Thirty Days of Turtles: Mutagen Man

Recently I decided that if I want to keep having new content on this blog, I'm going to have to branch out beyond Marvel and DC. They'll always bring in new content, and I'm sure I'll continue to find old ones I've missed, but it's time to move toward more unfamiliar territory. With that in mind, and because they have a new movie out, I thought I'd kick this new era off with Thirty Days of Turtles!

That's right: From June 3 to July 2, there'll be a post each day highlighting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles canon immigrants. Now, because TMNT canon is a little confusing, it can be hard to tell what counts as a canon immigrant and what doesn't. So for the purposes of this blog, a TMNT canon immigrant is anything (a) from the movies, cartoons, video games, toy lines, or tie-in comic series that later appeared in (b) TMNT volumes 1, 2, or 4 [because they're by the original creators] or TMNT volume 5 [because the original creators are involved, it's the new official continuity, and its goal is to use as much of the diverse TMNT lore as possible].

With that in mind, let's look at today's entry: Mutagen Man!

Mutagen Man isn't a very major character, but he does have an interesting path to creation. Mutagen Man began life as a sketch Peter Laird did for a possible Playmates action figure called The Unknown.

That action figure never got made, but the idea was reworked into Mutagen Man, which was released in 1990.

He first appeared in the 80s cartoon in an episode fittingly titled "Enter: Mutagen Man!" (1991). He was a delivery worker named Seymour Gutz who fell into a vat of mutagen and somehow survived with only his eyes, brain, and a few other pieces intact.

He later made his IDW debut in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutanimals #1 (February 2015), where he was an experiment that went horrible wrong. Mondo Gecko later gave him the more personal name "Seymour Gutz".