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Revision as of 03:35, 25 July 2012
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Leatherhead is a 12'4" or 7' mutant Blue and or Turquoise Alligator or Green Crocodile (depending on which version and skin color). He was created in 1987 by Mirage Studios artist Ryan Brown, who also went on to create the Saturday morning cartoon series Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa for the ABC television network. He has appeared in all TMNT incarnations except for the movies, Dreamwave comics, IDW comics, and the live action series. He has been portrayed as both an enemy and ally of the turtles.
Mirage Comics
He first appeared in Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #6. Originally, Leatherhead was nothing more than an infant alligator that had somehow found its way into the sewers. While in the sewers, Leatherhead was found by a group of TCRI Utroms who decided to bring the creature to their headquarters. During his stay with the Utroms, Leatherhead was exposed to Mutagen, which caused him to mutate into a humanoid and intelligent being.
Living with the Utroms, Leatherhead ended up being separated from his "family" when the TCRI building self-destructed. The now homeless Leatherhead was forced to live in the sewers where a big-game hunter named Mr. Marlin continually attacked him. During one attack by the hunter, Leatherhead met the Turtles. Aiding Leatherhead in defeating the hunter, the Turtles decided to allow Leatherhead to live in their old home.
Eventually four Foot Clan ninjas encountered an eye-patch-wearing Leatherhead in the sewers. Fearing that Leatherhead would kill them, the ninjas tried to get on Leatherhead's good side by promising to aid him in creating his Transmat Device. Accepting the help, Leatherhead and the ninjas set to work creating the Transmat, only to be interrupted by the Turtles. After a brief skirmish, the Turtles learned that the Foot Soldiers were actually helping Leatherhead. Embarrassed by the incident the Turtles decided to aid the mutant alligator. Eventually the Transmat Device was complete; Leatherhead could finally reach the Utrom homeworld. Unfortunately, instead of teleporting Leatherhead, the device simply blew up in his face. This failure was too much for Leatherhead to handle and in a fit of rage, Leatherhead attacked his Foot assistants and vowed revenge on the Turtles, whom he blamed for wrecking his attempt to get "home."
Leatherhead later resurfaced in Volume 4. He makes an appearance at Master Splinter's funeral. He is then seen wrestling a mutated Raphael in the sewers before swimming off. It is unknown what his current relationship with the Turtles is, but Raphael's comment that he hopes he didn't hurt Leatherhead would make it seem as if they're at least on good terms.
He has also appeared in two issues of Tales of the TMNT Volume 2. In issue eight, a mentally unstable and delusional Leatherhead is discovered by Raphael to be building another Transmat Device. Leatherhead seems to harbor an insane grudge against Donatello, and nearly kills Raphael when he mistakes him for Donatello. Once the Transmat Device was finished, it suddenly kicked into operation and caused three Utroms to appear; these Utroms blast Leatherhead with a ray gun, and take him away, destroying the Transmat Device as they leave.
In issue twenty-three, the Turtles are recruited by the Utroms to save Leatherhead from a renegade group of Utrom radicals called "The Illuminated," the same ones who took him away in issue eight, in attempts to clone him into an army of mutants to aid in their world "cleansing" agenda. It is revealed that the Illuminated where secretly drugging Leatherhead, which caused him to subconsciously to build the second Transmat Device he was working on in issue eight, then wake up and remember little. It also caused his missing eye to heal and gave him a massive increase in size. The Turtles rescue Leatherhead, defeated the clones, and aided in the destruction of the Illuminated. Leatherhead returns to Earth with the turtles rather than going back to the Utrom home world. These events all take place between Volumes 2 and 4 of the Mirage series.
It is interesting to note that in the past, at several comic conventions, Leatherhead creator Ryan Brown has said he initially intended to kill the character off at the end of Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1, #6 by having the gator-man tumble into the underground gorge with the evil big game hunter but Turtle's creator Peter Laird nixed the idea opting to have Leatherhead survive and return to the sewers with the Turtles.
Brown returns to plot his creation after 19 years in the September 2007 issue of Tales of the TMNT. Out for a swim, Leatherhead encounters a group of aliens called Sigmurethites and attacks them. The alligator-man's Utrom guardian Dr. X also appears in this issue in a female scientist's exoskeleton. A recent short story even brings more light to Leatherhead's origins: as a baby alligator he fought splinter(who appeared to be a normal rat but had been exposed to mutagen already),and it turns out that when Leatherhead was biting Splinter he ingested Mutagen infected blood, making him into the mutant he is today. And boom goes the dynamite.
Appearances
- Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1, #6 - Leatherhead
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1, #45 - Leatherhead, Too
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 4, #11
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 4, #17
- Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2, #8 - Virus
- Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2, #23 - Attack of the Replicants
- Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2, #38 - Triptyche
- Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2, #50 - World's Deadliest
- Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2, #58 - All Tomorrow's Yesterdays (Adventures version cameo)
- Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2, #62 - Adventures in Bunnysitting
- Tales of the TMNT Vol. 2, #63 - Monster Island
Image Comics
After two children are found slain and half-eaten in the sewers, Leonardo comes to believe that Leatherhead may have been responsible. Tracking down Leatherhead, Leonardo was surprised to find the mutant alligator unconscious and bound. Before he could free Leatherhead, Leonardo was attacked by King Komodo and his Monitor lizard minions, the actual killers of the children.
Engaging King Komodo in battle, Leonardo successfully managed to kill King Komodo's minions, only to end-up being knocked unconscious with his hand bitten off. Waking up hours later, Leonardo managed to free Leatherhead and the two, with help from Michaelangelo and Casey Jones managed to defeat King Komodo.
Afterwards Leatherhead, his feud with the Turtles forgotten, introduced them to Dr. X an Utrom left behind from when the TCRI building collapsed. Together with Dr. X and the Turtles, Leatherhead managed to assemble a new Transmat Device, unfortunately, energy projected from the device ended-up luring a group of Triceratons to Leatherhead's lair.
Engaging the Triceratons in battle with the Turtles, Leatherhead managed to viciously maul several of them. Unfortunately, while battling the last remaining Triceraton, Dr. X and Leatherhead's Transmat Device malfunctioned and transported Leatherhead and the unnamed Triceraton to parts unknown.
1987 Series
Leatherhead in the 1987 animated series
Leatherhead appeared in the 1987 TV series as an enemy of the Turtles. He started off as a giant green alligator until he swam through a Mutagen-polluted (thanks to a previous botched mission by Krang & Shredder, the one that gave birth to the Punk Frogs) part of the swamp where he mutated to his current humanoid form. He resides in the swamp area of Florida, commonly known as the Everglades. In his first appearance, he forced the turtle's allies the Punk Frogs as his slaves and then went after them, but was thwarted by the turtles. He became a recurring villain from then on. In this series, Leatherhead has a Cajun accent. He then hunted the Turtles on their own turf in the sewer. While he searches for the Turtles, he also meets the Rat King (whom he describes, in a Cajun accent, as "a few shrimp shy of a boatload") and wrestles him to the ground before he tried to fight against the Turtles. Later, he partnered up with the Rat King, after their attempts to kill each other failed, to eliminate the Turtles. In one episode called Night of the Rogues, Shredder hired him and the Rat King along with Slash, Tempestra, Antrax, Scumbug, and Chrome Dome to help him and Krang destroy the Turtles. His overall clothing is a vest, rubber waders (rubber pants that go over boots & regular pants, held up by straps over shoulders), and a beat up hat. He usually carries bear traps & large crayfish on his person. He is depicted as survivalist and tracker. Original creator Ryan Brown went back and redesigned his Leatherhead character for this particular incarnation of the Ninja Turtles.
Leatherhead was originally voiced by Jim Cummings who also, coincidentally, went on to voice more of Brown's characters, such as the Dakota Dude and Saddlesore Scorpion from the Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa. Peter Renaday voiced him in the episode Night of the Rogues.
Archie Comics
Shredder's lies to cause the Gator to believe that the Turtles are his enemy.
Leatherhead starts as an animal mutated by mutagen in all versions except from the Archie TMNT Adventures Comics, where he starts as a poor human named Jess Harley who lived in the swamps, and became transformed when the "witch" Mary Bones used the Turnstone on him. At first the Shredder lures Leatherhead to work with him until Leatherhead discovers that the Shredder is a villain. Leatherhead later becomes a wrestling hero at the Stump Asteroid and later a member of the Mighty Mutanimals. He and the other members of that group were killed before the end of the Archie Comics run with the Turtles characters.
Sometime before he was killed, Leatherhead appeared in a mini-series paired with Donatello. In the mini-series, the brainy turtle and himself came equipped with extendable battle staffs and worked together to help save a young child in a savage land. In the mini-series, he was very much the same character as portrayed in The Mighty Mutanimals comics.
2003 Series
Leatherhead appeared in the 2003 animated series. Instead of a villain, he was an ally to the turtles with a scientific mind like Donatello. He is voiced by F.B. Owens in seasons 2 and 3 and by Gary Lewis in season 4 and 7 as the voice doubles of Michael Clarke Duncan.
Leatherhead was originally an exotic pet who got flushed down to the sewer, somehow ending up in an Utrom base. After being exposed to the same mutagen that would eventually change the Turtles, Leatherhead became a massive, humanoid blue crocodile. He lived with the Utroms whom he considered his family. He was accidentally left behind during the Shredder's attack, which forced the Utroms to flee Earth.
Leatherhead first made a shadowed cameo in Secret Origins, Part 3 escaping from the TCRI building during the raid. He was first seen in the episode What a Croc, where he was helping Baxter Stockman create a new body, while working on a transmat device so he could rejoin the Utroms and had built the Turtlebot which was like the 2003 version of the 1987 series Metalhead. Leatherhead eventually met and befriended Michelangelo who found him living in the Turtles' old lair. Unfortunately for Stockman, the doctor accidentally allowed Leatherhead to know he once worked for Shredder; since the Utroms had adopted and told him about the Shredder, Leatherhead immediately got angry. Eventually Stockman bombed the location and despite Michelangelo's pleas for him to follow them Leatherhead sacrificed himself to save the Turtles. Later in season 3 it was rev
Leatherhead in 2003 series
ealed that Leatherhead had in fact survived the ordeal, but had been taken captive by Agent Bishop. The Turtles soon helped Leatherhead escape and for a time lived in the Turtles' lair. However, Leatherhead's animal rages, already dangerous, were made more so by Bishop's experimentation. While in blind animal rage, Leatherhead struck Michelangelo, and woke up to believe that he had killed his friend. Leaving the Turtles, a depressed Leatherhead found himself hunted by an extreme game hunter, Mr. Marlin, through the sewers. Luckily, he was saved by his friends who refused to give up on him, and was delighted to discover Michelangelo was alive and well. In the end, he chose to live away from his friends due to his affliction, living in a nearby chamber (an abandoned subway station resembling the Turtles' lair from the second and third TMNT movies) so he would always be nearby, but still able to ensure their safety. He reappeared in a number of subsequent episodes as an ally to the Turtles primarily in their battles with the Foot and Agent Bishop, including the raid on the Shredder's building facing Hun, during the battle the two fell into the silo. Both survived, and Leatherhead returned to his lair but lived by himself to avoid accidentally hurting the Turtles due to his anger issues that furthered increased from Bishop's experiments on him. He is later revealed to have helped Donatello create the Monster Hunter gear used by the Turtles against Bishop's mutant creatures.
Leatherhead running towards Mikey
During the fourth season, Leatherhead played an important role in working together with Don in containing the mutation of local creatures from the mutagens that were created by Baxter Stockman previously during his faked alien invasion. However, when Donatello is accidentally exposed to the mutagen, Leatherhead works with the other turtles in capturing the mutated Don. Leatherhead later discovered that the combination of the mutation from Bishop's outbreak was mixing with the original Utrom mutagen in an unstable way, it would kill Don unless if it was cured.
Leatherhead worked with the Turtles and Splinter in breaking into Area 51 where Bishop was. While Bishop sent the three turtles to steal the Heart of Tengu from Karai, he was forced to fight the mutated Donatello. Reminded of the trauma he had suffered, he was tempted to extract revenge on Bishop but managed to control his anger with the help of his friends. Despite his personal grudge against Bishop, Leatherhead was able to use the details that Bishop and Stockman had on the new mutagen, and using Bishop's resources, he is able to cure Don, and the other animals mutated from the outbreak.
Back to the Sewer
Leatherhead can be seen in Donatello's memory in the episode Identity Crisis. Leatherhead appears in attendance for Casey and April's wedding in Wedding Bells and Bytes. He is seen crying because weddings make him cry. During the Foot attack, he helps save the other guests as the barn collapses and then helps fight the Foot.
Video Game Appearances
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project: Boss (Sewer Level) -- Appearance is that of the action figure.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time: Boss (Train Level) -- Before fight, says, "Oh goodie, fresh turtles for lunch." Appearance is that of the Original Cartoon design. In the remake, Re-Shelled, Leatherhead no longer has the hat and looks more sinister and realistic. He is seen running faster than the train while saying, "Is that the best you can do?", and then jumps into the locomotive to prepare to battle the turtles.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist He appears as the boss of the first level. Appearance is that of the Original Cartoon design.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus: Boss character in the Turtles' old lair, as well as the final combatant in the Monster open Tournament.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare: Leatherhead is shown in the background in a cutscene near the end of Episode 1. There is no reason given why he is there in space with the Turtles, Casey, and April. In reality, this is because the scene was taken directly from the cartoon, where he was with them for some time. Leatherhead does appear in the DS version of the game as a boss fight and in a level or two where he teams up with the TMNT.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Dark Horizons: Leatherhead is the games final boss.
Action Figures
The first Leatherhead figure was released in 1989, the second in 2004.
Trivia
- Ryan Brown, at different convention appearances, has stated that his character Jess Harley is an homage to his favorite actor, Lance Henriksen, and is named after two characters from his favorite films, Jesse Hucker in Near Dark and Ed Harley from Pumpkinhead.
- Leatherhead in the 1987s version is seen in only four episodes but the 2003 version of Leatherhead is in twelve episodes.
- Coincidentally, the Mirage and Archie incarnations of Leatherhead both made their debut in the sixth issue of their respective comic series.