Thread:Gilgameshkun/@comment-29720851-20170503182211/@comment-995426-20170503224256

I wish I knew a relatively easy way of helping you access the Mirage and IDW comics. MNT Gaiden is free, but comic books, of course, cost money, and aren't even always in circulation or easily found pre-owned. There are, however, trade paperbacks (TPB) that collect several issues into a larger volume, and many readers prefer to buy these periodically instead of going for issue after issue, especially with how scarce comic book stores have become. IDW has been authorized to reprint much (but not all) of Mirage TMNT volumes 1 and 2 along with Tales of the TMNT, but only Mirage may reprint volume 4 for now. Volume 3 is a strange creature&mdash;that's actually Image TMNT, which was initially the official canonical continuation of Mirage TMNT after volume 2 ended. But it wasn't written by Kevin Eastman or Peter Laird, and later Laird (Eastman having already left Mirage) rejected its continuity entirely, and volume 4 completely disregards volume 3 as if it never happened.

Another issue is that, some people prefer the Mirage comics to be in black and white (for stark storytelling effect), but most of the IDW-published reprints of Mirage TMNT have been colorized. If a reader doesn't have a major emotional attachment to black and white comics, it may be no big deal, but it should be understood that most of the Mirage TMNT comics originally had no color within their pages, even if most of them had color cover art. The four turtles, which have no immediately obvious physical differences (more or less identical quadruplets), were mostly told apart by their personalities and by the distinct equipment on their belts, and (for a brief time during volume 4) by temporary tattoo symbols on their plastrons.