COVER BY: Simon Bisley BOOK DESIGN: Lorenzo Sperlonga
CONTENTS
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THE VERY ANGRY SEVEN: By Kevin Eastman, Eric Talbot, and Simon Bisley. Letters and Colors by Altered Earth Arts
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NO GUTS OR GLORY: By Kevin Eastman
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BIZ AND BUZZ: By Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley Design and letters by Lorenzo Sperlonga Colors by Robert Dunas
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INFECTIOUS: By Kevin Eastman
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THUMP’N GUTS: By Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley Lettering and colors by Steve Lavigne and Mark Martin
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ZOMBIE WAR: By Kevin Eastman, Tom Skulan, and Eric Talbot
PUBLISHERKevinEastman VICEPRESIDENTHowardJurofsky MANAGINGEDITORDebraYanover SUBSCRIPTIONMANAGERPatHayward RONINBEBOP is published by METAL MAMMOTH, INC. 100 N. Village Avenue, Suite 12, Rockville Centre, NY 11570 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright holders, except short excerpts for review purposes.
All stories and artwork is copyright by the guys that worked on them. 2008
This was a fun collection of wacked out stuff to put together. Most of which has not seen the light of day since the mid eighties and early ninties (and I’m sure it shows), and some of the rest has never been published. Either way, it was a blast to do at the time, especially in between the TMNT madness, the Tundra publishing and Museum adventures, on top of the Underwhere and Melting Pot books…and well, way to many other things to mention, but somewhere along the way I found the time to do these. And had the pleasure of working with some pretty cool guys as well. Thanks to all my brothers from other mothers.
THE VERY ANGRY SEVEN! A classic example in this series of explorations is the first one out of the box—“THE VERY ANGRY SEVEN!” If I remember correctly, Eric, Simon, and I decided to create the next huge licensing property… mutant animals worked once, why not again? Well, after a bunch of doodles, phone conversations, and planning…it was decided Eric and I would fly over to Simon’s studio in England and bang out a twenty four page story that would set the world on fire! Millions for all involved, Ferrari’s in every drive way! What we ended up with is something barely publishable (thanks Budweiser!), but a trip I will always remember for the rest of my life. Those really were some of the best of times. Enjoy it, and I’ll see you in the next chapter break.
INFECTIOUS YES, this is the most bizarre story I have ever done. I think it came from seeing a bunch of twisted stories about serial sex killers over the years— most of which were men, and thought, “What if you had the twisted mind of a demon/male sex predator in the body of a female? I know I was in between marriages at the time, I had too many female friends, and was always in admiration of the “power” they have over men, and most of them don’t even realize it. For the right woman, or the wrong one, with that “all consuming” lust, a man would do ANYTHING to own her. Can anyone say Helen of Troy? At the same time, I did then, and still do now, believe in the power of love— true love can conquer all. Redemption. So I started playing with these two concepts, lots of story notes, then a loose treatment, and about eighteen pages of layouts when I realized it wasn’t working, it seem to simple to figure out, to typical and boring—but I had recently read about a screenwriter that was in the same position with a script he had written, and in total frustration threw the entire thing up in the air— and as it fluttered to the floor had a brilliant thought…however he picked it up, with a few tweaks here and there, was how he’d finish it. So that’s what I did, threw roughly twenty pages into the air at the studio, I picked them up--and left them in that order. I did add a few bridge pages to that help beat out the rest of the story, and there you have it. The original comic was published in the early ninties, wrapped in a cover that was inspired by the 3D work Dave McKean and Bill Sienkiwiez were doing at the time—and if you are feeling really saucy, the next time you see me at a show, ask me why the cover is worth $20,000 dollars to me. If you’re still reading after this story, I’ll be back with you to introduce the next.
THUMP’N GUTS Back in the early eighties, after the $1.50 cover priced TMNT #1 shot up to $25 bucks a copy on the collectors market, there was a HUGE boom in the publishing of black and white comics. It seemed like in the span of a year, the first issue of ANY new black and white comic would sell 150,000 copies-thanks to “collectors” flooding into comic shops, looking to make a killing on the resale of these “collectors items” when the real sales figures should have been less than a few thousand at most. Less than a year later, everyone woke up, and the market died, taking quite a few comic shops and distributors with it. This was called the black and white “Boom and Bust” and many people still say we, Peter and I, started it. Crazy huh? Fast forward to the Image Comics years, add into the mix all the new multi-covered, trading card inserted, embossed covered, main stream publishers efforts—chuck in thousands of “new collectors” looking to put their kids through college by buying 400 copies and trying to resell the “rare” first issues of a seven million copy press run comic (think “Death of Superman”) and the business was REALLY booming. Now that my friends, is crazy! Of course, that too ended, but it took a few years, and when it went down, it went down big time. Many, MANY more publishers, and distributors, and comic shops went out of business. Towards the end, although we didn’t know how close the end was, Biz and I decided we’d try to make a point to the “collectors” out there—we’d do an ALL NEW superhero book, with three endings, three different covers, six different trading cards, a poster, and twenty dollar bills randomly inserted into a pre-marked up poly bagged issues--limited to 100,000 copy press run. Now THAT would be really collectible! The most important part of the packaging was a “little card” that explained what was collectable, the first appearance of Superman in Action comics, and what was not--seven million copies of the death of Superman. Didn’t work, the market already had two feet in the grave by the time the issue came out, the point missed--but in the end we ended up with a really cool comic. In the following pages, you get to see all the covers and endings. Enjoy, and I’ll see you one more time for the final adventure.
ZOMBIE WAR Zombies, Zombies, Zombies—always loved them, always will! From “Dawn of the Dead” onward, I was a hopeless case—the more blood, gore, flesh ripping, eyeball popping, gut twisting, and screaming the better! Wanted to draw one for a long time, and after talking about it WAY TO MUCH with Tom Skulan and Eric Talbot, we kicked it into high gear, and collectively plotted out an idea we all liked, and one we hoped hadn’t been done before —a mysterious comet, a crash landed stranded alien, a female military detective, hot on the apocalypse trail, and ALL the DEAD SOLDIERS of the world coming back to life to destroy the world—one bite at a time! What more could you ask for? Much like most all of the TMNT stories, as well as all the works I did with Simon Bisley, I hand wrote out the basic treatment, collecting all of our discussions and thoughts, and then started breaking down the story to a general page count, then jumped into the layouts. The funniest part of this layout process, is I did the entire storyboards during plane flights over a period of about a year! I was flying a lot back then, doing tons of signings and conventions, traveling to the West coast for work on many of the TMNT entertainment projects, and it was nearly impossible to find quiet time to draw unless I was on a plane. Anyway, my goal was to keep a few steps ahead of Eric, who was light tabling the layouts, and doing all the final pencils, inks, as well as the tones on Duo Shade paper we’d come to love using on the TMNT comics. When we finished we decided we’d publish the two volumes through a Tundra/Fantaco Press co-publishing arrangement, to help promote each other’s publishing adventures. Alright gang, that’s the last intro from me—enjoy the final section of this collection! Rock on!
RONINBEBOP is two hundred and twenty four pages of madness! Six different tales of insanity brought to you from the twisted minds of Kevin Eastman, Simon Bisley, Eric Talbot, and Tom Skulan. It’s got it all; nasty flesh eating aliens and monsters in “Zombie War”, body swapping serial killers in the lust drenched “Infectious”, over the top superheroes fight the evil Mental Head for the sake of planet Earth in “Thump’n Guts”, convicted murders are transported into the middle of an off world war as their penance is “No Guts No Glory” , tiny mutant animals fight for their life and turf in “The Very Angry Seven”, and Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley’s comic character alter egos come to life in the mad cap adventures of “Biz and Buzz!” A combination of full color and Black and White stories, some of which appeared as small press run independent publishing efforts in the early nineties, many have never been published!