Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26489974-20160315055507/@comment-995426-20171012222938

The problem with referencing the 1987 TV series, is that it was the bane of Mirage comics fans' existence. Mirage fans tend to hate the 1987 series, and 1987 series fans tend to be uncomfortable with the Mirage comics. And this was by design, as the two productions cultivated as different fanbases as possible, to be as far apart from each other as possible.



Basically, back in the mid-1980s, Mirage needed the money, and made a deal with Murakami-Wolf-Swenson for a cartoon, and a deal with Playmates for toys. But the comic was still for adults, and so MWS and Playmates wanted to keep the comics as far away from their intended target demographics as possible, and soon even shut out Eastman and Laird themselves from the creative process altogether. But the cartoons had far more publicity than the comic, and were not just extremely irritating to Mirage fans, but there formed a stigma that made it harder for adults to openly identify as fans of something people saw as "kid's stuff". This stigma was especially powerful during the days before the internet and deviantART and Tumblr, when parents might be disturbed to learn of such an adult fan and see them as a potential danger to the safety of their children. At one point, Mirage and MWS, their professional relationship never that friendly to begin with, sued each other for absolute control over the TMNT property, and later settled out of court under terms they're still not at liberty to disclose.

Even after Mirage got their full primary control back, the 2003 TV series and the continued Mirage comics were constantly bombarded by complaints from then-now-adult 1987 TV series fans that it wasn't the TMNT they remembered, that it was ruining their childhoods, that it was too dark, and it didn't have the cartoon stuff they loved when they were little, or ignorant reactions about the comic like "how dare you write this filth in a comic for children", etc., etc., etc., when most of what they were complaining about had been true of Mirage TMNT since its 1984 debut. Not that Mirage fans themselves didn't have anything to complain about in later Mirage comics, but this stark division of fanbase legacies has never quite gone away, and if anything, has only hardened. At one point, during Mirage TMNT comics volume 4, Peter Laird appeared to have enough with complaints in the letters page, coming with a very diplomatic way of telling them "shut up." For the rest of Mirage's main run and during the run of the 2003 TV series, references to the 1987 TV series were usually at least slightly mocking, and sometimes outright ridiculing, especially in Turtles Forever when the 1987 series turtles were written in a very unflattering light, famously simultaneously crying in one scene when they're scared. Of course, to a Mirage fan, this was very amusing.

And then in 2012, Nickelodeon put a Mirage fan and a 1987 series fan in charge of jointly executive-producing a new series. It was good enough...for a little while. But the two producers couldn't work well together, increasingly undermined each other, and eventually outright sabotaged each other's vision. As the production became more troubled, the quality of the show went downhill, and now even before the series is finished, Nick has washed its hands of the series except for the letter of its contractual obligations, and the two executive producers have been fired and blacklisted from working with Nick in the future.

The recent announced reboot, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it explicitly for even younger audiences than the 2012 series was, with more comedy and less seriousness. What does this tell me? Nick is trying to target the youngest audiences tuning in for the first time with no previous baggage, in such a way that it can ignore older existing fans and all their fighting and arguing. Ironically though, this drastically younger shift is exactly what MWS did back in 1987 and was so inflaming to existing Mirage TMNT fans. The way we're complaining that the 2018 series will be like Teen Titans Go? The 1987 series saw Mirage fans making the same kinds of complaints thirty years ago.

As a Mirage fan, I still generally believe that TMNT should be primarily for adults with an adult frame of mind, and not for children or for adults chasing childhood nostalgia. Of course, I'm willing to watch something made primarily for children as long as it still sends cues to those adult-minded audiences, as the 2012 series initially did.

Now, I hope you can see how references to the 1987 series can become excessive...to TMNT fans who weren't 1987 series fans. What most appeals to a 1987 fan, is often absolute nails on a chalkboard to a Mirage fan from back then or even some 2003 series fans. And what most appeals to a Mirage fan, is often equally absolute nails on a chalkboard to a 1987 series fan from back then. This means that for any future TMNT production to try to combine influences from both source material, takes not only a production that can work together well, but not be so concerned with serving past fans that it is negatively disruptive to the newer story. As a Mirage fan, it's when the 2012 series shifted too far towards 1987 series fanservice that I was most alienated from the show.

So what does work relatively well in combining the two infleunces?

The Archie TMNT comics branched off a parallel continuity based on the 1987 series continuity, but it was written by Mirage staff. Mirage viewed the Archie TMNT comics as a buffer between Mirage and MWS, insulating Mirage from any pressure to incorporate anything from the 1987 series; Archie did that for them. Archie TMNT gradually matured with its audience and steadily darkened its tone, though not all at once. And it at least tried to tell a good story, whereas MWS made no secret from day one that the sole purpose for the existence of the 1987 TV series was to help Playmate market and sell toys (toyetic TV show), and every other concern was ultimately irrelevant.

The IDW TMNT comics also work fairly well in this regard. Though Mirage co-creator Peter Laird has made no secret his complete lack of fondness for the 1987 TV series, fellow co-creator Kevin Eastman, at least in his older years, has been far more pragmatic, willing to work with the IDW comics as well as the 2012 TV series and the 2014 film franchise, though the latter two in a much more limited capacity. I'm not always a fan of Eastman's writing, and wouldn't consider him among my top five favorite TMNT writers (most of whom are other Mirage writers), but he's gotten better at drawing influences from both Mirage and 1987 to create something new that is still a good read.

As for "soft reboots"? This is what happens when a character or plot element or genre element is noticeably drastically retconned or retooled. Now, small differences can creep up when multiple different writers are involved, and even real people's personalities can change subtly over time. A soft reboot is not those things. When a soft reboot happens, it is almost certainly intentional and drastic, and usually will not feel like a natural change. The real reason soft reboots happen is usually a matter of an executive change of direction in production, whether a network's marketing priorities change, or a new writer wants to downplay what an old writer created in favor of a different vision, etc.

Specific examples?

Season 3 felt like a soft reboot over season 2. It used to be that, during seasons 1 and 2, you could watch most any episode multiple times and still notice new gems in the way characters banter, details of their body language, and layers in their (compelling) drama. Somewhere during the North Hampton arc, the entire formula seemed to change to become a more rubbery comedy, with the characters becoming more caricature-like, and their dialogue certainly a lot more wooden, their drama more shallow and inconsequential, and the easter eggs becoming either lazier or scarcer and certainly far less subtle. All in all, it felt more like a abrupt genre shift than an incremental evolution of a show. For me, the biggest case is Raphael, whose behavior changed so much in such a short amount of time that it was like he was replaced by a different person. Characters who had far greater plausible reasons to undergo major changes, like Leo, actually changed much less than Raph did. It was just so glaring to watch.

Another example is the 2003 TV series' Fast Forward season. The network (4Kids) stepped in, and the planned fifth season (wrapping up the series' longer plot arcs) was shelved out of concern that it wouldn't sell enough toys. Instead, a different season was produced drastically changing not only the setting and roster of characters, but softening the entire tone of the series, like a genre shift. As we already know, this was received very poorly by existing 2003 fans (especially since unresolved plot points were left unceremoniously ignored and dangling), and led to Back to the Sewer trying to return to the previous formula. That shelved fifth season was completed and released, first as on-demand streaming, and then on television some years later.

Another weird example, but in the opposite direction, happened to the 1987 TV series during its last two or three seasons. The "red sky" seasons were darker and edgier, not in any actual attempt to be more like Mirage (which had actually already suspended publication between 1994 and 2002), but to compete with shows like Batman the Animated Series and Gargoyles which had gained popularity around the time and were far darker than most 1980s cartoons had been.

Soft reboots are relatively easy to manage with television shows, especially those for children, because of the "fleeting demographic rule." The target audience remains mostly fixed, but people themselves gradually age, so even if there are older fans still watching the series later, they are less important to showrunners trying to sell a product (in this case toys which older viewers are less likely to buy), so they can make fundamental changes that will go unnoticed by newer, younger, more profitable fans who may be tuning in for the first time.

Soft reboots are not as easy to do with comics series, especially today, because most of the readers of most comics series are adults, and not necessarily even just young adults, but pretty much all adults who are still loyal readers. If they keep reading for years, then they can retain longer memories for plot and character continuity, and it becomes all the harder for retcons to go unnoticed. So if a comics series does undergo a reboot, it is usually a hard reboot (like between Mirage TMNT and IDW TMNT), or an elaborately-crafted soft reboot with the same overall effect as a hard reboot (like Archie Sonic comics before and after the Super Genesis Wave).