Creation Story
Bebop is half of the Shredder’s mutant muscle, the warthog to Rocksteady’s rhinoceros, and like his partner he did not come from the comics. He was built for television. When the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon went into production, Fred Wolf told the writers to add more mutants to the show, so Peter Laird sketched two henchmen during the Playmates toy negotiations and writer David Wise turned them into characters. Bebop got the name, the mohawk, the purple shades, and not much in the way of brains.
In the cartoon’s continuity he and Rocksteady begin as human street-gang members working for the Shredder, who mutates them into animals to make them more useful and, mostly, makes them worse at their jobs. Barry Gordon, who also voiced Donatello on the same series, gave Bebop his voice.
Animated Debut: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)
Bebop’s first appearance anywhere is the 1987 series, in its opening episode “Turtle Tracks” (December 1987). He arrives as a human, one of the Shredder’s gang, and is mutated into a warthog over the early run. Because the 1987 cartoon, not a comic, is where he debuts, his earliest appearance is an animated one, and there is no Mirage-comic version of Bebop to point back to.
First Comic Appearance: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #1
Bebop reached comics through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #1 (August 1988), the Archie Comics series that began as an adaptation of the cartoon. That issue is his first comic appearance, and it doubles as the first comic appearance of his partner Rocksteady and their alien ally Krang, which makes it the key collectors track for all three cartoon-born villains. The Mirage comics and their keys are covered on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles team page.
