Turns Out David Wise Created the TMNT

[Bry]

Listen. Nobody's trying to claim that David Wise didn't have a big part in the impact and development of the franchise. He did, and I acknowledge and respect that. And he isn't denied his due credit. But he is making claims here that are objectively, provably untrue. The Turtles' personalities and roles did pre-date his work on the cartoon. He took those qualities and made them more broad/one-dimensional and cartoon-appropriate, sure, but he was absolutely working from the characters as Kevin and Peter wrote them as their basis. To claim he created them all by himself, and that he based them on aspects of himself, is ludicrous. It's just not true.

And how about this part?

Taking inspiration from Lois Lane, he created the character of plucky reporter April O’Neil to act as a “conduit of information,” the character who could tell the Turtles everything they needed to know about their latest adventure. When it came time to name her, Wise borrowed a name of a completely different character from the comic. And her signature hair and jumpsuit? Wise borrowed that from the character of Fujiko Mine, a thief who occasionally posed as a news reporter on the anime ‘Lupine III.’

Sure. And in no way did you just take her outfit from her first appearance in the comic and give it a palette-swap to make it distinct from the other characters' signature colours:



Actually, the colour versions were first published at the end of 1986, so it's possible there'd been some early work done on the show at that point. In that case, it's possible he had no colour version to go on and just assigned her yellow, with the overall "look" firmly based on that original character design from Eastman and Laird.