Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the most enduring franchises in comics outside the Big Two. Since its debut as a self-published black & white comic in 1984, it's gone on to be one of the most successful comic book creations out there. Although its forays into movies, television and toys have long over-shadowed it's original comic stories, many people and many publishers have looked for ways to change that. At WonderCon this month, IDW announced that it had acquired the license to do new TMNT comics in the near future, but a fan-favorite indie artist just revealed what could have been.

Over on his Tumblr blog, Ross Campbell (Wet Moon, Shadoweyes) talks about plans for him to draw a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series at Dark Horse. Apparently, DH was among several comic companies that bid on the TMNT license. Although IDW eventually beat out DH, the idea of Ross Campbell doing a TMNT series is amazing -- in addition to this failed project, Campbell was in talks at one point to do an issue of Mirage's Tales of the TMNT, although he ended up only doing some covers.

As much as I love seeing Campbell doing his own creator-owned projects, I'd love to see him spend some time on company-owned character he's inspired by, whether it be TMNT or even a young X-Men series, which he's talked about for years and did some art for over at Project: Rooftop.