Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26489974-20160315055507/@comment-995426-20171011021703

1987 TV series: The entire series was awful. This was the anti-TMNT.

2012 TV series: The second half of the series was really, really bad, especially the fast, easy, shallow love interests and the excessive callbacks to the 1987 TV series. In the first half of the series, the biggest problems were the permanent shelving of Timothy's plot, the blatantly toyetic secondary mutation of Bradford from Dogpound to Rahzar, and the loss of character development for nearly every character that becomes one of the Shredder's minions.

I haven't watched enough of the other TV series to really determine the worst things about them. I've mostly been into TMNT comics. So...

Mirage comics: The "Bodycount" arc was pretty bad. Besides that, I would have to say the most jarring thing is volume 4's integrated Apple product advertising which is both unsubtle and distruptive. I know some people complain most about Stephen Murphy, but I'm not that bothered by his writing, except on rare occasions when he's heavy-handed about a topic in a way that's actually disruptive to the flow of a story or makes characters act really out of character.

Archie comics: The deaths of all the Mutanimals, killing off some of the most interesting characters in quick succession. Slash's heroic sacrifice soon after had some real meaning, but the Mutanimals' deaths were brutally senseless.

Image comics: The attempt to retroactively integrate the Mirage comics continuity into the Savage Dragon universe created an enormity of maddening plot holes. Also, Bat Splinter seemed extremely out of character for any version of Splinter.

IDW comics: Viacom forbids IDW from giving its versions of the four turtles any permanent long-term character development (or seemingly even letting them age past their teen years even after six years of publication), making them the most wasted, least interesting characters in the series. Also, the tired retread of storylines where a character is snatched away and mind-controlled by an enemy and remains gone for an increasingly long time. First Leo, then Alopex, and now Slash. Also, Baxter Stockman becomes awkwardly written to substitute for Harold Lillja. And the "Dimension X" story arc overall is pretty bad, especially the way it writes Mikey to act more like his 2012 TV series version during that series' terrible second half.