User blog comment:Kintobor/2003 series is great/@comment-27710776-20180629214158/@comment-995426-20181226061525

Well, early in the TMNT franchise's history, in the mid-1980s, Mirage Studios tried to make more money with their comic characters. They sold the rights for action figures to Playmates, and an animated television series to market the toys to Murakami-Wolf-Swenson (later renamed Fred Wolf Films). Of course it had to have been understood that both would be for much younger audiences than the Mirage comic. But while Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird provided early input into the series (such as designing Bebop and Rocksteady), MWS soon shut them out of the process entirely and didn't want their involvement. The 1987 series became something extremely unrepresentative of the TMNT that Mirage wanted to create. What's more, MWS didn't want the show's viewers regularly exposed to the Mirage comic. Likewise, Mirage's attitude towards the show soured. Even worse, the MWS series ended up being far more well-known, and the public at large started to think of TMNT as something for little kids&mdash;this even damaged the sales of licensed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness table-top RPGs by Palladium Books, as they were marketed to audiences no younger than 12 and soon even that age group became uncomfortable being seen as fans of a franchise (TMNT) that everyone thought of as for little kids (the show and toy line's target age was 7). After a large number of early books between 1985 and 1988, Palladium stopped publishing new TMNT RPG books altogether&mdash;they just weren't selling anymore. One thing you need to understand is, there weren't really 1987 TV series fans back then who were adults&mdash;the adult fans of that show today were young children back then. And it was considered creepy for adults or even teenagers to be exposed as fans of something "for children"&mdash;compare the old trope of the creepy middle-aged man running an ice cream truck.

In the late 1980s, Mirage licensed a second comic book series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures published by Archie Comics, to provide a buffer between the Mirage comic and the MWS series. It would initially adapt comic book versions of early episodes of the MWS series continuity, but would then branch off into a separate continuity, targeted at teenage audiences with Mirage Studios staff doing the writing. This effectively sustained three target audiences: Mirage TMNT comics for adults, Archie TMNT comics for teenagers, and the MWS series for young children. And unlike the MWS series which kept targeting the profitable 7-year-old toy consumer demographic year after year, the Archie TMNT comic would gradually mature with its readers, until it became something quite PG-13 and more like Mirage TMNT comics themselves.

Late in the MWS series' run, it's said that Mirage and MWS went to court and sued each other for full control of the TMNT franchise. But they settled out of court under undisclosed terms. Both the MWS TMNT series and the Archie TMNT comic ended in 1996. The Mirage comic had already stopped publishing in 1995, as their adult audience became too difficult to sustain. Kevin Eastman sold his stake in the TMNT property to Peter Laird in the late 1990s. Mirage licensed Image Comics to produce a sequel series to the Mirage TMNT comic without Mirage Studios writers, but it ceased publication without a conclusion after 23 issues, and Peter Laird ended up not liking the result anyway.

In 2002, Peter Laird resurrected the Mirage TMNT comic in yet another volume, completely ignoring the events of the Image TMNT comic. The turtles had been allowed to age since they were created, so they were actually adults in their 30s, and the title was changed from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" to simply "TMNT". Then in 2003, Mirage licensed 4Kids Entertainment to create a new TMNT animated series, again for children in conjunction with Playmates Toys, but this time with the stipulation that Mirage would be far more involved in its development. And one of the things that set it apart was that it would mostly completely ignore everything designed for the 1987 TV series.

The problem was, by 2003, many of the MWS series fans had aged into adults, and many of them did not like that the new Mirage comic or the new 4Kids series didn't suit their childhood nostalgia. Basically, the "you're ruining my childhood" fan complaint, which was especially ironic for a comics series that had never been for children in the first place. Peter Laird soon soured on the fanbase and their complaints, and is said to have become less and less involved in TMNT altogether, delegating even management and writing of the comic to other Mirage Studios members.

In 2009, without telling anyone else at Mirage Studios in advance, Peter Laird sold the TMNT property to Viacom, and existing comics projects were abruptly cancelled and wound down in 2010. To this day, he doesn't regret the decision. Since then, he hasn't read the new IDW comics, or watched the 2012 TV series, or seen any of the movies, and doesn't want to. I get the impression he really just wanted to tell the TMNT story and do the TMNT comics he wanted to create, and the franchise became a pop culture beast he couldn't control anymore even after MWS's involvement ended. He was very unhappy owning what TMNT had become, so he sold it. But he's still allowed to make new TMNT comics in the future if he decides to.

To this day, it seems like it's extremely difficult to successfully meld the separate Mirage and WMS visions for TMNT, as there are invariably fans of each who fundamentally don't like the other version's style or substance, and Mirage and MWS back in the day deliberately cultivated completely different fanbases to have as little in common with the other as possible. And the MWS fans grew up, while their TMNT interests largely did not. Fanbase baggage 101. Viacom, to its credit, has at least tried to reconcile the two visions. The IDW TMNT comic keeps pushing forward for an older audience. But the 2012 TV series in particular seems like a cautionary tale about how sometimes trying to please everyone ends up instead pleasing no one.