Trivia / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage)

• Approval of God: Jack Kirby was apparently very flattered by the homage to him in the Donatello miniseries.
• Breakthrough Hit: This comic made Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird the media titans they are today.
• Creator Breakdown: Peter Laird put Volume 4 on hiatus and later sold the franchise to Viacom because he was burned out. Many posts on his blog reveal how, ever since the merchandising and cartoon started circa 1988, things spiraled out of control, and he ended up neglecting his own family. As part of the deal, Laird does have the option to produce 15 issues per year set in the Mirage continuity. He has written four issues since the sale, but he otherwise has little interest in pursuing it.
• Exiled from Continuity:
  • About half of the stories within Volume 1's Guest Era were originally written to fit in with established continuity and were treated as such by Mirage staffers. For example, "Sons of the Silent Age" (which is still considered canon) is a follow-up to Rick Veitch's "The River" trilogy (which isn't). The events and characters of these issues can't be referenced because their creators (most notably Rick Veitch) refused to sign "retroactive work-for-hire contracts" which would have signed away ownership of concepts and characters they invented for their issues.
  • There was apparently concern that this would be the case with Volume 1's eighth issue due to the presence of Cerebus the Aardvark. Mirage would've needed David Sim's permission to reprint the issue, and they feared he wouldn't give it, so a non-Cerebus version of the story was whipped up to fill the hole, since the story introduced characters that went on to be important to the Mirage continuity, and there would've been plot holes if the story was removed from canon without something to replace it. Of course, this trope was averted in the end. Click here for a review of the Cerebus-less story and some of the back-and-forth that was involved.
    • It was noted that issue 8 was conspicuously absent from the Compendium collections from IDW. Turned out it was because of a Kickstarter to remaster issue 8 and give it a separate release. Time will tell if future reprints will contain the book.
• Flip-Flop of God: In issue 4 of volume 1, a panel shows a mysterious man with a cigarette, spying on April and the Turtles with a telescope but his identity is never revealed. Kevin Eastman believes that they simply forgot to do a payoff on that scene. Both him and Peter Laird used to believe that it might have been someone from the Foot clan until Laird found some old notes that seem to indicate that this was Casey Jones. A lot of fan seem to agree that this was Casey anyway as he seemingly arrives to the Turtles' rescue out of nowhere in issue #10 and the 1990 movie has a brief moment where Casey watches Raph on the roof of April's home with binoculars, seemingly referencing the unseen observer.
• Follow the Leader: Even before the late-80s mainstream popularity of the Turtles led to a slew of kid-focused imitators, the unexpectedly huge success of the comics in the mid 80s resulted in the "black-and-white boom", a large if short-lived surge in the number of independent publishers producing cheap black-and-white comics. Though most merely copied TMNT's visual style, a fair number of them did attempt to ape the premise: Adult Thermonuclear Samurai Elephants, Mildly Microwaved Pre-Pubescent Kung Fu Gophers, Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils, Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters... as you'd imagine, none of them managed the Turtles' staying power.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Mirage published a very large number of backup stories, guest issues, and one-shots over the years, and quite a few of them have yet to be reprinted by IDW. Those that have are only available in new colorized versions- a controversial choice, since they were created to be in black and white, and the addition of color can radically alter the visual tone of the stories. The only Mirage stories currently reprinted in their original black-and-white are those created by Eastman and/or Laird themselves, printed as part of the Ultimate Collection hardcover series.
  • "The Paradox of Chudnovsky", the story mentioned above that was intended to Retcon issue #8 away, was shelved after Dave Sim gave his blessing for said issue's continued publication. It currently can only be found in Spanish- and Russian-language versions.
  • Unlike the other three volumes, Volume 4 has never been collected into trade paperback form and there is no indication of when it ever will. As such, the only way to access the run without piracy is to track down the physical issues. In particular, the issues after #28 were not released to comic book stores and could only be purchased directly through Mirage, with print runs limited to 1000 copies each. While they were previously made available to read online as well, the links have gone defunct, leaving those 1000 copies the only legal way to read them.
  • Anything mentioned in Exiled from Continuity entry above also counts, as the creators never signed away the rights and therefore their stories were (and still are) off limits to IDW for reprints.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Many issues of Volume 1 received second printings with new covers and additional backup stories.
• Quietly Cancelled: Appears to have been the fate of the series. Already suffering severe Schedule Slip from 2006 onwards, Peter Laird's sale of the IP to Viacom in 2009 led to progress on the Mirage series slowing to a crawl. While Laird retained the right to write and publish issues of the Mirage series post-sale, he would only publish a handful of subsequent issues, the last of which arrived in 2014. In 2021, Laird announced on his website that Mirage Studios as a whole had been dissolved, effectively cancelling the series.
• Recursive Adaptation: A special one-shot issue adapted the 1990 movie, and another one-shot adapted the 2007 movie years later.
• Refitted for Sequel: Killing off Splinter was Mirage's idea, and they suggested it to Gary Carlson, who wrote Volume 3, but he refused, feeling he was too important to the series, and he didn't want to irritate the loyal fans who had stuck with the franchise even through its Audience-Alienating Era. Eventually, Peter Laird did the deed himself in Volume 4, though this may have been subverted later.
• Schedule Slip: A perennial problem with the series, and notoriously so.
  • During the first volume, a common joke among the creators was that you could tell it was a Mirage book if it was running late. Many issues were delayed by several weeks or even months; #15 was so late that it was actually published after #16, and Tales of the TMNT #7 was released a full nine months after the sixth issue.
  • Volume 3 was almost never able to maintain its alleged monthly schedule, skipping months on a regular basis. Gary Carlson himself admitted this contributed to the book's cancellation, and he felt that he might've been able to tell more stories if it had maintained its schedule for even a few months.
  • After #28 in June 2006, whole years would pass between issues of Volume 4. There was a gap of nearly four years between the October 2010 release of #31 and the May 2014 release of #32, which remains the most recent issue.
• Sequel Gap: The last issue of Volume 3 was released in October of 1999, and that was it for decades, with later stories treating it as Canon Discontinuity. It wouldn't be until July of 2020, more than 20 years later, when issue 24 came out and became the first of three issues designed to give the run a proper ending.
• Series Hiatus:
  • No Turtle comic was published between the last issue of Volume 3 in October 1999 and the first issue of Volume 4 in December 2001.
  • Technically speaking, Volume 4 remains on hiatus to this day. Though Laird has worked a miracle before, releasing one new issue after four years as mentioned above, most fans aren't holding their breath.
• Shrug of God: Gary Carlson has admitted that he has no idea why Mirage asked Erik Larson to publish the book for Volume 3.
• What Could Have Been: Tatsu was supposed to show up in the comics after "City at War".
  • The original plan for the Lady Shredder in Volume 3 was for her to eventually be Karai. The run was cancelled before they could pull it off, and even after Urban Legends continued the story, they changed plans, having her be revealed to be Karai's daughter Amai, who was revealed to be Not Quite Dead following the events of City at War.
  • Kevin Eastman made statements that implied that the story that eventually became The Last Ronin was originally conceived as a potential Grand Finale for the Mirage comics as a whole before the idea was shelved and eventually retooled into its own continuity, well after the Mirage comics went a direction that made The Last Ronin difficult, if not impossible to work in.
• Word of Saint Paul: Peter Laird's current opinion on the canon status of "The River" trilogy boils down to this; while it was considered Canon Discontinuity, when a fan pointed out that it was referenced in Sons of the Silent Age, he admitted "The River" could work nicely in the Mirage continuity, but as he no longer owns the franchise, he stated this is only his own personal opinion, with the implication that Nickelodeon is now the final authority on what is and isn't canon in the Mirage comics.
• Write What You Know: After being driven out of New York by the Foot Clan in issue 10, the Turtles, Casey, and April escape to Northampton, Massachusetts- where Mirage Studios was located at the time.

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