Do you find it ironic that Volume 4 had the same alterations as Image did?
 

Peter Laird didn't want to take the time to address the changes to the turtles in Image before Volume 4 began, (Don was still a cyborg, Leo still missing a hand, Raph's face was still scarred), so he started off in a time gap without it.

However in Volume 4, similar things happen:

- Raph is mutated to his Gamera form and stays that way for almost the entire volume, I think he is in that form for more issues than Cyborg Don was already.

- Don is shrunk to 8 inches tall and has to wear robot Turtle armor to regain his normal size, making him somewhat a cyborg again.

- April is now a drawing created by Kirby's crystal

- Mike gets his teeth knocked out by the aliens and has babies (?) with an alien princess.


So now, much like the Image conclusion by Andrew had to revert the Turtles back to status quo, now when/if Volume 4 ends, Peter Laird will have to do the same thing with the Turtles.

So why do you think the same changes has happened?

I feel that Peter not explaining the Image changes was a mistake, since it confused readers who missed that series (which was TMNT's dark age) and felt that having more bizarre changes may have been self-explanatory, along with Peter disregarding Volume 3 as canon. It was part of the problem why Volume 4 didn't last as long as intended, and the fan outrage among these changes forced Mirage to divert to their Tales series. Since it is highly unlikely that Mirage will ever come back, it looks to be up to us fans to give a proper send-off, and reverting to status quo looks to be the best solution once again, though the April as a drawing issue complicates things since she was never normal to begin with.

I haven't read the image series but it sounds like a bad idea to completely ignore an entire run's set of stories when tmnt has a pretty solid canon throughout mirage. (unless you're the xmen/marvel/dc where this is 100% necessary).

Well the problem was the Image series got canceled without getting a proper conclusion. Had they known the series was ending they probably would have had the turtles return to form in that series, many of the concepts Andrew used in his conclusion came directly from the writers of that series.

Volume 4 was set roughly 5-6 years after the Image series ended, so there was enough of a time gap there that the stories can fit.

I do think it is a little ironic that many of the major controversial changes in Image ended up being mirrored in a way in Volume 4. However, I don't think it was merely the changes that Peter Laird didn't want to incorporate, but the Image run itself. It had a significantly different tone than Volume 4, so we can see how he wouldn't feel comfortable continuing from it. When it came to the turtles, he has never had to follow after someone, and being the owner/creator, he had the power so that he didn't have to.

Peter Laird seemed to want to retcon almost every story he didn't have a hand in, like most of Volume 1 as well.

He even admitted to not even bothering to approve stories for Tales V.2 because he got too busy with the 4th movie that he probably would have retconned half of those if he went back to read them now.

Why should Peter Laird want to revert the Turtles back to status quo? He doesn't need it.

There are tons of "future turtle" stories and the turtles are 'back to normal' in them. That's gotta be explained. If/when he calls it quits, he's not gonna leave those plots in limbo.

At least I hope not.

i kind of want to see how mikey's babies will turn out. maybe they'll look like Raph's dino form? part dinosaur... part turtle? i wonder how many little mikeys will be running around... :D

Uh, right. I forgot the "future turtles" part.

I sure hope some day we get to see not only how Don and Raph get returned to normal, but that April's so-called origin story was just some messed up dream or illusion!

I wouldn't say the same changes. Some are superficialy similar but it seems that Peter intended for most if not all to relate to the actualy story. I was rather intrigued by Jim Lawson's cover for what would be the next issue with Monster-Raph attacking Mecha-Don. Weren't the "vampires" that bit Raph and caused his transformation working for the alien villain? Surely connected there.

Image did an admirable job of throwing in their changes to show the turtles would naturaly incur grave injuries in their misadventures. None seemed to have any relevance to the overall narrative.

He's stated repeatedly that he was going to revert the turtles themselves to status quo anyway.

With Raph and Leo, that is true, but Donatello's time as a cyborg fighting with the CPU seemed to be more or less part of the ongoing storyline through most of its run. I do prefer Volume 4's Donatello who built the turtle bot himself. It just seemed to fit better with his personality.