Eastman & Laird Reunited!!!!

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Yes, the headline is true! You might have thought it would take hell freezing over for the two co-creators of the TMNT to get over their apparent irreconcilable differences and collaborate artistically once again. But no, it didn't take that, it took a much more unfortunate reason. You see, my pal and occasional TMNT writer Jake Black has the Big C. Yeah, that's right: Cancer. The good news for Jake is that the specific type of cancer he has is Hodgkins Lymphoma, which has an extremely high cure rate. The bad news is that being extremely treatable doesn't make the treatments any less sucky and it doesn't make medical bills any less expensive. He's already won a battle with his insurance company to get them to cover his treatments, but you know they're not covering anything. And on top of that he's still got a wonderful family to support, which isn't as easy to do when you're sick and can't work as much as you're used to.

That brings us back to the headline. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird have collaborated to create a commemorative art print, the sales of which will go to Jake's medical bills! I'm pretty sure that Kevin and Peter haven't collaborated in this form since the mid-90s and, honestly, the chances of this happening ever again are rare at best. What does that mean? It means you need to get yourself one of these!!

How do you get one? For now, you have to be attending San Diego Comic-Con next week. They will be for sale at the Mirage tables in Artists' Alley for the (extremely reasonable) price of $25. The edition sold at Comic-Con is limited to 100 pieces, but if you miss out or can't make the Con, don't fret too hard, it sounds like a non-Comic-Con edition of the print will eventually become available. Jake reports that there are also plans to put the image on T-shirts and posters.

The current Mirage crew collaborated on a print, also for Jake's benefit, that was first sold at a Free Comic Book Day event back in May. This print will also be available at Comic-Con next week for $20.

Mirage: Please do art for us, but we won't pay you

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Jim Lawson updated his blog today with a new piece of art featuring all four Turtles looking down on New York from one of its many rooftops. This fantastic piece was done for a TMNT 25th anniversary project that 4Kids is working on. Jim and all of the Mirage artists were asked to contribute pieces of art; however, Mirage got these pieces of art as freebies and did not pay the artists for the time and talent put into them.

Needless to say, this is unacceptable. Unfortunately, this attitude is becoming more and more typical of Mirage, namely CEO Gary Richardson who also attempted to cancel all of the employees' life and disability insurance last week to save the company all of $9,500 a year. The only reason this didn't happen is apparently due to a technicality (not a sudden change of heart from Mr. Richardson).

With all of the writing that has been put on the wall concerning Richardson, the only question that can be asked is: Why does Peter Laird apparently sit back and do nothing while Mirage crashes and burns and his employees, who have given the last 20+ years of their lives to the company, as well as their entire professional careers, struggle to make ends meet while he and Gary Richardson are living free and easy?

You can see the new piece by Lawson in full here.

Addendum: It has been clarified to me that 4Kids, not Mirage, requested these pieces of art and as such, it was 4Kids, not Mirage, who did not pay for them. It still seems to me that Mirage could have found it in their hearts to pay the artists for the pieces anyways, and asking for art that you don't intend to pay for, no matter who the asking party is, is in poor taste no matter what the situation.