"Ira-dah!" Devin shouted. "Giraffe Boy."
"How will he get through doors with that neck?" asked Jeter critically, looking at the hasty sketch. "You know how much trouble Flaming Carrot has."
"Good point. Maybe we should get away from animals and fish. Be original. Go with. . . ."
"Fruit. "
"The Ultimate Pistachio," cried Devin, sketching up a storm. "See, he wears a giant kevlar-titanium pistachio shell over his face to conceal his true identity as a migrant worker. "
"Do pistachios have superpowers?" wondered Jeter.
Devin chewed his pencil eraser. "They're hard and salty," he ventured.
"so's Popeye the Sailor, and he hasn't been big since the fifties. "
"I still like my terrapins," Devin said forlornly, scribbling a quartet of happy reptilian faces.
"Mutant Terrapins!" Jeter shouted in triumph.
"No. We gotta be original. Can't call them mutants."
"Transformed Terrapins," suggested Jeter, adding a row of domino masks to his newfound collaborator's sketch.
"Good start," said Devin, grinning with approval. "How about giving them nunchuks?"
"How about Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins?" blurted out Jeter Baird, inadvertently coining a new industry.
"Yeah, yeah. It's fresh, it's original, and most if all it's not commercial."
"Right. No one will take us seriously if we're too commercial. "
Little did they dream.
By emptying their tuition funds, Jeter and Devin printed five hundred thousand copies of the first issue of Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins, and when the first shipment arrived at their dorm, they ripped open the boxes and reveled in the thrill of being published comic-book artists at last.
Then harsh reality sank in.
"This isn't as funny as I remember," said Devin.
"Maybe we should have hired a writer," muttered Jeter.
They looked at one another, going as slack-jawed as their creations.
"Will anyone buy these?" wondered Devin.
"Will we ever finish our education?" worried Jeter.
Their eyes widened in alarm as they realized that their mothers were going to kill them when they found out.
Jeter and Devin canvased every comic-book store and newsstand in Amherst, trying to sell Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins to anyone that would take them.
Where they weren't laughed at, they were spit upon.
" I can't tell my mother," wailed Jeter.
"Neither can I," moaned Devin.
It was Jeter who hit upon the thing that was to enable them to recoup their investment and make them millionaires many times over.
"There's only one thing we can do," he said.
"What that?"
"Get on the Tuckahoe show."
"How will that help?"
"It won't," Jeter admitted. "But both our moms watch him every day. It's better than having to watch them cry when they learn what we did."
They hitchhiked to New York City, a case of Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins number one under each arm.
It was surprisingly easy, they found. The research director of The Bil Tuckahoe Show had only to listen to their tale of woe once when she blurted out, "College students who squander their tuition money on comic books!" she cried. "It's perfect, and we can postpone that awful segment on monkey makeovers."
"But we didn't buy them," Jeter started to say.
"We had them printed," Devin finished.
"Don't say another word! Bil likes his guests to go on cold."
The next day, frightened and tearful, Jeter and Devin found themselves in front of a studio audience as the silverhaired Bil Tuckahoe fixed them with his sheepdog eyes and demanded, "You two boys are addicted to comic books, aren't you? Admit it. You'll do anything for a mint copy of The Fantastic Four. Lie, cheat, steal, sell your parents into slavery. "
They tried to explain. Devin started to cry. Jeter lifted a copy of Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapins number one up to his face like a felon being hauled before a judge.
A camerman rushed in to capture the cover in his viewfinder, while a studio technician punched up a slugline graphic which read, "Deter Baird. Addicted to Comic Books."
The image of four fat masked sea turtles clutching Oriental weaponry was broadcast across the nation for the first time, electrifying preschool America.
Jeter Baird and Devin Western never sold a single copy of their comic book. They never finished college or got their marketing degrees.
They didn't have to. The cartoon, toy, and film offers began pouring in before taping ended on that day's edition of The Bil Tuckahoe Show.
Soon the images of the four terrapins was unavoidable from Manhattan to Madagascar. The money came in by the sackful. Every toy deal triggered another. Modest TV cartoons led to full-length movie deals. Everything the scaly cartoon creatures touched turned to gold.
It was an American success story of unprecedented proportions.
And, like all American success stories, it had a downside.