The reason why Rick Veitch's stories aren't being collected by IDW

[DrSpengler]

Originally Posted by Jester

Here's a silly question: Could this explain Wyrm, who is in essence a cheap knock off of Bloodsucker?

I half-heartedly joked about that the other day on TMNT Entity.

In all likelihood it's probably just happenstance. Veitch made a mutant leech character in August of 89, then Ryan Brown/Steve Lavigne/Steve Murphy come up with their own mutant leech character in May of 90 (the Playmates toy came out in 91). I guess there are only so many ways you can do a leech mutant. The only trait the two characters share that I found a little too coincidental was the power to be chopped up/blown apart and still be able to reform themselves.

The River trade paperback collection was published by Mirage in July 1991, a year after Wyrm had been created, and obviously before the retroactive work-for-hire contract was issued to Veitch. So looking at the dates, it wouldn't seem that Wyrm was created as a retaliatory "knock off" to cheat Veitch out of royalties for Bloodsucker.

Just two coincidentally similar leech mutants. Still, if anyone ever wanted to USE Bloodsucker in a contemporary piece of TMNT media, they could easily just use Wyrm and make him Bloodsucker in all but the name, as Wyrm's mostly a blank slate in terms of characterization.