good Bye For Now Mirage

[VaughnMichael]

Wednesday, May 26
Howdy folks,

Do you hear that in the distance? The fat lady belting out the final verse? The cows trudging home after a long day in the field? Yup - it's definitely there... faint murmurings, but growing more definite with each passing moment... yeah... the volume is assuredly increasing... in fact, it's not in the distance anymore...

So, this is The End - although not Le Grand Finale. I'm not sure if Mirage will ever have one of those or not - but for all intents and purposes, as I type this, all the "T"s have been crossed and all the "I"s are dotted and Mirage Publishing, as it has existed for the past six years or so, is being put to bed. "Tales of the TMNT" volume two #70, the final issue of our (final?) regularly published series, arrived at our hallowed halls yesterday. With any luck, it will be in comic shops today - or at least in the next week or two - I can't really say since we've never gotten the book into every shop on the same week with any issue for whatever reason. But I digress, and it is bedtime after all, so let's move on. There's miles to go before we sleep... or at least a few more paragraphs.

So what does the future hold? Truth is, we don't know. Peter Laird did maintain the right to print up to 18 TMNT comics (set in the Mirage universe) per year, so at some point he may decide to dive back into the turbulent waters of the small press comics industry and Mirage will resume publishing a regular Turtles comic. Key word in that sentence being "may," since Peter is still decompressing from the past 25 years of cah-razee TMNT bidness and isn't exactly sure what he wants to do in the future. Thus only time will tell what will become of Mirage and its relationship with the Turtles via the funny book world. Regarding TMNT Volume Four, our totally irregularly published and self-distributed book, there is no time table for when new issues may begin to appear, but it's possible that Peter may return to it at some point.

So all hope is not lost (if you've been hoping for more Mirage Studios TMNT comics, that is) - but due to the nature of things, I can't tell you whassup, because we simply don't know at this time. So stay tooned, true believers - hopefully we'll have news for you some sunny day.

I can tell you that this web site will remain online for the foreseeable future, with infrequent updates of the old comic synopses linked via the Back Issue Bins. Most of the Mirage stuff is up now, and I'll be adding what I can as time permits. I'll only be working here one day per week from now on, so replies to e-mail will be much slower than in the past.

Well, the fat lady has reached the final crescendo of the last verse of this tune and the cows have all settled into their feedbags and are making preparations for their well deserved nap - it's time to be going. Until we see you again, we once again want to thank you for the 25 years of support, it is very much appreciated, more than words can express. While things are going to be very slow and sleepy around here, we hope you'll join us if/when things get rolling again. Until that time, take care and rock on.

Cheers!
Dan

You know it's odd, until now nothings really hit me.
But Dan's last letter did, it brought tears to my eyes a little bit.