Created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1984 as a parody pastiche of several of the most popular comic books of the time, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went on to become a global phenomenon. The original one-shot black and white comic published by Eastman and Laird’s Mirage Studios  generated a viral word-of-mouth campaign that resonated so strongly with fans, that the pair began publishing the adventures of Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo, the four fun-loving, hard-fighting brothers, as an ongoing series.