Turns Out David Wise Created the TMNT

[Allio]

great, it's Ken Penders 2.0

[pennydreadful]

David Wise made a notable and significant contribution to the Turtles franchise, but his comments could potentially be interpreted as being somewhat egotistical. Tone is hard to translate via text, so potentially he could've been making these comments in a more tongue-in-cheek context than it's coming off as. Or potentially, he is in fact taking more credit than he is due.

In the meantime - can't we all just get along?



There's no need to be hostile or name-calling. The mods shouldn't have to jump in every time there's a disagreement - you're all grown-ups (or at least old enough to know better) and you should know how to behave appropriately in the forums. Two wrongs don't make a right - if someone's annoying you enough that you're starting to see red when you reply, put them on ignore until the urge to strangle them has passed.

[snake]

Originally Posted by Allio

great, it's Ken Penders 2.0

Ken Penders? Who?

[Sanjuro]

Originally Posted by hitmonkey

He's completely off base. This would be like Christopher Nolan claiming to have created Batman.

He isn't completely off base. Your comparison actually works in a way.

If Eastman and Laird came out claiming to be the sole reason that the TMNT are popular, they would basically fall into the Bob Kane category unfortunately.

[Whatswiththeheadbands?]

As the show moved through development, Wise sat down to transform the black and white parodies from the original comic book into characters who could sustain an entire cartoon series. His conclusion was simple: each member of the team had to represent a part of the title. Teenage. Mutant. Ninja. Turtle.

“We needed the ninja guy,” Wise recalls. “We needed the martial arts master. That should be the guy with the Katana, the Japanese sword. That was Leonardo. That’s why Leonardo leads.”

As for the mutant part of the title, Wise was drawn to science fiction. “They needed a gadget guy,” he says. “A kind of nerdy guy who was not the best fighter in the world, but great with a soldering gun. I just randomly picked Donatello.”

“Then we had the weird fact that they’re turtles,” Wise says. “You can’t do a show with this title and not have humor. The title is too goofy. Their names are just too out there.” Raphael became the audience conduit, the sarcastic wisecracker who knows who sees how silly all of this really is. “We needed somebody who sees the absurdity that these are four turtles who have been turned into humans running around the sewers and fighting evil.”

And finally, it was time to create the teenager. “These characters are young and still in a carefree state of life,’ Wise explains. “[Michelangelo] was the Sid Vicious of the Turtles. Sid Vicious couldn’t play or sing but he epitomized punk. Michelangelo epitomizes what the turtles are about.” The other big inspiration for the character? Spicoli from ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High.’

So What he is Basicly saying is he invented the Turtles' Personalities.

[Netkeeper]

Originally Posted by snake

Ken Penders? Who?

Ken Penders used to do art/writing for the Archie Sonic comic. He tried to claim copyright on the characters he created for the comic himself and when he left [or got fired, I can't remember which], he tried to take the rights with him, and the whole thing was even taken to court [which, IIRC, the judge didn't even take seriously because this **** is ****ing ridiculous] but ultimately ended in some of the most important characters in the comic being rendered unusable except in Penders' own awful works.

He also tried to claim that Sonic Chronicles was infringing on his copyright because Shade looked like Julie-Su to him.

He's full of ****.

[Type 97 Chi-ha]

Originally Posted by Sanjuro

He isn't completely off base. Your comparison actually works in a way.

If Eastman and Laird came out claiming to be the sole reason that the TMNT are popular, they would basically fall into the Bob Kane category unfortunately.

The creators of the Superman character lived in poverty through their lives when they asked for a raised from their employer DC Comics. However badly they were treated, they may have created the character but are not wholly responsible for Superman's being a household name.

I do have the book Batman And Me by Bob Kane, and I cannot verify its accuracy. But practically every comic I've seen with Batman in it features the line "Created By Bob Kane" on it.

[Sanjuro]

Originally Posted by Type 97 Chi-ha

The creators of the Superman character lived in poverty through their lives when they asked for a raised from their employer DC Comics. However badly they were treated, they may have created the character but are not wholly responsible for Superman's being a household name.

I do have the book Batman And Me by Bob Kane, and I cannot verify its accuracy. But practically every comic I've seen with Batman in it features the line "Created By Bob Kane" on it.

Bob Kane has a very interesting dirty history. I still give him the credit he is due, but you have your Adams, Aparo, Miller who added elements to the character's depth over the years. I would put Wise in that type of category.

[Leo656]

Bill Finger had as much and probably (read: definitely) more to do with creating Batman than Bob Kane did. Pretty much everyone in the industry not named "Bob Kane" admits that. All Kane did was pretty much draw it and put his name on it. Bill came up with most of the concept ideas and wrote the earliest scripts. Kane didn't even draw it for very long before quickly adopting the then-industry standard of having a team of people draw ALL the books, while he just rubber-stamped his name on it. Sadly, Finger didn't really get much credit for any of it until after he was dead, which is further proof that having a good PR guy is more important than what you actually contribute.

"Batman created by Bob Kane" is kind of a long-running joke. Guy did as little as you could possibly do for such an inordinate amount of credit.

[Refractive Reflections]

So I read the article closely to see where all of this emotion was coming from, and I found these parts:

“I’m always asked by fans who Patti Howeth is,” Wise cracks. “She’s the person who didn’t write the five part pilot!”

Later on, Wise would learn that he was not the first choice for the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ job. Another respected animation writer was approached first, but he was just about to move onto sitcoms. Having enjoyed Wise’s work at Marvel productions, he recommended him to Fred Wolf and Rudy Zamora Jr.

That writer? Chuck Lorre, who would go onto create ‘Two and a Half Men’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ But Lorre’s unexpected involvement in the series doesn’t end there.

“In the original opening credits, there are some spoken words that go ‘We’re the world’s most fearsome fighting team!’ and ‘We’re really hip,’” Wise says. “That’s Chuck Lorre speaking those lines. His geek cred runs strong!”

But if you’re wondering if David Wise is currently bathing, Scrooge McDuck-style, in his pool of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ money, the answer is no.

“It was a job,” he explains. “I saw no benefits from it. I had no licensing money. The more successful it was, the more scripts I had to write. For years, that covered my bills … It was nice to see it successful, but there was the discomfort of knowing that you’re the one guy who’s not getting rich. I should have created my own thing.”

Although Wise will never deny Eastman and Laird their success, he has complicated feelings toward the Turtles legacy. “[Eastman and laird] created them, but me and Playmates and Fred Wolf made them popular,” he says. “I put a lot of myself into that show. Cowabunga? That was me. The pizzas? That was me. All of the stuff that everyone loves about them? That was me. But everyone else got rich.”

There’s a sardonic humor to Wise that’s difficult to translate into print. He insists that he’s not bitter. He’s proud of his work and the impact it’s had on people. He just wishes that he was getting paid. However, one lingering sore point is the live-action 1990 movie. Well, more specifically, the film’s poster. “It shows [the Turtles] coming out of the sewers and it says ‘Hey dude, this is no cartoon.’ Well, dude, you wouldn’t be saying dude if I hadn’t started saying that in the cartoon. That really pissed me off.”

According to this article, it's difficult to believe he's not "bitter" ("He insists that he's not bitter") but just having "discomfort" ("...but there was a discomfort of knowing you're not the one guy who's not getting rich.") when he's really stretching his claims here (with the Mirage Turtles not having distinct personalities). I think the bitterness is displaced on the wrong people (the Mirage comics, the public's perception) when it should be directed more toward the entertainment industry (having no licensing money from the series; aka: a bigger piece of the pie) and Playmates (the garbage catapult reference of how Wise "flipped out" over Playmates wanting it incorporated into the cartoon and he made sure it malfunctioned in the cartoon).

I don't know if Wise fully knows that the public does consider his influence a big part of the OT's and the franchise's success (as with the voice actors and animation teams) as a whole, since the general public has made the OT versions of the Turtles as the iconic figures of pop culture, and not the comic versions. From my perspective, it seems that the business executives who were handling the franchise didn't give Wise a more deserved, bigger piece of franchise's success. This seems to be synonymous with others who were a part of the OT's franchise, in not getting a more fair portion of the franchise's success. A couple examples are with Chuck Lorre not getting songwriting credit for the OT theme, and (I'm not too sure about this) I think it's rumored that Rob Paulsen left the series allegedly after season 9 because of the disputes about pay.

This kind of shady business practice isn't too surprising because it's found in the music industry as well where new, upcoming songwriters have to compromise in removing writing/royalty credit from their work, just so they can have it accepted by a major popular recording artist for a small, one-time flat amount (to have their name out there in the business), only to discover that it becomes massively successful and not getting a dime of that success.

On the outside of the OT franchise, didn't Laird mention he had a huge amount of legal headaches in dealing with the businesses commercializing the franchise too, and they had wanted to claim ownership of TMNT through the OT's success? (I think in a thread somewhere here, didn't Laird said he had to legally battle over the details?)

So it seems that the "blame" or bitterness should be toward the business executives since they were claiming they "created" Ninja Turtles toward Eastman and Laird (by using the concept and ideas that the OT crew had produced), but yet at the same time within the OT franchise, the business executives weren't fairly paying or giving credit to the OT crew who were making it successful in the mainstream.

It seems like big business was trying to shortchange everyone who was creatively involved and responsible with the franchise's success as a whole.

[neatoman]

The guy who recycled the same scripts over and over again, expresses distaste of the material he's adapting, takes credit wherever none is given and inflates it until the truth comes out, turns out to be a lying piece of crap? What a twist!

[Prowler]

Can't blame Wise for feeling like he deserves more recognition(as in "money") for his contributions to the FW series, but it's pretty low to claim credit for things you have not created or been responsible for. I'm guessing he has some score to settle with Laird and Eastman after all these years.

Anyway, he wrote the best episodes of the series, but then again, he wrote the most episodes out of all the writers of the show. The others didn't write more than 10-15 each while Wise must have written 50 or more. And yea, he did recycle some plots, which was a bit annoying but I can forgive him for that.

I've also liked some of the episodes written by the guy who wrote "Shredderville" whose name I've forgotten.

[John Pannozzi]

I don't know if this was already mentioned in this thread, but I'll say it anyway. You know when Fred Wolf sued Eastman and Laird, claiming he and his studio came up with concepts like the Turtles living in the sewer and April wearing a jumpsuit. This is is like that.