Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20151111163045/@comment-995426-20160308031738

Those kinds of relationships are not anywhere near ten times more interesting. They feel forced, and that's to their detriment.

And I don't really care so much about the sensibilities of 1987 series fans or how it annoys them to be told that what they like sabotaged the original series. I would have to respect the 1987 series to begin with.

And I'm not alone in thinking adults who were 1987 series fans have a stunted maturity in that area&mdash;not if more like the 1987 series is what they want and prefer. They may not necessarily be stunted in the rest of their lives, but their TMNT fan interests haven't really grown up. And I used Batman as a comparison one of my friends brought up&mdash;I'm not as big a Batman fan personally, but it seemed like a good analogy. I find modern Batman tolerable, but the 1960s Batman is better off forgotten entirely.

The Mirage TMNT source material was a parody, but a dark parody of other adult comics of the day. There's childish humor, and then there's a more adult sense of humor. That is TMNT&mdash;a dark ninja drama with good character development and adult comedy elements. It's a balance of seriousness and humor, without letting the humor hurt character development.

And by casting itself as being more about a close-knit family and relationships, it developed a warm, good-natured side too. But such a thing has to be done right, because it's too easy for it to go very, very wrong if the writer doesn't have enough respect for characters' complexities. Splinter is one character important to get right as a character who helps knit other characters together. April is another such character.