How popular were the Mirage comics in the 80s?

[Great Hierophant]

If the Mirage Turtles had a true home, it was in Northampton and Western Massachusetts. New York was almost always just some "big generic city" but when they have to move to Casey's grandmother's farm, then we truly start to see a sense of place and use of real locations. They stay there for a long, long time (occasional jaunts back to NYC on occasion nothwithstanding.)

[frank_one]

Now that I think about it, we never see any real location of New York, just random buildings and skyscrapers. Maybe the Twin towers appear in Return to New York or City at war, but I'm not sure.
The same can be probably said about every Marvel comics though, like Spider-man.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by frank_one

Now that I think about it, we never see any real location of New York, just random buildings and skyscrapers. Maybe the Twin towers appear in Return to New York or City at war, but I'm not sure.
The same can be probably said about every Marvel comics though, like Spider-man.

Surely the Statue of Liberty has appeared in the comics at least once, no?

[Great Hierophant]

The Twin Towers appear on the flyleaves and endpapers of TMNT #19-21 (Return to New York) and the Statue of Liberty appears at the end of RTNY #3.

[ToTheNines]

Stumbled across print run totals or the early stuff. Self-reported by Mirage.

TMNT #1 (first printing) - 3,000

TMNT #1 (second printing) - 6,000

TMNT #1 (third printing) - 35,000

TMNT #1 (fourth printing) - 60,000

TMNT #2 (first printing) - 15,000

TMNT #2 (second printing) - 30,000

TMNT #3 (convention edition) - 500

TMNT #3 - 50,000

TMNT #4 - 60,000

TMNT #5 - 60,000

TMNT #6 - 65,000

TMNT #7 - 95,000

Gizmo - 32,000

Prime Slime Tales - 35,000

Fugitoid - 60,000

Michaelangelo micro-series - 60,000

Raphael micro-series - 60,000

Donatello micro-series - projected over 100,000

Gobbledygook #1 (1984) - 150

Gobbledygook #2 (1984) - 150

[Great Hierophant]

As relayed in my book, an article in Comics Buyer's Guide reported print runs for Mirage TMNT issues and reprints up to and including TMNT #17 and Tales #5. They were still selling pretty well then but Mirage's single issues would never again reach the heights of TMNT #8's 135,000 copies.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by ToTheNines

Stumbled across print run totals or the early stuff. Self-reported by Mirage.

TMNT #1 (first printing) - 3,000

TMNT #1 (second printing) - 6,000

TMNT #1 (third printing) - 35,000

TMNT #1 (fourth printing) - 60,000

TMNT #2 (first printing) - 15,000

TMNT #2 (second printing) - 30,000

TMNT #3 (convention edition) - 500

TMNT #3 - 50,000

TMNT #4 - 60,000

TMNT #5 - 60,000

TMNT #6 - 65,000

TMNT #7 - 95,000

Gizmo - 32,000

Prime Slime Tales - 35,000

Fugitoid - 60,000

Michaelangelo micro-series - 60,000

Raphael micro-series - 60,000

Donatello micro-series - projected over 100,000

Gobbledygook #1 (1984) - 150

Gobbledygook #2 (1984) - 150

What was the US population back in the 80s? 250M or so? Those are very modest sales figures.

And were the Mirage comics exported abroad at all back in the day? Did they even make it to Canada or Mexico?

[ToTheNines]

Those numbers rivaled Marvel and DC at the time: https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/1986.html

[CyberCubed]

Man, Peter/Kevin definitely screwed up when they let the "guest writer" stuff start right after Return to New York. Granted a lot of those issues were good, but the problem is they were all essentially isolated "filler" stories. What should of happened is Kevin/Peter should of done big issues or story arcs inbetween the guest stuff...not wait like 30+ issues later till Issue 45-48 prior to City at War.

[ToTheNines]

I think it was very cool of them to let their peers go wild on their flagship title. TMNT was on top of the world and they could do whatever the hell they wanted. And they did lol

In a perfect world, they probably should have had a separate anthology book to put all that out on and kept everything in volume 1 canon. Looking back, it doesn’t bother me at all but I have to imagine it was frustrating as hell following the book back then and getting hit with some of those oddball stories month after month.

But on the other hand, if they weren’t particularly inspired to tell any real stories after RTNY… I certainly respect that decision and I’m glad they weren’t forcing it. Fans were probably pretty excited once #45 came out and CaW was on the horizon.

[Great Hierophant]

They simply did not have the time to call the shots on the comic after RTNY or the ability to work together as they did on TMNT #11 and previous issues. The movies, the licensing, the cartoon, the toys, the lawsuits left little time to oversee the original comic.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Great Hierophant

The Twin Towers appear on the flyleaves and endpapers of TMNT #19-21 (Return to New York) and the Statue of Liberty appears at the end of RTNY #3.

They climb the Twin Towers in Origin, too.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I admit, I've always been fascinated by those old lettercols, even in the late 1990s/early 2000s when I read them originally.

Like you read one at CAW era, or before and wonder, "What happened to this guy? Did he like where TMNT went in Vol. 2, or 3, or 4? Is he still a fan?" A lot of them even had fully printed addresses.

Here’s a good one. This guy had a letter printed all the way back in #3.

[Great Hierophant]

Originally Posted by ToTheNines

Here’s a good one. This guy had a letter printed all the way back in #3.

I watched that interview with great interest and then grabbed my copy of #3 1st Print to read his four paragraph letter and verify what he told the interviewer matched what he said. Then I checked out his auction, which produced nuggets of gold for my project.

[CyberCubed]

The age of that guy in the video proves how the oldest TMNT fans from the Mirage run are all boomers at the ends of their lives. Kinda surreal when you realize within 5 years almost all the original TMNT fans will be dead from the early Mirage era.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by Great Hierophant

I watched that interview with great interest and then grabbed my copy of #3 1st Print to read his four paragraph letter and verify what he told the interviewer matched what he said. Then I checked out his auction, which produced nuggets of gold for my project.

Great! I’m glad you got some good stuff.

Is anyone who has a first printing of TMNT #4 willing to post a picture of fan mail pinup in the back? Lawrence Klein was just on Turtle Tracks, which was mostly a retread of the YouTube interview I posted above, but he revealed that he is best friends with a filmmaker named Jason Sklaver who has his art printed in the back of #4. I’d love to see it.

[Fenryr]

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by ToTheNines

Stumbled across print run totals or the early stuff. Self-reported by Mirage.

TMNT #1 (first printing) - 3,000

TMNT #1 (second printing) - 6,000

TMNT #1 (third printing) - 35,000

TMNT #1 (fourth printing) - 60,000

TMNT #2 (first printing) - 15,000

TMNT #2 (second printing) - 30,000

TMNT #3 (convention edition) - 500

TMNT #3 - 50,000

TMNT #4 - 60,000

TMNT #5 - 60,000

TMNT #6 - 65,000

TMNT #7 - 95,000

I was able to see some more:

TMNT # 22 - 16,550

====

TMNT Vol. 2

====

TMNT #10 - 2,700

Which shows an interesting trajectory. I'd be curious to see the sales of Vol. 1 #8 to like #16. I bet you see a big decline when Kevin and Peter stopped working together. And wow, 95,000 for #7. That's not terribly far from the height of the Archie series, which was doing 150,000 a month at its peak.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by Fenryr

https://i.imgur.com/mM2pvVM.png

Thanks doggie!

[ToTheNines]

Randomly looked into another name from a letter printed in #3: Dr. Kenneth E Leistner.

Sadly he passed away in 2019 (https://www.liherald.com/stories/eas...s-at-71,113822), but he was kind of a big deal in the power lifting world. He was about 35 in 1984. Interesting guy.