Mirage Studios

Mirage Studios was an American comic book company founded in 1983 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in Dover, New Hampshire. The company was best known for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) comic book series and the subsequent franchise it has spawned.[1][2][3]

Not to be confused with Mirage Enterprises.

Mirage Studios
IndustryComics
Founded1983 (1983) in Dover, New Hampshire
FounderKevin Eastman
Peter Laird
FateDormancy (as of 2021)
HeadquartersDover, New Hampshire (1983–1984)
Sharon, Connecticut (1984–1986)
Northampton, Massachusetts,
United States
ProductsTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
DivisionsMirage Licensing, Inc.
Mirage Publishing, Inc.
Mirage Management, Inc.

History

Mirage Studios was started in 1983, in Dover, New Hampshire. The company was named "Mirage" because there was no actual company. Less than a year before Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 was published in May 1984, Eastman and Laird began experimenting with numerous series. Mirage then moved to Sharon, Connecticut, and stayed there for two years before ending up in Northampton, Massachusetts.

With the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Eastman and Laird hired a core group of artists to help with the increasing workload. The first addition to the studio roster was Eastman's high school friend Steve Lavigne, brought on in 1984 as a letterer.[4][5]

In 1985, Eastman and Laird hired artist Ryan Brown to assist them as an inker for the Turtles. Brown would be the first in a long line of artists, other than Eastman and Laird, that would work on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. In the following year, two new members were added, penciler Jim Lawson from Connecticut and New Jersey's Michael Dooney who would paint a number of covers. With the addition of these four core artists along with Peter and Kevin, Mirage's Ninja Turtles output would expand over the next couple of years to include numerous Mirage spin-off titles, as well as a companion comic book entitled Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In 1989, Kevin Eastman invited freelance illustrator A.C. Farley to do cover paintings for the TMNT collected books. Peter Laird also invited Farley to do issue #29 of the TMNT comic. Farley was eventually invited to be part of the studio and crafted many paintings and comic artwork for the TMNT until his departure from the studio to resume his freelance business in 2004.[4]

In 1991, Mirage secured an interlocutory injunction against Counter-Feat Clothing for similar designs of drawings.[6]

The Mirage artists operated out of a renovated factory space in Florence, Massachusetts. This is where the bulk of the creative output was done, such as the Playmates Toys toy designs and the Archie TMNT comic series, until Tundra Publishing took over the building.[7]

Eastman and Laird along with Brown, Dooney, Lavigne, Lawson and Farley toured extensively over the years, making personal appearances and attending many comic book conventions in Detroit, Chicago, Hawaii, San Diego, Ohio, Boston, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire among many others. As the TMNT went mainstream, later additions to the studio would include Eric Talbot from Eastman's and Lavigne's old high school, writer Stephen Murphy, and Brown's friend, Dan Berger, who was brought in from Ohio to ink the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventure title from Archie Comics. In 1988, Mirage participated in the drafting of the Creator's Bill of Rights for comic book creators.

On October 21, 2009, it was announced that Viacom had purchased most of Mirage's rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property. Mirage retained the rights to publish 18 issues a year, though the future involvement of Mirage with the Turtles, and the future of Mirage itself, was unclear at the time of the announcement.[8] Mirage went dormant on December 31, 2009.

Since August 2011, IDW has held publishing rights to TMNT comics under license from Viacom.

On September 9, 2021, an announcement was published on the Mirage Group official website that the four Mirage corporations (Mirage Studios, Inc., Mirage Licensing, Inc., Mirage Publishing, Inc., Mirage Management, Inc.) were officially going into indefinite dormancy and, as of September 19, 2021, they will have stopped conducting all merchandise sales. The website will no longer be updated but will remain active as an archival resource related to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics published by Mirage between the years 1984 and 2010.[9]

Titles

Mirage produced many titles, although most did not remain in publication for more than a few issues. Comics published include:

References
  1. Douglas C. McGill (December 25, 1988). "DYNAMIC DUO: Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird; Turning Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Into a Monster". The New York Times. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  2. Gustines, George Gene (July 14, 2012). "Image Comics Is Having a Creative Renaissance". The New York Times. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  3. "Tv & Video". Los Angeles Times. June 25, 1990. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  4. Jason Heller (August 7, 2014). "30 years later, the first 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' comics still pop". Entertainment Weekly's. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  5. Andrew Farago. "The fascinating origin story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". The Week. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  6. Catherine Colston; Kirsty Middleton (2005). Modern Intellectual Property Law. Psychology Press. pp. 637–. ISBN 978-1-85941-816-1.
  7. Gary Groth (January 3, 2012). "The Kevin Eastman Interview Part 2". TCJ. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  8. Rodney (October 21, 2009). "Viacom Acquires Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". The Movie Blog. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  9. Mirage Studios (September 9, 2021). "The Mirage Group Website".
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