'I think we chose a rat because as we began working out the story for the first issue of TMNT, we knew a lot of it would be set in the storm drains and sewers and back alleys of the city, and we figured that a common denizen of those places was the humble rat.' Since The Hand menaced Daredevil during Miller's tenure, it was only natural that the Turtles would find themselves in conflict with The Foot, a clan of ninjas whose leader, the Shredder, was none other than Oroku Saki. 'Splinter's name was a tip of the hat to the Daredevil supporting character Stick,' recalls Laird, discussing the ninja master created by Miller who provided young Matt Murdock with the skills he would require to fight crime as Daredevil. Splinter had been the pet of the exiled ninja warrior Hamato Yoshi, who was slain along with his lover, Tang Shen, by the treacherous Oroku Saki, who blamed Yoshi for the death of his brother, Oroku Nagi. The turtles and the canister, which bore the initials T.C.R.I., fell down a grate into the sewer below, where they were discovered by an inquisitive rat, Splinter. Eastman and Laird extrapolated that after the canister containing that isotope struck Murdock, it collided with a bystander who was carrying a fishbowl containing his pets - four baby turtles. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' origin story paid homage to the first issue of Daredevil from 1963, in which young Matt Murdock is blinded by a radioactive isotope while pushing an old blind man from the path of an oncoming truck. Drawing inspiration from some of their favorite contemporary comics, including Frank Miller's epic samurai adventure Ronin and his celebrated run on Marvel Comics' Daredevil - along with their mutual love of Jack Kirby - they set to work developing the Turtles universe. With their work on the first Fugitoid story coming to an end, the pair decided to make the Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles their next comic book project. The more they thought about it, however, the more potential they saw in the offbeat concept. We were just pissing our pants that night, to be honest. That was in pencil, but Pete inked it, and added 'teenage mutant' to the 'ninja turtle' part. 'Then, of course, I had to top his sketch, so I drew four of them standing in a dramatic pose. 'Pete drew a cooler one,' remembers Eastman. One night at Mirage Studios in November 1983, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were hard at work on the latest chapter of their Fugitoid comic when Eastman, struck by some unknown inspiration, drew a masked, nunchuck-wielding 'ninja turtle.' He showed it to Laird, and the two of them shared a laugh at the sheer goofiness of the premise.

Teenage mutant ninja turtles characters