The Mirage/ Image Rogues Gallery (and its wasted potential)

Mr_Toitle

In my eyes, the Mirage/ Image rogues gallery has the most potential out of every incarnation we've gotten; that's actually the problem.

The Ninja Turtles have never had a consistent rogue of villains over the years. Mostly (taking the source material out of the occasion) every other incarnation takes either from the Fred Wolf cartoon or tries to come with some lame ass new villains like Hun, Bishop (Sue me), Snakeweed or pretty much any original mutant on the 2012 cartoon, etc, etc.

Look, I don't want take anyone's enjoyment away from some of this stuff and hell, their are some cool villains outside of the source material that I do like. Armaggon, Mr. Null, and Mutagen Man (though purely due to the design and logistics). My main problem comes from the fact that any original villains outside of Mirage (or even Image) feel like they belong in a Fantastic Four (Manglina), X-Men (any fucking animal mutant in the franchise), or even a Spidey comic book.

However, the rogue gallery in Mirage is a bit more... Diverse than all that. You've got a mad scientist with robots used for ulterior motives, a space queen that uses her position for political and tyrannical purposes, an elite group of fighters that feel disenfranchised after their master dies and kill anyone else in the clan that isn't loyal to their master, a Mutant Leech that feeds on another mutant, a Vampire that leads a cult of vampires to summon lovecraftian monsters, a time-traveling buffon that want to rule all time, an Australian in a high-tech suit that has tentacles coming out of it, and... Yeah I should probably stop before this post gets a little too long.

Image was no sloucher either, with the comic dabbling into the Mob with the Puzorelli Family, a Warlord that comes from a descant of dragons, and kick ass kunoichis!

My point is that the Ninja Turtles are such a unique property that having them face only or mostly other mutants or a interdimensional alien warlord feels like a huge waste to me. There's something creative and indie about the villains in the Mirage comics that no other adaptation can match.

Tatoruzu

The death of The Shredder in the first issue and Laird's insistence on making his second death permanent was probably the best thing that has ever happened to the TMNT. We likely never would have had so many great villains otherwise.

I think a lot of adaptations use Shredder as a crutch — there are a lot of stories that boil down to "Shredder uses mutagen to create new mutant opponent"

Mr_Toitle

Tatoruzu Oh, absolutely. I just yonder the potential in a lot of these villains and wonder where we would be if Peter and Kevin had solely dedicated themselves to the comic; probably around 1992 or so. Maybe they could've reach at least their 100 issue goal. Yeah, yeah, Turtlemania was still in the air, but if they hired someone else to take over the lucrative side of the property, who knows?

Tyron_Leung

Tatoruzu dc comics intially killed off joker once for decade and brought him back in the 70s with the stories like the laughing fish tmnt adaptations such as the movies doesn't do shredder justice hes been second fiddle to tatsu a made for the movies character or krang and he sat out tmnt 3 replaced with lord norinaga and portugese colonizer with a english accent walker, tmnt 2007 being dead in the intro replaced with a robot mech like silver samurai almost made an alien general like ch'rell shredder, or white washed with studio mandated changes of getting rid of ninjas in the modern day Eric sacks like they did with the mandarin making him a parody of usama ben laden aka cia operative Tim osmond or white washing bane as a weaboo ninja terrorist lackey to ras al ghuls daughter whos also white washed in the mcu or nolanverse respectively like the various iterations of the joker or green goblin shredder has been a incompetent buffoon and an incel in the movies and they don't expand on his character I believe they should revist the mirage world and give him a batman year one type story line expanding on the hamatos and the orrokus.

Tatoruzu

Mr_Toitle For sure. They had great ideas, especially for villains, but the villains never had the opportunity to shine as bright as they could have because Peter and Kevin were so busy with other stuff.

They probably should've gone the Dave Sim route and stayed independent (although, who knows where the turtles would be now if that were the case).

In fact, Sim said something very interesting in a 1994 interview:

I wanted to write and draw comics, and certainly the experience that Kevin and Peter have had has shown me that I made the right choice. The problem being that you retain control. They haven't sold the turtles, they licensed the turtles for merchandising and for the movies and whatnot. But in order to control that, you become more businessman than comic book artist. ... They meet with lawyers, they meet with accountants, and every time they can grab 10 minutes here and there, they draw a picture.

It's kind of funny that it wouldn't be long before Kevin sold his shares to Peter and then eventually Peter would sell it all. I know I'm kind of digressing here, but this really is the crux of all of the problems Mirage had.

Mr_Toitle

For the record, I reposted this on X.com for a general audience to see.

Mr_Toitle

Tyron_Leung Don't forget the Tangs!

Leonardo1984

I personally think the 2003 show did a really good job expanding the Mirage villains and creating their own.

Tatoruzu

Leonardo1984 Good point. The 03 show definitely did a lot of work in that regard. But I could also see how some of the additions, like The Shredder's new origin, might have turned people off.

Tyron_Leung

Leonardo1984 yeah lsean did a good job expanding on baxter stockman but removing tang shen and orroku nagi was very bothersome and rat king was pretty cool Segway from agent bishop it was wierd they used raphs secondary mutation to donatello tho

Leonardo1984

Tatoruzu True, I grew up watching the 2003 show so the alien twist never really bothered me. In fact, the 2003 Shredder is my favorite villain in any media.