Miami Mice vs TMNT vs Cerebus!

Miami Mice #4 (Rip Off Press, 1987)
Art by Mark Bodé, Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman and Dave Sim
Inked by Bill Fitts

MARK BODE:

(from The Invurt interview, 22 February 2012)

...Kevin [Eastman] was a big fan of my dads, and he came up to my table at San Diego, I think it was '85 or '86… I think TMNT started in '84, and then it snowballing into mainstream around ’86 and it became a huge phenomenon... I think it was the cartoons and the TV that really pushed it over the top… but you know, Kevin came to my table and said: "I'm a big fan, and we should work on a strip together." At the time, I'd come out with my first comic, Miami Mice, which was just riding on the black and white funny animal boom that had happened because of Kevin and Peter [Laird]. So I rode on that without even knowing them, and Miami Mice became a best black and white seller itself. It sold 185,000 copies in the period of a year, and that was my first comic. It was disillusioning to have a hit right off the bat, and you just feel like... what now! I stopped doing Miami Mice after I collaborated with Kevin and Dave Sim, who did Cerebus. We jammed on the last issue of Miami Mice, and then I killed it, because I just didn't want to do that. It was suppose to be a one shot, and I did four issues and I was like, this is taking over my life. I'm underneath my drawing board with a BB gun and there's mice running around in my basement... and it was just taking over my mind. So it was time to end it. It was still selling well, and I went on to something that didn't sell at all - but there you go.

In the near 30 years of Mark Bode's professional career as an artist, his work has appeared in Heavy Metal, Epic Magazine and many other magazines and comics. He was born in Utica, New York, the son of the legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bode. Mark is best known for his work on Cobalt 60 and as the creator of the hit comic Miami Mice.