Thread:The S/@comment-995426-20160813194043/@comment-995426-20160813230010

Ahh, much better. (Don't ask how I calmed myself down. XD)

Now. It seems to me that the criteria for "allies" will have to be clarified, and&mdash;if necessary&mdash;renegotiated, perhaps on a per-continuity basis.
 * In continuities where the four turtles always act as a fantasy team of good vs. evil (perhaps in some of the children's series), perhaps the assumption of "the turtles" having a united set of allies can hold.
 * In continuities that are less about good vs. evil and more about the lives of character ensembles and grey decision-making, the same assumption seems na&iuml;ve. This is especially true when turtles sometimes maintain different (even contradictory) pools of allies from each other, and also depending on whether Splinter, April, Casey, etc. are to be considered integral central protagonists with equal importance to the four turtles themselves.  Where TMNT becomes more slice-of-life, more film noir, more ambiguous morality, the question of who is an ally is never more complicated.  I'm reminded of this exchange in Mirage's City at War:

This changed the tone for the entire rest of the series. They weren't fighters of good vs. evil. They weren't superheroes&mdash;in reality, they never were. They were people trying to live their lives and to survive in an already difficult world. From then on, their alliances would be those of practicality far more than those of black and white righteousness. And the turtles themselves would not always do good things, and they wouldn't always have the same allies as their brothers, and the stories would focus more and more on other characters who would form their own exclusive alliances, and sometimes even family would turn against family. (Then comes the question: If an "ally" is only an ally of the turtles, is an ally of April or Casey or Splinter also an "ally" even if they are not necessarily allies of the turtles?  You can see how these complications can arise.)

And then there are all the edits I've given the MNT Gaiden articles. MNT Gaiden, despite not being an official publication, deeply resonates with a certain long-established TMNT fan interest that Mirage explored to a smaller extent but the TV shows and even IDW could never completely satisfy, especially now under Viacom's market-image-oriented scrutiny&mdash;taking the noir lives of TMNT characters to their logical, dark conclusions, and making damn good drama in the process. And one of the first things you'll notice about its associated allies category, is that Donatello (MNT Gaiden) is not an ally&mdash;not because he's one of the turtles, but because he's actually an antagonist and struggling with some pretty horrifying mental illness, only partially caused by his curse, and partially in him all along. Mirage TMNT had much smaller hints of this, but seldom had characters like Don or Casey being arguably evil for more than a panel or two. (The most they've done so far is with Michelangelo or Shadow Jones and their eager embrace of their dark sides.)

If there are ever officially-licensed TMNT works (under Viacom) that are allowed to go in such a grey direction, then the assumption of "the allies of the turtles" will most definitely not be a valid assumption. There is evidence that Kevin Eastman has actually tried to, to some extent, with IDW TMNT, but was vetoed by Viacom. And my friends like to discuss how even some of the IDW TMNT characters seem to be surrogates for main characters in ways they'd be considered likely to develop if Viacom might actually allow it; for example, Old Hob seems to be a much greyer, more morally ambiguous expy of Raphael (IDW).

Anyway, my point being, when you delve into the world of truly adult TMNT fans, divorced from the fandom of both kids and of adults who are nostalgic about what they liked as kids, then all sorts of common assumptions about the nature of the TMNT franchise no longer hold. (Even my one-time interest in 2K12 was more about its one-time strong Mirage fan appeal than for any of its kid's appeal, which is why I went from fan to critic in such a hard way during season 3.) I hope these things can help illustrate where I'm coming from as an editor.

I'd also like to make it a point (this is a topic segue, BTW) that I don't readily compare TMNT to superhero comics, because in my core TMNT interest&mdash;Mirage TMNT&mdash;they were decidedly not superheroes. (To be honest, I'm not interested in superhero comics, and neither are my brothers, nor some of my friends, but we all like Mirage TMNT, especially for its slice-of-life stories, &agrave; la True Stories.) Often, when terrible things were going on around them, they'd just shrug and keep going, because they were not heroes.



Even the whole "heroes in a half-shell" thing was a legacy of the kid-friendly superhero-oriented Fred Wolf, not of Mirage. Even where Mirage TMNT had superhero characters (and the premise originally parodied some superhero comics' elements), the turtles themselves were decidedly excluded from this category, especially when they ponder their sheer mortality and resolve, like in City at War, that they are not heroes but just people trying to find peaceful lives. Early volume 4 drives this point home further, where actual superheroes are doing all sorts of heavy-lifting, and the turtles are largely spectators just like any ordinary human.

In many TMNT continuities, the turtles are genuinely heroes, but this is not an assumption that can always be made. That is why I don't make it a habit of comparing the established fleshed-out Mirage TMNT series to Marvel comics, DC comics, etc.