Cowabunga! Here is Dover's plan to honor its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles origins
Megan Fernandes
Fosters Daily Democrat
DOVER — Before becoming a world-famous franchise of cartoon series, movies and merchandise spanning nearly 40 years, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters began with sketches in Dover.
Mirage Studios was founded in November 1983 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in a residence at 28 Union St., where they lived together and created the early sketches of what became widely known as TMNT. The home has since been demolished and the property is now owned by the Dover Housing Authority. One thing that remains is the maintenance hole cover in front of the property, a well-known symbol of the series as the entrance to the turtle's lair in the city sewers.
The Dover Arts Commission hopes to install a unique historical marker on the maintenance hole cover in front of where Mirage Studios was founded and where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were first created at 28 Union St. The house was demolished earlier this decade.
Dover is looking to memorialize the city's ties with the TMNT comics through an artistic historical marker on a maintenance hole cover. The City Council endorsed the Arts Commission's concept plan at its June 7 meeting, so the commission can pursue the trademark rights needed to include original art honoring characters named after Italian Renaissance artists Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo.
Dover resident James Lane proposed the idea to the city's Arts Commission, calling it "a part of Dover's hidden history that needs to be told."
"I live nearby where Mirage Studios was, and often thought there should be a historical marker here but the house is gone," Lane said. "While on a walk I looked down and there was a manhole cover there and it was instantly very obvious to me that this is exactly how we should commemorate the site."
How TMNT took off from Seacoast
Long before Ralph DiBernardo owned Jetpack Comics & Games in Rochester, he was a teenager selling comics at the Newington Flea Market in the late 1970s, where a Walmart now stands. He said he befriended two of his regular customers, Eastman and Laird, who at that point were two artists living in Dover.
Ralph DiBernardo, the owner of Jetpack Comics in Rochester, holds an advertisement used to premiere the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic at the Portsmouth Mini-Con event in 1984. DiBernardo, seen here at his store Thursday, June 24, 2021, befriended the creators of TMNT when they launched the comic they created at their home in Dover.
Eastman and Laird printed their first comic book at a Somersworth shop in an initial run of 2,500 copies. One day they showed up and asked DiBernardo if he'd buy copies of their original comic "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" so they could repay an uncle in Manchester who loaned them startup money to print the first run of publication.
DiBernardo bought 500 copies to help his friends. When he had difficulty selling them when he first opened Jetpack Comics in Portsmouth (before later relocating to Rochester), he cut up some of them to make advertisements. Some of those black-and-white early versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics would one day be worth $100,000 in mint condition, nearly 40 years later, he said.
"Truth be told, I just wanted to support my friends, but I didn't believe that comic book would become what it is today," DiBernardo said.
DiBernardo's Portsmouth Mini-Con convention in 1984 is where the first TMNT comic premiered, he said. Since then, the creators have gone back to visit him over the years at his shop and allowed him to do reprints exclusive to his store, including a TMNT cover that includes a rough sketch of Rochester's downtown, where Jetpack Comics stands today in the background.
Pictures displayed at Jetpack Comics in Rochester illustrate the history behind the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles world, including the advertisement used to promote the series' Dover creators' first TMNT comic book at the Portsmouth Mini-Con event in the 1980s.
DiBernardo said there are really two version of TMNT, the edgy ones in their first comics and the more kid-friendly version fans of all ages know and love today.
"The original TMNT was gritty and geared towards a more mature reader," DiBernardo said. "Kevin and Peter loved comics like Heavy Metal and the original was influenced by that. Then there's the cartoon and the Archie Comics line, which is geared towards kids."
Eastman and Laird have made special appearances at Jetpack Comics through the years at its Free Comic Book Day events. One year, more than 7,500 people showed up to Jetpack Comics for the chance to meet the TMNT creators, DiBernardo recalled.
After the first issue came out, the creators moved around until they set up shop in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The Seacoast and New England connections don't stop there, with other TMNT contributors later brought onto the project also having ties to the area. This includes Steve Lavigne, who once owned a comic book shop and art gallery called Shellback Artworks in Wells, Maine, that closed in 2016, and Massachusetts local Jim Lawson, who worked on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and also co-created the series Planet Racers with Laird.
"Peter and Kevin never forgot their history and where they started," DiBernardo said. "They always came back to the Seacoast and gave back to the community."
City seeks to honor TMNT past
When DiBernardo heard Dover was looking to promote the history of the early days of TMNT, he was immediately on board.
He hopes to organize a convention and give away free TMNT comics.
"I want to be a part of it because it's such a brilliant idea," DiBernardo said. "Dover is the home of one of the most important children's properties in the world, and it's time we recognized that."
Linnea Nemeth, vice chairperson of the Dover Arts Commission, said the idea of commemorating Dover as the birthplace of the TMNT has been brought up before over the years, but the ideas never moved forward.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles section at Jetpack Comics in Rochester, as seen Thursday, June 24, 2021.
"At the time we liked the idea but didn't know what the best way to memorialize it through a statue, plaque or other forms of art," Nemeth said. "This idea is spot on and is very fitting, given the prominence to maintenance covers in the storylines."
Nemeth said the commission has big plans for this idea, and hopes that when the time comes to unveil the project, it can involve the city, community, the Dover400 committee and local museums in a city-wide celebration.
"It's an exciting venture and ties in with our Dover 400 celebration," Dover Mayor Bob Carrier said, noting he would likely write a proclamation to honor the event and Dover's ties to the franchise.
Lane estimated the cost to have a custom-made and locking maintenance hole cover could be a few thousand dollars. He anticipates that the cost will be covered by a crowd-funding campaign of TMNT fans and supportive locals.
If the commission cannot get the rights to design the cover with original art, the commission has back-up plans to creatively design a text-only marker, Nemeth said.
This project is one of the many Dover's Arts Commission has in the works.
"We're not just looking at projects that acknowledge the history of our distant past, we're also looking at ones like this that give a nod to our more notable recent history," Nemeth said. "We're starting to incorporate a more diverse range of public art projects that people can connect with. Whether you read the cartoons, watched the series or you had the action figures as a kid, it's will resonate with a lot of people."