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.

COVER BY: Simon Bisley

BOOK DESIGN: Lorenzo Sperlonga

CONTENTS­

e THE VERY ANGRY SEVEN: By Kevin Eastman, Eric Talbot, and Simon Bisley.

Letters and Colors by Altered Earth Arts

e NO GUTS OR GLORY: By Kevin Eastman

e BIZ AND BUZZ: By Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley

Design and letters by Lorenzo Sperlonga

Colors by Robert Dunas

e INFECTIOUS: By Kevin Eastman

e THUMP’N GUTS: By Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley

Lettering and colors by Steve Lavigne and Mark Martin

e 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

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 detec-

tive, 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 dur-

ing 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!