OK, mister Dark Edgie McEdge.

Well, take me. I only really enjoy Mirage, most parts of TMNT 1990, I like that TMNT 2003 exists as a counterpoint to all other cartoons even though I don't really like it, I enjoy 2012 for what it was and sharing that with my daughter, and large parts initially of IDW before it became what I feared it might. I'd still consider myself a TMNT fan.

Like with Green Lantern. Good lord. We had a great run of comics. Something like 40 or 50 years, with some bumps in the road. Because the last 5 or so are hot, woke dogsh**, I don't think that suddenly makes me not a fan. I feel like I can still consider myself a fan of "the good stuff."

Leo basically retreated into a place of opinion where he can’t be challenged, because his objective argument was dismantled by reality.
You can’t provide sales numbers that prove “tmnt isn’t dumb!”, so he’s playing the only card he had left. I can appreciate the stubbornnesses on some level.

Indeed.
This is rather impressive. Clinically speaking that is.

A decade of failure on the part of the brand speaks louder than a handful of nerds on a message board.

"But they moved a few extra units in a dying medium - for a dying publisher - so that proves people still care!" Right.

I know this is a TMNT forum and thus full of defensive TMNT fans, but go outside once in a while. Nobody in Real Life cares about this sh*t. C'mon.

While I don’t necessarily agree completely with your “absolutism” in your opinions of the current state of TMNT, its hard to disagree with the basic premise of almost everything you’ve said within your last several posts.

I believe there are considerably more die hard fans that would fill up an entire stadium but the truth is you couldn’t get more than a ballroom’s worth to show up for something.

And your pretty much spot on that TMNT will probably die out at some point. My guess is it happens when our generation is either dead or much too old to give a damn about it anymore and the corporations realize there’s nothing left to milk out of it.

TMNT had its peak now almost 30 years ago and I would bet everything I own it’ll never achieve anything remotely close to that 4-5 year window from back then. Pop culture just doesn’t work that way anymore. People are fickle with their consumption of such things. The turtles continue to survive mostly propped up on nostalgia! Casuals will only show up for a minute or two and that’s about it. The best bet for some kind of resurgence would come from a film and that hasn’t gone well for almost 30 years and it’s not likely to improve. A gritty live action show could work but I don’t think a streamer would take it on. Too much money and no guarantee you wouldn’t puss off the diehards and get enough internet backlash to kill any momentum.

If the turtles were part of a larger universe or IP then maybe the game could change for them. Look at Marvel it has its ebbs and flows, especially for fringe characters but those characters can continue to survive because of the universe they’re attached to. And Marvel as a whole right now are in a way propped up by the MCU. If those films and shows didn’t exist There simply wouldn’t be Marvel stuff everywhere you look. At least not anywhere near like it is now. The Turtles simply don’t have that helping it along. It’s mostly just us middle aged and overly nostalgic fans. And we got our kids into it for a year or two and they moved like kids do nowadays.

Now is it possible that there exists some magic recipe that make the turtles more relevant than they currently are? Sure, but it would take convincing a bunch suits that the recipe doesn’t mean throw together a childish cartoon and let Playmates make toys for the childish cartoon and tow years later we make a movie that doesn’t resemble the cartoon at all. Good luck convincing them.

Tmnt has already filled a ballroom full of fans. That’s why the 2014 film opened the way it did and why the last ronin is the top selling book of last year.
If we’re talking conventions, that’s not indicative of anything. Even I would never go to a tmnt convention.

I agree with you that Viacom is mishandling the property though. It’s never going to recover, the way they are treating it now. That said, there is still juice in the tank. You don’t become IDW’s highest selling book ever, top selling book of the year, or even #1 at the box office opening weekend, when you can’t fill a ballroom full of fans.

It’s not about personal feelings, it’s in the numbers.

You realize that's already 8 years ago now... which is about two or three lifetimes ago as far as kiddie trends go. And then 2016 -- 6 years ago, even -- that movie actually straight up lost money. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you about your larger point but these are not a great barometer for TMNT's franchise health, really.

And again, comic book sales are meaningless. Maybe in the 90s when books would sell 175,000 copies a month. Now, children's franchise-wise, it's all about keeping a show on the air that's getting millions of eyeballs, sustaining a toy line, and maybe throwing out a movie every once in a while. Everything else is just in the periphery, a bonus if it works out, oh well if it doesn't.

Will TMNT decline enough that Nick will be -- essentially -- "done" with it? Yeah. Probably eventually (maybe two or three "let's try another cartoon and do a new Beebop and Rocksteady origin!" cartoon from now). And I do believe they're the kind of people that would rather just sit on the TMNT rights rather than sell them off and risk a competitor doing better with them.

Fair enough with tmnt 2014 being older now. Not so relevant a point in 2022 is it? Though to be fair, it's all we have to work with, in terms of gauging the success of new tmnt movie franchise.
I don't think the sequel negates the point, because sequels to crappy films tend to do worse. The cat was out of the bag.

In regard to The Last Ronin, the sales aren't meaningless at all, when someone is claiming that "the comics are failing". It's just plain wrong, whether comics are a niche market or not.
That was the reason the success of TLR was brought up, so I want to make sure I don't get roped into a "moving goal post" argument, in which i claimed The Last Ronin will win an Oscar or something.
Simply put: no, the comics aren't failing. TLR is a huge success. End of story.

But to get carried away, I don't think the sales are meaningless outside of that either. The book's success was a surprise no one saw coming. Yes, comics are niche but when you can outsell Batman and Spider-Man on their home turf, it's meaningful. It does prove there is interest in the brand. You don't get that big a splash, even in comics, without it.

The size of the market is less relevant then the TMNT's size within that market.
Especially when it is one of the rare occurrences of tmnt done right. All of the sudden the brand becomes the top dog in it's respective medium. Yeah, that says "if you build it, they will come."

I can agree with the last paragraph. I can imagine Nick sitting on this franchise, like they have so many others. At the same time, it's unpredictable. Currently, we are headed that way, when you look at the poor output and their past history of burying properties.
But all it takes is a change at the top, a change in company direction, the right catalyst. So you never really know what could happen with TMNT.

I will single handedly keep the TMNT franchise alive on my own if I have to. I'll see all of you in the 2030's.

@6:52: Hey, FW Splinter doesn't like pizza! He likes Sushi! False, false!:lol:

Has a price been revealed yet? It's probably going to be around $29.99, isn't it? Pretty expensive for a 2D game, but oof.

We all expect you to purchase it at least four times. :tlol:

If the only difference were that it was using 3D models instead of 2D sprites, and everything else was still exactly the same, would that really be more worthy of a higher price tag despite the fact that 2D sprites require a lot more work?

I'm not saying that this game should be anything like a full-price $60 game or anything like that, but I honestly don't get why so many people undervalue 2D spritework.

That's how it is with Iron Man. The current volume is the best it's been since around 2005 or so, but it's literally been 15 years in between of garbage Iron Man in print.

Some people say "well if you didn't like the book for that long, then how are you still an Iron Man fan", but I think being able to discern the good material from the bad while sticking with something out of hope and passion for the project can be the true determining factor for a fandom at times.

Sometimes you stick with something because you want it to be good and are waiting for it to be good again.

I bet they subconsciously think that 3D is superior somehow and 2D belongs to the "ye olde" days.

Is that the Christopher Cantwell series you are referring to? The Alex Ross covers are really enticing.

Expect the TMNTSR portion of FanFest to debut around 2:35 PM ET tomorrow:
http://i.imgur.com/XEZPyBo.jpg

It's a 2D beat 'em up that will probably be less than an hour long for a single playthrough. Granted I plan to play through it multiple times with all 6 characters, but even then it's a lot to ask for a lot of money for a game like this in 2022.

But I expect it to be $29.99 since that's what other games are priced at like this.