Drawing Blood

Drawing Blood is the most gloriously self-aware comic about comic books in years—a semi-autobiographical action-comedy in which cartoonist Shane “Books” Bookman, creator of a global franchise called the Ronin Ragdolls, faces the wreckage of his fame with a hitman on his tail and his own creations haunting him. Publishers Weekly dubbed it “The Fellini’s 8½ of Comics”, and it lives up to the billing: a rollicking, hallucinatory tour through the absurdity of building a media empire before you turn twenty.

When You Create a Global Franchise Before You’re Twenty… What Happens Next?

The premise is barely a disguise. Books Bookman is a stand-in for Kevin Eastman, who co-created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at 23 and watched it explode into toys, cartoons, movies, and chaos. Here, that story is filtered through a cracked funhouse mirror: our hero owes money to the Lithuanian mob, his Broadway musical is a disaster, a “gritty” Hollywood adaptation of his Ragdolls is in production, and the characters he drew as a kid keep materializing to argue with him. The result is equal parts laugh-out-loud comedy and bruised, heartfelt autobiography, rendered with Eastman’s unmistakable inks over art by Ben Bishop and Troy Little.

From Kickstarter to Image

The project began life as a Kickstarter campaign in 2017, funded directly by the fans who’d grown up on the Turtles. In 2024, Image Comics brought the twelve-issue series to comic shops nationwide—the launch issue selling out at distributor level on the day of release, its TMNT-adjacent pedigree snapping it up. Eastman and co-writer David Avallone have packed the run with cameos, meta-textual gags, and a rotating cast of cartoonists, turning what could have been a vanity project into a genuinely moving meditation on success, art, and the ghosts we all carry.

Perfect for fans of Chip Zdarsky’s Public Domain, Stray Bullets, and any comic that isn’t afraid to bite the hand that drew it.