Talk:Wanted: Bebop & Rocksteady/@comment-34811886-20180513020306/@comment-995426-20190316194950

BH Ouji:

Yes, Mirage was not fond of the 1987 series at all. But when TMNT started since 1984, it wasn't exactly hugely lucrative with just comics, tabletop role-playing games, figurines, T-shirts, etc. I mean, they've certainly always had their devoted fans, but they were mostly adults or older teenagers who the comics were written for to begin with. The 1987 series was an attempt to make more money off the property by developing a version that would appeal to children. But after some collaboration at the beginning (Eastman and Laird did actually design Bebop and Rocksteady), relations between Mirage and Murakami-Wolf-Swenson broke down. MWS shut Mirage completely out of the process and doubled down on making a toyetic cartoon for 7 year olds even when it came sharply at odds with Mirage's style and substance, and apparently some kind of licensing terms allowed MWS to continue what they were doing whether or not Mirage approved. The two eventually sued each other over ownership of the franchise, but was settled out of court on undisclosed terms and control reverted to Mirage. Until Peter Laird abruptly sold the property to Viacom in 2009, Mirage had very little interest in giving MWS's work any further recognition of oxygen.

The Archie TMNT comic was actually launched in part because of the breakdown between Mirage and MWS. It forked its continuity from very early in the 1987 series, but no longer shared continuity with it after that point, and all further writing for the comic was handed over to Mirage staff, who gradually matured it over time&mdash;not all at once, but increasingly you would find scenes like these that never would have been green-lit for the 1987 series in a million years:

All this considering the TMNT franchise was conceived as something chiefly for adults, an audience the comics mostly still target. Even every newer IDW TMNT physical comic book has a disclaimer: "suggested for mature audiences."