Creation Story
Leonardo is the brother Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird built to carry the discipline. Where Raphael fights and Michelangelo jokes, Leonardo trains, follows the rat sensei Splinter most closely, and ends up the de facto leader of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His weapons are twin katana, and his name comes from Leonardo da Vinci, one of the four Renaissance artists Splinter named the brothers for in their 1984 debut.
Like the others, he started in red. The black-and-white Mirage comics dressed all four Turtles in identical red bandanas; the blue that now reads as “Leonardo” was assigned by the 1987 Playmates toy line and carried by the cartoon. It has stuck ever since.
First Appearance and First Cover: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1
Leonardo’s first appearance is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 (May 1984), the self-published debut Eastman and Laird ran in 3,275 copies and brought to a comic convention in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. All four Turtles, Splinter, the Foot Clan, and the Shredder debut together in the one Copper Age issue.
The book is now one of the most valuable independent comics on record, kept scarce in high grade by its small run and the near-black cover that shows every mark. The highest grade on the CGC census is 9.8, and one of those copies sold for $245,000 in September 2021. How the book grew into a global franchise is laid out on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles team page.
First Solo Issue: Leonardo #1
Leonardo’s one-shot, Leonardo #1 (December 1986), was the last of the four single-Turtle micro-series, and the one that turned the series dark. It is built on a deliberate contrast. While April, Raphael, Splinter, and Michelangelo bring home a tree and cook a holiday meal, Leonardo is alone on the rooftops, cornered by more than two dozen Foot soldiers and beaten down. He crashes through April’s apartment window with a warning: the Shredder is back.
That cliffhanger runs straight into the main title. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #10 and #11, the Turtles and Casey Jones escape the Foot and leave New York to lie low at a farmhouse outside Northampton, Massachusetts. Leonardo’s solo issue is the hinge the whole stretch turns on, which makes it the heaviest of the four micro-series books rather than the self-contained side story the format usually produced.
