Everyone loves rags-to-riches stories, right?
The enterprising son or daughter of a humble handloom weaver parlays a bright idea into a million bucks. Horatio Algers are everywhere: Sheldon Adelson, Oprah Winfrey, and J.K. Rowling all started with nothing before making a mint.
My personal favorite might be Peter Laird.
Who’s that?
In 1975, Laird was a wispy-haired clerk at Omega Books in Northampton, where my brother Chris and I spent our paper-route profits on “Spider-Man,’’ “Iron Man,’’ and other Marvel titles. He was the comic-book equivalent of John Cusack’s character in “High Fidelity.’’ Instead of the Human League, he was into the Justice League.
Laird was slight and soft-spoken - meek, you might say - and wore the uniform of the struggling artist: wire-rimmed glasses, tatty T-shirt, and jeans. A year later, when he opened a place of his own down the street, a hole-in-the-wall he called the Little Used Book Shop, my brother and I followed him.
Laird, who grew up in North Adams and graduated from UMass, seemed to know everything about comics, and he liked many of the same characters that we did. Mousy as he was, his favorite artist was Jack Kirby, whose heroic, sculptured creations included “Captain America’’ and “Thor.’’
When no one was in his tiny basement shop, which was often, Laird would sit at a drawing table he used as a desk and doodle. Occasionally, I’d see one of his pen-and-ink drawings in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, used as clip art to illustrate a food column. My father, then the editor of the newspaper, once brought home a drawing Laird did of a tuna-fish sandwich.
“It was kind of a hand-to-mouth existence,’’ Laird recalls. “I was trying to draw comics, but I didn’t quite know how to get to the point where I could make a living.’’
Broke, he eventually closed the shop and moved to New Hampshire, where he bunked with his girlfriend and a guy named Kevin Eastman. The two comic-book buddies spent their days staring at TV and sketching. One afternoon in November 1983, Eastman drew a turtle standing on its hind legs and holding a pair of nunchucks.
He handed the picture to Laird, who, laughing, drew his own version and then handed it back. Eastman dubbed it “Ninja Turtle.’’ Laird suggested “Teenage Ninja Turtle.’’ They settled on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,’’ and a $6 billion franchise was born.
“We sat on it for a few days, and then thought it be might be fun to do as a comic book,’’ says Laird. “We couldn’t come up with any authentic, cool-sounding Japanese names, so we decided to give them names of Renaissance artists.’’
The first comic book featuring the crime-fighting turtles known as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello came out in May 1984, and the 3,000 copies sold out instantly. (You can find one on
“There’s nothing else like it,’’ says Jonah Weiland, executive producer of ComicBookResources.com, a website devoted to the comics industry. “The idea and the title were equally brilliant and absurd, and it just took off.’’
Laird and Eastman eventually became wealthier than Richie Rich, but their friendship soured, and in 2000 Laird bought out his co-creator. Today, the two men don’t even talk.
“There was a divergence in the way we wanted to do things,’’ Laird says. “A breakup isn’t inevitable with a relationship like ours, but it is common.’’
These days, Laird lives with his wife and daughter in Western Massachusetts, where he oversees Mirage Studios - the publisher and purveyor of all things “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’’ - and also the Xeric Foundation, a nonprofit he started to help struggling, self-publishing comic book creators.
Laird has a mountain of money but only one extravagance: He collects motorcycles. His favorite bike at the moment is the sci-fi styled Victory Vision Tour. As for drawing, he doesn’t do much of that anymore, which is a source of great frustration.
“It’s a problem of inspiration,’’ says Laird. “When you attain this kind of success, where you basically don’t have to work anymore, it takes a lot of energy to keep moving forward. . . . There’s definitely a light side and a dark side.’’
Sounds like a good idea for a comic book.
