One Step Forward or One More Coffin Nail? The End of Mirage Studios...

I recently found out that the ninjaturtles.com which has been the home of the TMNT and Mirage Studios on the world wide web has closed up shop. It turns out that the recent acquisition of the TMNT by Nickelodeon has left Mirage with no rights to the heroes on the half shell and thus the last 25 years of Mirage and the Turtles has come to an end. Mirage being the studio that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird first published the TMNT with in 1984 and once the release of the last few issues of the new comics are out, they are done.

This is really kind of sad, the website was taken care of rather well, and was the best place to go for current updates on the goings on with the Turtles. This is where I could find out about the latest issues, any changes with the shows whatever. They even hosted a monthly art contest for fans of the turtles, which three contest winners would be chosen and their drawings posted on the site... including art by yours truly. And those whose art was chosen received a prize (mine was a signed companion book to the 2003 cartoon). But no more. I just checked the whole site through and all artwork submitted has all gone away. OK, it's a little more sad than previously stated...

I can't say I've been a life long turtle fan, but I can say that I've been a fan ever since that week in December that they ran the marathon... that lead to the series... that lead to the toys... that lead to the movies and so on. I've got stacks of comic books collected over years and years and put out by several different publishers. Every different publisher had a different take. Mirage and it's indie roots had a dark tone, while Image had an even darker tone, and on the opposite end of the spectrum Archie brought the happy go lucky, pizza eating turtles of the cartoon to print and Dreamwave Productions' the most recent cartoon. And now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think I would have gotten into comics or drawing (which I still find myself doodling a turtle from time to time) as much as I had if it weren't for the Ninja Turtles... which brings me to Nick.

I really don't know how I feel about this change, Nickelodeon has had several great shows throughout the years Avatar the Last Airbender, and Invader Zim being just two of them. Whether they wind up rerunning the past shows or revamping and creating a whole new show either way it could be equally bad or good. But as I've heard after the fall out from the aforementioned Invader Zim Nick could just up and cancel the show after one season an the world could be left without the Turtles and nothing but crummy merchandise... and nothing to appease the fans made over the last 25 years.

I think the recent tv movie Turtles Forever was a great tribute to all things TMNT

So as a lesser tribute to the end of Mirage my picture for the monthly art contest...