"The turtles had no individual personalities before the cartoon"
 

Seems like a myth that is stated a little too often. Yes, the turtles were not that different from each other in the earliest issues and the cartoon made it them much more noticable but plenty of material had already been published by the cartoon's release, in which the personalities had already been formed.

I agree, the Mirage Series had published 12 issues before the show even started, so there was plenty of time to develop personalities. I havn't read any, but I'm certain the Turtles did have disinct personalities by issue 12.

The first issue did flesh out a bit, particularly Leo's personality as a leader.

After that, we have Raph being a hothead almost tried to kill Mikey in his fury (and later found Casey), we have Donnie saving the gang from mousers by hacking the system, and we have Mikey in a carefree attitude playing snow, taking a new pet cat (Cronk, at least I think that was her name.. Ice Cream Kitty is better anyway. Oh wait, it's Klunk), and kicking bad guys asses on his own on xmas day.

So I disagree, the comic did portray plenty of the turtles basic personalities early on.

We get both Leo as the Leader and Raph as the Loner in the first issue of the Mirage book.

They were there.

Who says such a thing? I have only read the first handful of issues available at Mirage's old website, but one could tell easily that the turtles had different personalities.

The personalities were there, it's just that Fred Wolf exaggerated said personalities:

Leo became even more obsessed with leadership and more of a 'goody two shoes' than he was in Mirage.

Mikey's personality as the fun-loving turtle was exaggerated - he was a fairly serious character in the early Mirage issues (his one-shot aside) but he was the only option they had for the 'fun loving' turtle in FW.

Donnie is smart and good with his hands in Mirage, but he's not really played out as an ultra-genius in the early issues - he's more of a very clever tinkerer. In FW he is portrayed as someone who would be considered the world's greatest genius if he didn't have to hide from the outside world.

As well all know, FW radically changed Raphael. He went from a tortured soul to a wise-cracker who repeatedly broke the fourth wall. The original film might have confused us at the time, but thank goodness it remained relatively faithful to Mirage Raph.

Overall, when you think about the two different universes (one bleak and realistic and the other over-the-top and very light-hearted) it's no real surprise that the FW turtles are hyperbolic versions of the Mirage turtles, for the most part.

I'll go out on a limb and say people who think: Kids will find it too hard to tell them apart if they're all wearing the same color!

FW's target audience were children, so they had to make their personality traits obvious and uni-dimensional. Raphael being turned into a joker was also a good move. An aggressive and violent Raphael probably wouldn't go well with the parents and guardians.

As a kid with no knowledge of Mirage, I was initially confused by the 1990 TMNT movie, mainly with Splinter's origin and Raphael's personality being distinctly different from their FW ones. But I ended up liking the movie anyway.

Yep, I think that's how most of us felt at the time. Just makes the film even more rewarding to watch now with the benefit of Mirage knowledge :)

I do sometimes wonder though if they should have been even more faithful and made Leo the turtle who was beat up on the roof by the Foot. But I think with the way Raphael was in the film it just 'fit' better.

If the cartoon actually kept the Turtles with all red bandanas the series would have bombed. There was no way the show wouldn't be successful without color coding them.

Raphael was my favorite turtle back then alongside Donatello so I didnt' mind it at all... well it did suck watching him get beaten up, yea lol

They could have given each turtle a different skin tone. But honestly, considering all the animation mistakes, maybe it's common for people to confuse them? And whenever you talk to someone about the turtles they always think of the bandana colors first to identify them or to remind themselves who was who.

I don't mind the multi-colored bandanas at all, myself. Color coded weapons like in the 2k3 series was overkill, though.

Yeah, the beating just made him look like an even stronger character in the end though, as he came back from adversity. Similar to Leo in Mirage.


One thing I like about most iterations is that they have different skin colours e.g. Donnie being more of a brown tone etc. That didn't apply in FW though, as you imply.

It took a few issues to see everyone`s personality at the forefront but considering they hadn't intended past issue 1, I'm sure they had to flesh it out.

Yeah, I gotta say that I really wish in the OS they had given them different colored skin tones as they had with the Playmates figures (and all the publication artwork/materials following it). That and the different colored bandanas would have been perfect! I like that 2k3 series did this tho.