Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25139993-20190226082336/@comment-995426-20190226102751

Still gradually reading. But I can note something else. While the 2012 series was indeed rather dark for a TV-Y7 series, it was actually very bubble gum and rather bowdlerized compared to many of the various comics.

Remember that moment when Splinter was stuck with the Rat King and was tempted to eat a rat? In the original story that inspired that plot...



He did eat the rat, and many more, so he could survive and not starve to death. But the experience did leave him traumatized (it was cannibalism, after all), and he refused to talk about it afterwards.

Truth be told, TMNT was never originally conceived as a story for children. It was written for adults, and the comics are still primarily for adults though mostly accessible to teenage readers. I think the 2012 series was trying too hard to be too many mutually incompatible things to too many irreconcilably different kinds of TMNT fans. The Mirage comics didn't try to strike this kind of balance (as it was the original and it was never required to). The Archie comics started out targeting fans of the 1987 series, but it gradually matured with its audience over time (compare Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, or both incarnations of the Samurai Jack series). Really, I think the IDW comic perhaps does the best job trying to strike a balance between different TMNT fans, but it's also freed up by the fact that it doesn't have to constantly help market toys to 7 year olds, a responsibility that often came to the detriment of the quality of the various TMNT shows for children.