How is the Image series supposed to fit with Volume 4 and Tales Volume 2?

[neatoman]

Ok so I was originally going to wait for when IDW reprint the Image series and at least a chunk of volume 4 but I'm really itching for an answer, how can the Image series be considered in continuity with the 21'st era Mirage? I would really like to see what excuse some people have for saying that the Image series can still be considered part of the canon.

Granted I haven't read the Image series, I've only read what IDW has reprinted of Tales and what Peter Laird put online for free (which are last couple of volume 4 issues). But from what I can tell researching this, the Image series does not really seem to fit. Granted most of this is research from the internet rather than first hand experience, so feel free to correct me.

First off, the Image series infamously begins with everyone but Mikey getting mutilated in some fashion and the series ended with them still being mutilated, Volume 4 began with the Turtles have no disfigurement nor do they have them in any issue of Tales meant to take place between volume 2 and 4. If the series is indeed to be considered canon, then one would expect there to be an explaination for why they are no longer mutilated but no such explaination seems to exist. The mutilation was just the big one though, it seems that character development and plotlines started in the Image series is blatantly ignored and not followed up upon in either book. Another important thing to bring up is if some issues of Tales unambigiously takes place right in the middle of where the Image series happens, then that would be a pretty clear cut retcon, remember, no mutilated turtles in that time period means the events of the Image series probably didn't happen. I know that at least one character from the Image series (an Utrom scientist I think) came back, but unless he made unambigious reference to the Image series, then they probably just used the character in the same way Hun showed up without the 4Kids cartoon becoming canon.

Maybe I got something wrong here (again, researched most of this on the web) but it seems like it would require jumping through mental hoops to make it fit.