Kirby - The Fifth Turtle
 

Hey guys! I've got the Artobiography that Kevin Eastman put together, and in it he mentions the fifth turtle named Kirby that was supposed to appear in the live action TMNT 4. I'm just curious.... Did any part of his story, particularly his origin, leak out before or after the movie disappeared? I basically just want to know any information on him that anyone might know.

why a name like Kirby? why not somethin like Picasso or whatever to keep the whole artist thing goin?

I'm sure it was to be in honor of Jack Kirby.

Same thing I thought. They sure loved Jack Kirby's work.

Yeah, he was definitely named after Jack Kirby.

I don't recall any specifics on the character outside of what's in Kevin's Artobiography.

oops sorry... whenever I hear Kirby, I think of a certain pink powderpuff...

I always think of Kirby Puckett. :P

A bit Kim "Leonardo" Garvin mentioned about ten years ago I've still kept :

"Ok, I will FINALLY come open on one hot tidbit rumor I had heard about the script for TMNT IV many months back. Now that this is out and about, I am in the free to mention it. (I was sworn to say nothing till then, so it would not be me who leaked anything on the possible script.) It was before the TV show stuff started coming out, and so it did not include Venus, but another turtle called Kirby. In honor of the great [Jack] Kirby of comics of course, which Mirage did the Donatello solo [special] with a Kirby character as tribute as well... And it would be about dimension hopping, due to the influence of the mutant Kirby’s things, some of which would be dark and nasty. This was to be a gritty flick. Renet [a time-travelling character from the comics] was not involved that I had heard."

Mike Dooney also did designs for the film, and Julie Strain mentioned she was locked in for the part of -- in her words, verbatim -- "an evil character from an alternate universe."

That's just badass. I'd do dirty things in public just to see actual, official pictures - even just preproduction art - of this TMNT Kirby.

I dont get it, was this supposed to like the Donatello microseries only Kirby was a turtle and all the turtles went instead of just Don?

Yeah, something like that.

Here you go:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1035/...e3c646d5ff.jpg
Click for full picture.

here's another drawing of Kirby by Kevin Eastman.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...er/Eastman.jpg

Thank you!
(Takes off all of his clothes, runs outside, and humps the closest tree)

Though I'm pretty far from the biggest fan of the new movie, I will say it seems a little sounder than what the Kirby movie might have ended up being.

We know little about the Kirby movie, though... but what I do know didn't sound good.

If Kirby was actually a Ninja Turtle as well, what do you think the reason was for not mentioning him all those years? Perhaps he was the TMNT of an alternate reality. Or might he have been a brother they thought had died long ago or was otherwise removed from the family? O_o Any official word on whether he was supposed to be good or evil?

I wonder what color his mask was...

Maybe Benvenuto knows.

that's exactly what he was. He was created by Kirbys magic pencil. From what I'm told some of the idea was taken and used on april in vol.4 I'm sorry towards anyone this might offend but I like the idea of the gem/pencil creating a turtle from another world rather than it creating april.
White.

Wow, so many posts in such a short time. :D Thanks for all the info, folks. So Kirby was meant to be an alternate reality ninja turtle. That's probably the best way they could have introduced a fifth turtle without it being silly like Venus (I know, it sounds strange saying that a character from an alternate dimension isn't as silly as something else, but it's true). I like how dark the character feels which makes me think he was meant to be an anti-hero of sorts, or perhaps just a hero who was forced to survive in a dark and gritty world, which in turn influenced his personality. That seems to be the most obvious choice of personality too, since we've already got turtles that fit the four major personality types. Raph is a bit of a jerk, but Kirby sounds like he would be a bit darker and crazier. Raph's attitude is more motivated by love, hate, and sarcasm, but I think Kirby's would be more motivated by cynicism, assuming that he did actually come from a darker and grittier world. Eh, I'm sort of rambling now.

Anyway, I'm not sure how the movie would have turned out, especially since the third film wasn't nearly as dark as this one sounds like it was meant to be. But I like the character, and I think he would make a good Mirage version of Slash. I wouldn't mind seeing him in some issues of Tales or something.

So I guess that makes, what? Like 8 official mutant turtles throughout the various universes? Leo, Don, Mike, Raph, Kirby, Venus, Slash, and Tokka? Crazy stuff. I don't think there are any more, are there?

EDIT: Oh, and I guess there are 2 turtle robots too: Metalhead (OT) and Turtlebot.... Anything else?

Kirby was suposed to be a guide of sorts to the turtles in the other world there going to be allot of crazy action figures for this movie seeing as it would have had tuns of crazy monsters and aliens but sadly none of them where ever shown just talked about in the toy magazines i used to buy.
Btw a little tid bit about Venus not sure if many knew this but her bands where going to be pink not sky blue like they ended up being I painted my venus this color because I like her this way better seeing as leonardo was already blue.

Well, pink is just a light purple, so nyeh. :P They should have just made her color.... I dunno, green.... Haha, I dunno, green's the only primary/secondary color not taken aside from yellow, but yellow's too bright, and green kinda clashes with their skin color. Heck, she shouldn't have had a color because she shouldn't have had a mask. That would have made her unique -- no mask....

Neon pink so it's not really close to purple that would make it more closely related to raphs red.
And yeah green just looks odd on a green skined character but I guess they could have made her skin brown.
And i agree she should have had a differnt kind of mask or none at all but you would have seen even more of the cheodo brothers(sp) bad work if they didnt have them lol.
And another little not so well known fact is that they where going to change leo and dons colors for the next mutation as well Leo was going to be yellow and don was going to have black I'm glad they kept things they whay they always where.

Or braid her mask loops. wow that was dumb

Well, I know that April temporarily mutated into a Turtle in one of the Archie comics (and I think her mask was white as well - holy crap I need to find a copy of this comic myself!). Plus, there are the four Dark Turtles from Fast Forward.

And as for robot Turtles, there was Mec(h)aturtle in the first NES game, and T4 in the unreleased Dreamwave comic.

And don't forget the Turtle Saint!

OH! This reminds me - I recently acquired this picture, which reveals that the Dark Turtles were not originally designed to have red/blue/orange/purple skin, but rather the green skin tone of their respective Turtle:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...rk-turtles.jpg

They think we are completely retarded. It's almost insulting our intelligence how they colored the skin the bandana color. What the F. I saw the original dark turtle toy sculpts and they were green skined as well. They looked much much better than the blue, red, purple, and yellow turtles we got. Yellow... uh which turtle is yellow again? Oh yeah, none.

I want these
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...no/darkdon.jpg
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...o/darkmike.jpg
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...o/Dark-Leo.jpg
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b.../Dark-Raph.jpg

It's not strange. Venus was very nearly in the movie with Kirby the Turtle.

From a chat with Eastman around 1997 :

RiAngelo: The new Turtles rule - is there still a fourth movie in the works that will use the new fifth Turtle, Venus?

KevinE: Yes, there is.

KevinE: We’re still hoping for a fourth feature film in 1998. And, the most important new Turtle, Venus, will be very much featured.

Yep I even used those pics to make a rad desk top background of rht official website before the figure came out as u can see above i used the proto pics and even called sh'okanabo being the one who creates them when tuns of people didn't believe me lol:lol:

I might have actually been tempted to buy one of those. Thanks for posting!

or you could have just bought the ones the released and paintd them that way thats what i do with allot of my figures.:D

I dunno, I think I'd probably just end up with chunks of plastic with a crappy paint job if I did that. :P Plus it would have required giving Playmates money for a product I don't like. I'm very happy with owning all of zero Fast Forward figures. (Sorry, but it's the truth.)

Kirby
 

Kirby makes me think of a 1990's video game from Nintendo.

Now a fifth turtle (notice the small cap) drawn as if it were in an alternate universe and is not really a part of the family, that is fine with me.

But Chet only had FOUR baby turtles in his jar. FOUR. I still shudder at the idea of Venus de Milo. I am glad this has not been carried out in any other universes. No comics feature her AFAIK- at least not Mirage ones. She's not in the NT. She's not in the CG movie. She won't be in Forever War (hopefully). So I can easily pivot my neck and pretend she never materialized.

I think it should have been a no brainer to make her pink. I'm pretty sure Venus's primary use from the creators standpoint was to broaden the audience of Ninja Turtles (more girl fans) what more girly color than pink? And light blue wouldn't have been a bad choice if we didn't already have a blue turle, like you said. My younger cousins still play ninja turtles, and the girl likes venus, even she pretends her bands were pink.

reading all this just really makes me want to see some more behind the scenes stuff from the turtles movies and the turtles movies that didnt make the cut. scripts, concept designs (I would love to see the maquettes and different designs they came up with for the movie versions of Splinter and the turtles) anything. one of these days something has to get leaked

it's ok I love the Fast Forward toys they are some of the best toys since the lines start in the 80's.Thats why I liked them so much because we finally werent getting batman the animated series type figures anymore we actully got figures with detail that actully looked better than they did on the show since the toys where based off of art work more than the show.
But I understand where you're coming from Rose I hated allot of the 2k3 figure so I passed on the same goes with the new movie turtles I'm fine with the tmnt that I have why the hell do I need a set of ugly cgi looking turtles that don't even fit with the rest of my figures. When and if they make Mirage styled figures those will be the ones to replace everything.

Oy! Venus was to be a neon pink? That would have got me to stop watching after the first second. As it is (with the distaste I've always had for Power Rangers), I gave that irritating show three chances (episodes) to entertain me. Didn't happen. When Venus showed up, I clearly remember thinking, "at least her bandanna isn't pink". Honestly, I think hers should have been white to comply with Shinobi ideals (spirituality and all), so I guessed that was why they settled with sky blue (the heavens).

That last interview snippet made it sound like Venus was replaced by or a replacement for Kirby.

Ah! I can't believe I forgot about the FF dark turtles. Okay, so the full list would be Leo, Don, Mike, Raph, Kirby, Venus, Slash, Tokka, April, Dark Leo, Dark Don, Dark Mike, Dark Raph. And for robot turtles we have Metalhead, Turtlebot, Mechaturtle, and T4. And then there's Turtle Saint.... Was Turtle Saint a robot controlled by all four turtles Power Rangers style? If that's the case, then he's technically not a robot, but rather a battlesuit. Good grief, I hate the Japanese turtles so much. I'm not sure which one I like least, the Japanese turtles or TNM.

Anyway, April technically isn't a mutant turtle since she started out human, and weren't the Dark Turtles just clones? So the only turtles that started out as turtles and were mutated into, um, mutant turtles are the eight that I originally listed, right? (assuming, of course, that Kirby is a mutated turtle like the others)

Oh, and yeah, those dark turtles that you guys posted above look way better than the ones that are on FF now. Why on earth would a clone's skin just happen to turn into the color of the bandannas that the turtles wore...? Ugh.

Here's my thoughts on it Shelf...

The original four: mutant turtles
Slash: either mutant turtle (cartoon) or just another alien (archie)
Tokka: mutant turtle
April: mutant turtle even if for a short time
Darkt turtles: clones of mutant turtles (so you can go either way on it)
Venus: mutant turtle sadly
Kirby: if he's from the pencil, is he still a mutant turtle or a drawing come to life like April?
Metalhead: turtle robot
Turtlebot: isn't the one from the first video game the same thing as the one from "What a Croc"?
T4: mouser turtle robot? lol
Turtle Saint: four mutant turtles combine to create some funky Japanese warrior thingy

I like the sculpts better than the final product.