2021, Laird was 67-years-old. He infrequently writes or draws new comics projects, and is otherwise semi-retired.