Should Laird have sold TMNT to Disney or WB instead of Nick/Viacom?

[Galactus]

I remember Laird saying he was open to idea of NECA doing figures based on the '87 series but wanted more Mirage stuff out there first. It's a moot point of course because Playmates made sure NECA wouldn't have been able to do more but it shows he wasn't 00% against giving the Fred Wolf version some representation.

He'd already gotten a movie commissioned, he would have kept the Mirage books going for as long as it personally interested him and he was open to licensing the comics to another company and I think it's likely we would have gotten another animated series. I kinda wish that he'd held out a little longer and we'd have gotten some of these things I think it might have left the franchise in a slightly better place creatively to show a potential buyer it need not all be all Fred Wolf and the time still I imagine that a third go around would have bored him immensely. He probably stepped away from the franchise at the right time for him.

As for the OPs question of whether he'd have been better selling to WB or Disney are we asking which would be better commercially? If that's what you mean then Disney by far would be the better stewards in that regard.

Creatively...uh I'm not sure either of them are a good fit. I imagine this is stealth asking would you prefer them in the Marvel of DC universe considering they'd likely be folded into their established comic book universes.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

So you think Peter read this forum back in the day? Interesting, but I guess I shouldn't be shocked, if true. I'd be curious if I were Peter.

He (or SOMEONE) from Mirage definitely was. He'd sometimes paraphrase things I'd said about Jim Lawson's artwork on here, nearly word-for-word. I never wrote to the book like so many other people here did at the time - I remember a ton of people getting super-excited that their letters saw print - but all I would've said is "It's boring and ugly, step your game up brah" so I never bothered. But he apparently got the message anyway. Whether it was he himself "hawking" or someone else reporting back to him, I don't know 100%, but there were definitely Mirage staff lurking here back then.

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

If the majority weren't interested, they wouldn't keep trying to replicate FW's success. Like it or not, TMNT will never step out of Fred Wolf's shadow. It IS TMNT, it's life blood. Everything else? A bonus.

Which is really bad for people who grew up but still want to love the franchise. Just not THAT part of it.

It's okay to look back on things and admit they weren't perfect, but the romanticizing of SOME things just doesn't make much sense. It's like I love MOTU and I want it to stick around but should it be completely stuck in the Filmation vein forever just because that's what became "iconic"? I love that show and will defend it to death but it's objectively the "worst" (or at least, "least-good") representation of what the brand could and ought to be. It's 100 miles away from the whole "Frank Frazetta painting come to life" that it started and was envisioned as.

In that way, MOTU and TMNT are very much the same. There's this giant fanbase that just wants to grow up and move on from That One Version, even if that's the version that brought them into it, because they're not 6 anymore and that's supposed to be okay. Because there's BETTER stories and material to explore with the concepts and characters, but they'll never be explored so long as everything is "BRUH we gotta keep it 80s style bruh!" The "iconic" status of those earlier works becomes creative handcuffs. And it should NOT be that way. For one thing, those things could have been a LOT better themselves in the first place, so it's a bit frustrating that "the worst version" of something can become the dominant thing in an entire brand that's capable of so much more. It's not only limiting, but damaging.

It's like, DC fans of a certain age all grew up watching Super-Friends. But Super-Friends (pre-"Galactic Guardians") was f*cking awful and any sane person can see that. "It's ICONIC though!" Who cares?! It's terrible! Imagine if the people responsible for DC cartoons had that attitude of, "Well, that show ran for 20 years and raised like three generations of fans, it's ICONIC! We have to keep it like that forever!" We never would have had Batman: TAS or Justice League/JLU if people had that attitude.

I don't like the early-00s trend of "Every 80s cartoon was terrible and we were just too dumb to realize it." I don't agree with that at all, just to be clear. BUT, I also disagree with the idea that One Version of a thing, no matter how iconic, should be how that thing is represented forever. That's rather creatively bankrupt thinking and it leads to a lot of creative stagnation. People who write for TMNT shouldn't be having to ask "Where do Bebop and Rocksteady fit into this?" or "How much 'Cowabunga' is appropriate?" as Big Questions towards their overall narrative; that stuff shouldn't be part of the "bedrock" of TMNT, no more than Orko for MOTU.

And that's the problem with FW dominating the conversation of everything with TMNT that's come since. Instead of asking, "What are the best stories we can tell with these characters?", the first and most often-asked question by the "creative staff" is, "How much FW stuff can we fit in, and where?"

As we get further and further removed from the era that cartoon existed in, and fewer and fewer people remain in romantic love with it, the people who control the brand are going to be forced to either veer away from FW or else the brand IS going to die. Because like it or not, one day there won't be anyone left alive who gives a sh*t about that show anymore, just like nobody gives a sh*t about Super-Friends. If your brand can't shift gears and remains slavishly devoted to what people loved about it 30+ years in the past, then it stalls out and dies.

"FW IS TMNT"? Yeah, pretty much. Is that a GOOD thing, either for the fans or the long-term survival of the brand? No, not really. It's only good thing for people who's favorite version of TMNT is FW. And that group gets smaller every year.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

I'm going to chime in here as well.

I'm going to say if Laird had to sell them to either, I'd go with Warner Bros. I feel that WB for all of their faults (which I'll get into) would likely allow the TMNT to go into uncharted territories that neither Disney and to a lesser extent Viacom allows them to. They'd at the very least acknowledge that TMNT is a comic book property rather than a "cashcow" or "nostalgia romp." The only concerns I have with them handling the property is that they'd get integrated in the DC universe which isn't inherently a bad idea in of itself but I'd prefer if they'd stay in their own universe with an occasional crossover here and there. Not to mention weird little spinoffs akin to TTG or DC Superhero Girls is definitely not the type of directions I'd like for the IP to take. If we get strange retcons like how Indigo fears, then I share that sentiment. Maybe they'll be their own thing like Leo says, hopefully. Also, seeing how the Synder cut of JL is doing, I'm starting to ponder at the possibility of him doing a TMNT film.

The most I've enjoyed from Viacom is the Batman vs TMNT comics and movie, some of the IDW comics, and the 2012 series. But even then, I have my issues with each of them especially the latter two. After the PD duology and Rise, I can't feel that much excitement for the brand. The only thing I'm fine with as of now is that there's hardly anything TMNT related. Although I'm happy The Last Ronin exists and I still need to pick that up as that's where my support should be.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I remember both PL and Murphy (in the Tales letters column) were constantly ranting how much they hated George W. Bush and how they wished Al Gore became president. They would also constantly talk about global warming and how they "feared for the future."

Now keep in mind this was in the early 2000's, so between 2002-2008 or so.

It was an issue already when the Archie Comics were published.