Because the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was based so strongly on the Mirage comics, we know kind of what the original Leatherhead was like. He first appeared in 1988's Tales of the TMNT #6, and Playmates expressed interest in making a figure of the character, but had Ryan Brown submit a new design - "plain alligator man with wraps around his joints" wasn't exciting enough for the toyline, so they wanted something with more detail. So in his own words (via Dan Berger, on Facebook), Brown "submitted a drawing inspired partly by Cajun swamp dweller Ezekiel Tork and they went with it."
Okay, if you don't know who Ezekiel Tork is, don't feel bad: that is a character who appeared in a grand total of two issues of Man-Thing in 1974. How is that the specific reference Brown pulled out? How did he remember the character 14 years after its last appearance, let alone remember it another 36 years after that when he was asked about it in 2024? That's wild, man!
Also, Archie Leatherhead's real name of Jess Harley is a reference to another of the character's inspirations. Ryan Brown's favorite actor is Lance Henriksen; not only does the human form in the comic look like the actor, he's named after two of Henriksen's roles: Near Dark's Jesse Hooker, and Pumpkinhead's Ed Harley. So it's kind of a shame that when Lance Henriksen did eventually voice a TMNT character in the 2012 series, it wasn't Leatherhead. Ut!
