What was wrong with mirage comics
 

Tmnt was going in and out a hiatus’s for years on end and was only in consistent publication through the tv cartoon tie ins with all the turtle mania money they could’ve solidified an editorial and have kev and Pete run tmnt marvel method style with the guess artists and other staff filling the rest out to make and more stable functioning comic runs and then vol 2 getting canned with in like a year the entire vol4 debacle that’s literally older than me but released less issues than most comic runs that have come and gone with in 5 year chunks of that what was going on with that company

There was a flood around 1995 that caused Mirage to cancel Volume 2, I'm sure it was intended to go on a lot longer than 13 issues. Then they partnered with Image in 1997 so it was only a 2 year break. Then after when Image ended in 1999, Peter Laird started up Vol. 4 in 2001, so again only a few years break.

There was nothing wrong with Mirage, it was perfect as it was. Perfectly imperfect. Marvel style? No, thanks.

I said marvel method ei the process of mass developing comic issues simultaneously through root manuscripts being fleshed out at Various stages of elaboration of scripting and illustrations ei how stan and Jack created the entire marvel universe while also how go nagai had his manga’s and their anime tv adaptation shows going on with in months of each other

I feel the big reason Mirage ended so soon was Peter Laird grew tired of it all resting on his shoulders. Volume 4 was his story and while it had its flaws (like April's weird origin story) he was doing the best he could. The poor guy was burned out after about a decade of trying to entertain us die-hard fans and when he saw the opportunity to take the weight off his shoulders, he went for it.

I'm curious what of all Peter did to get 'burned out', at least in the sense of actually making the comics. Not watching over the franchise and singing contract deals, I mean actually working with the Turtles directly.

Seeing at we got the guest artist era, Volume 3 being Image and how long it takes between issues of Volume 4, it seems the most consistently Laird has ever been involved with the TMNT directly was when he was overseeing the 2K3 show.

Could be the Vol. 4 lettercol.

I don't remember the letters being vile -- were they? I thought his storylines were well-written, slow moving sure but entertaining. I always thought them on the intellectual side which I enjoy.

I thought they were pretty mixed, but there definitly was a decent amount of critical fans writing in.

I enjoyed vol 4 a lot, but that’s probably because I usually forget about April being a drawing.

I am probably a minority in this opinion, but I like weirdness of April's origin being a drawing. It was also a cool to see how Kirby had come to find the crystal in the Donatello 1 shot.