[neatoman]

So after years and years of hearing about how grim, gritty and dark the Mirage comics were, I finally got a good chance at reading them close to two years ago and I have been keeping up with all of IDW's reprints of them.

So what is my verdict?
Well... It's grimmer, grittier and darker than the cartoons and movies but almost anything that takes itself seriously is grimmer, grittier and darker than "Dude let's grab a pizza!". There is some blood and the turtles themselves are a bit ruthless but that's not inherently dark, that's just common in action. Most of the stories actually seem pretty upbeat or more about wackiness than hardboiled grit. Whenever the Foot are involved there is some sense of grit and harshness involved but after City at War there's actually a pretty upbeat, if a little bittersweet, ending. There's some philosophy on the nature of right and wrong and while that is a bit thought provoking, again, it's not inherently dark. The stuff that might actually be called dark is stuff like Casey's alcoholism and even then it's more depressing than dark.

There are also some attempts at darkness or grimness that just falls flat. Like the first Rat King seems like it's intended to be some kind of horror story but it's ruined by the Rat King's failure to even scare the turtles, his relatively easy defeat and the fact that he keeps narrating about how HE HIMSELF is intimidated by the turtles. Hell if anything, the 4kids version of that story works better as horror since he barely has lines and is an actual threat in that version.

Maybe it does not seem dark to me since I associate "dark" with with much harsher and twisted creations? Like Alien for example, the aliens in that series are not horrifying because they want to kill you, they're horrifying because they want to rape you. Or how about Nightmare on Elm Street, a dead serial killer goes into your dreams and brutalise you in ironic ways as revenge for being burned to death. Or how about a dark comedy? Hot Fuzz, a town commitee is murdering all sorts of people just for the petty reason of keeping the image of an ideal town while brainwashing the police so they're not to be caught. Or how about what's acceptable for children's media in my native region, Håkan Bråkan, a children's TV-show that featured all sorts of things that would never make it in to a kids show in the US.

So in short: Enjoyable, a little dark but not dark enough to really be called that. Maybe not made for children but certainly not something I would keep away from children, in fact, I would encourage children to read it.