Talk:Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/@comment-26423071-20171207174946/@comment-33165688-20171207201311

And therein lies the problem, Gilgameshkun: the implicit contempt for people who didn't come to TMNT through sufficiently mature comc books (I barely read any comics, and my friends don't read any, so... what's your point?). If someone comes to TMNT through kids' cartoons, past or present, they are still fans of the Turtles and should be respected as such. Their opinions and likes should not be dismissed out of hand.

Maybe they'll like the one thing, or maybe their interests will branch out to stuff like the IDW comics, the 1990/2007 movie, the 2003 series, etc. But there is not a hierarchy of fans based on highly specific niche standards of what is considered objectively "good." There is a wide range of fans with differently-shaded likes, dislikes, standards and reasons for liking what they do, and usually based on differing standards for what, in an artistic work, is most important.

I agree with King Phelous that all those different kinds of media have merit and can be appreciated in their own individual ways. I, for one, consider it a sign of mental flexibility to be able to see merit in different things for what they are, and to enjoy different media in different ways.

One of the things I really like about the TMNT franchise is that unlike most franchises, it permits the same core ideas to be expressed in various different ways - different tones, different worlds, different casts, different source materials, different origins, different ways of presenting old material that gives it a fresh spin. And unlike most franchises, it's not a take-it-or-leave-it situation - you can like one series and dislike another, enjoy one comic and ignore another. It's been that way for most of its existence, and that is, I hope, the way it's gonna stay.