Forty years ago this month, Kevin Eastman drew a masked, bipedal turtle with nunchucks to make his buddy, Peter Laird, laugh in their New Hampshire apartment. And thus a pop culture franchise was born, spanning comics, animation, toys, live-action rubber-suit movies, video games and one unforgettable Vanilla Ice song.
And sure, you know Leo, Mikey, Donnie, Raph, Shredder and Splinter. Maybe even Bebop and Rocksteady and Baxter Stockman. But what about Ace Duck? Or Scumbug? Or Napoleon Bonafrog, or any of the other countless mutants created over the years to fill out Playmates toy lines or 20-minute cartoons or video game miniboss rosters?
Mutant Pizza is a new, 101-trading card set dedicated to shedding light into even the most obscure corners of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-dom, featuring work by artists you may have seen elsewhere on social media (such as Rat King and Chameleon by CXF podcaster extraordinaire Adam Reck!). Some you may have seen before drawing a different kind of mutant — the Mutant Pizza set was masterminded by Scott Modrzynski, who previously produced two sets of X-Men cards known as The ColleXion.
You can find Mutant Pizza on the pay-what-you-want site Gumroad. All proceeds benefit the Sea Turtle Conservancy, a nonprofit that seeks to ensure the survival of sea turtles within the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific through research, education, training, advocacy and protection of the natural habitats upon which they depend. Now that’s radical!
ComicsXF talked to Modrzynski about Mutant Pizza, obscure Turtles characters, some of the artists who brought this set to life and much more.
Cowabunga.
What is the origin of this project?
Mutant Pizza was born out of the high of completing ColleXion: RefleXions. There’s this affirmation of your efforts when people pick up the things you helped bring to life, and it motivates you to keep going, to go again. Like finishing a marathon. When’s the next one? And in this case, I wanted to give the X-Men a rest, so we went from one kind of mutant to another.
How did you determine the beneficiary of this set, the Sea Turtle Conservancy?
The Archie comics always had this environmental slant to them, so I knew that the charity I wanted to donate all the proceeds of Mutant Pizza to should also be some sort of environmental cause. I opened it up to the cast of artists to see if anyone had a preference or suggestions, and one fantastic painter, Elisa Barety, actually made the suggestion. I did a little research on the Sea Turtle Conservancy’s mission — protecting sea turtles’ natural habitats — and checked their Charity Navigator score (99%), and that was enough for me.
What is your personal history with the Heroes in a Half Shell?
I was definitely all in on the first wave of TurtleMania. He-Man was my first obsession, and I loved GI Joe, but Turtles? Couldn’t get enough of it as a kid. I was too young for the Mirage comics, and at the time, my budding comic collection was oddly sporadic. I just got random issues of random comics here and there. But the Wolf/Marakami series was a must every afternoon when I got off the bus, the movie was an absolute phenomenon, and even more than that, the PlayMates toys were where my imagination ran wild. They were so colorful and weird and sometimes gross. Lots of toilet humor and melty-type sculpts (Muckman, Wyrm, the plunger cannon all come to mind), and as I look back, it seems that so many of my childhood memories and joys are tied to TMNT gifts. To this day, every time I hear “I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning,” I think of trying to set up Samurai Leo, Panda Khan and Pizzaface on the coffee table.
This is a huge set featuring some deep pulls that only appeared in certain shows, video games or toy lines. Were there any you were completely unfamiliar with going in?
Yes! Millo Sketch, an artist from Mexico with an invaluable scratchy, etching-like style to these fan-made sets (He’s been in on all three to date) chose this guy Shogun, who only ever appeared in TMNT II: The Arcade Game. I barely ever got past the inferno inside Level 1, so it’s no surprise I never heard of him. I read the entire Archie series in preparation for this, so Katmandu, Bellybomb and Verminator X were also new to me. Piotr Nowacki, Mike Cerminara and Juan Wences smashed those cards, by the way. I love Piotr’s newspaper comic strip style in particular, which is such a departure from the standard visual ID of action hero illustrations, exactly what I want to see from these art cards. Mike hits all the right notes with his use of color, halftone, character pose and general layout. A real pro. And as for Juan, the BLAM BLAM BLAM background on Verminator X is a terrific use of the space that also conveys who the character is. I can’t say enough about everyone who contributed their time and energy on these.
Who is your favorite obscure Turtles character and why?
I’ve always been a sucker for the weird mutants. Yeah, ninjas are fine, but give me Battle Beast-type monsters! And that said, while I acknowledge that Nick’s 2012 series is the best of the bunch, Rise of the TMNT is my favorite. So many new, inventive characters. As a longtime wrestling fan, the luchador, Ghostbear, is a personal favorite, but so is Bullhop. (I created collages of each of these characters for the set from old Wizard magazines.) But I think my favorite has to be Meat Sweats. He’s an evil chef turned into a pig who wants to cook and eat the turtles. He can do this Venom-symbiote thing with his arms, and sometimes, smaller Meat Sweats pop off his body. It’s gross and altogether can be very terrifying, but he is hysterical in the series, which deserves an extra life.
How was the division of labor decided? Not everyone can draw the main four turtles.
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember exactly how I decided who got what. I always ask artists to send me a list of their preferred choices (this isn’t a job) and how many they’d like to contribute. Then it’s a lot of whittling down in a Google spreadsheet to try and best accommodate everyone. I do specifically remember that when Elliott Dickson and Jody Edwards requested Leonardo and Raphael, respectively, they had to have them. Elliott’s da Vinci-inspired iteration was so good that it had the lead card in the set. And Jody is one of the most incredible watercolor painters I’ve ever seen. She actually gave me two Raphaels, and I let the people of social media decide. That was like two years ago, though. Goes to show how long this has been brewing.
In that same vein, how did you determine the card order? Leo is a long way from Donny is a long way from Mikey is a long way from Raph.
If I had the greatest hits one after another, I think some people would check out right away. So in my mind, thinking in terms of a nine-card grid, let’s try and get one all-star per “page” and then fill in around them. By that same token, I tried to balance the colors the same way, so one 9-up page wouldn’t be too green or too purple or whatever.
Each card comes with an environmental fact related to the kind of animal on the front of the card. Do you feel like doing all this research has made you more of an environmentalist?
In third grade, I gave a speech over the PA system of my elementary school about alkaline batteries and how to dispose of them properly. That was 1990 (and probably riddled with misinformation). I cringe every time I see an aluminum can in the regular trash. I’m not out there like an activist or chaining myself to trees, but I’ve always tried to be conscious of the environment, and this became a great outlet to expand on that a little. I never want any of these fan-made card sets to feel like cheap imitations, and adding all these unique blurbs (or reading lists on the ColleXion, and double-sided good and evil cards for RefleXions) is the way they can stand apart and on their own.
What was the biggest challenge in making this set?
Finishing it. I was away for six months with the Navy. I came home and just had this “I don’t want to do anything for a while” inertia envelope me. I found a new job that is both creatively fulfilling and incredibly time-consuming. I’ve got a family and a house that has unfortunately been kind of a money pit. Time and energy have been in short supply.
Prior to this you produced two sets of X-Men cards known as the ColleXion. In this time, you’ve worked with a ton of artists in a number of media (pen-and-ink, wood cut, Lego, etc.). Who are a couple of the first-time artists on this set people should check out?
The first-timers! They were all great. Jeff Harvey is an amazing cartoonist. Zac and Bonnie Zemantic are a spousal duo with completely different looks, but both incredible in their ways, and very prolific in their work. Zac has some online comics I’ve really enjoyed. I highly recommend Anonymous Cubed. Robin Quinn is a pixel artist, and this was one of the harder ones to convey, because their Baron Draxum might just look like it hasn’t fully rendered, but the more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that’s just part of the art. Vaheirr Cosplay made an actual Ray Fillet cosplay. It’s INSANE. I would have loved to have seen some X-Men cosplay on those card sets, but honestly, wasn’t sure how to cold call someone for that without possibly sounding like a total creep, but when you’re dealing with fishmen, bug people and the like, it’s fine. Flops is an artist whose pin-ups could and should be variant covers for comics across the major publishers. Jonathan Valiente’s digital art has a cutout appeal to it. Rough angles, perfect in its imperfections. I’d apply that last phrase to Jeremy Brooks as well. His Scumbug is a great example of that. Lukasz Kowalczuk has the indy vibe I definitely sought out. His work is perfect for anything with the word “Mutant” in the title. Also a workhorse who has put out so much tremendous stuff on his own: comics, RPG games, posters, etc. KC wilson, Johnny Luu, Eric Peters … everyone brought it, and in their own way. I’m probably missing a couple, and I apologize, but I’ve had this on my desk for so long that they all seem so familiar to me now.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
