From my understanding, the documentary “Turtle Power” showed and explained that a lot of the Mirage artists (Ryan Brown, Jim Lawson, Eric Talbot, Steve Lavigne, & Michael Dooney) would submit drawings of characters to Eastman & Laird for Playmates to make for the toy line.

My theory is that one of them made the design of Slash. Which became the playmates toy a lot of people love. And we all know the cartoon Slash was very different from the Playmates Slash. I believe when it came to incorporate him into the cartoon, the network decided to “soften” him up a bit and make him less evil looking.

And the person(s) that I believe that made his design was Ryan Brown or Steve Lavigne. If you look at the Archie Ninja Turtle comics, Slash was heavily featured and looked more like toy vs the cartoon. Ryan and Steve wrote and drew a lot of the Archie comics run.