Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

***Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*** is a mostly black-and-white comic book series created in 1984 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and published by Mirage Studios, a comic publishing upstart the two creators co-founded. It was the first version of *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*; because many other different versions of *TMNT* have also been published since then, the original comic series and its continuity are sometimes referred to as **Mirage *TMNT***. Between the main comic series and its companion series *Tales of the TMNT*, Mirage *TMNT* has published sporadically over the decades with occasional long periods of hiatus. Its most recent hiatus began in 2010 when Mirage cancelled *Tales of the TMNT* volume 2. Peter Laird sold the property to Viacom (now ViacomCBS) in 2009, who then licensed IDW Publishing to create a freshly rebooted *TMNT* comic series in a similar vein as Mirage *TMNT*, and also to issue reprints of certain older Mirage *TMNT* publications. The most recent new stories in the Mirage *TMNT* continuity were published in 2014, including two new stories in the *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* 30th Anniversary Special published by IDW as well as the long-delayed Mirage *TMNT* volume 4 issue 32 published for free on Peter Laird's TMNT blog.

## Relation to *Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden*

The fan webcomic *Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden* by Tigerfog, which started publishing in 2004, is based on the Mirage *TMNT* continuity up until an unspecified point of time during Mirage *TMNT* volume 1 after *Return to New York, Book Three* but before the *City at War* arc. At this point of time, when the four main turtle characters are 17 years old, the events of the *MNT Gaiden* Prologue branch the story into a parallel timeline with very different subsequent events. Because of this, *MNT Gaiden* is an independent continuity, but derives much of its backstory and canon unmodified from earlier events in Mirage *TMNT*.

However, there are exceptions to this general rule:

* Whereas in Mirage *TMNT* the turtles' bandanas were all red in color, the turtles in *MNT Gaiden* wear color-coded bandanas like those seen in most other different versions of *TMNT* since the 1987 TV series: blue for Leonardo, red for Raphael, purple for Donatello and orange for Michelangelo.
* *MNT Gaiden* contains limited references to the 2003 TV series, including the use of Shell Cells as handheld communicators. The general art style also draws most of its inspiration from the 2003 TV series.
* Since Mirage continued publishing *TMNT* after *MNT Gaiden* began its own publication, the Mirage continuity introduced plot elements that drastically alter basic assumptions of previous Mirage *TMNT* canon in ways that would otherwise threaten to drastically affect the canon of *MNT Gaiden*, including:
	+ Mirage *TMNT* revealed during (late) volume 4 that Splinter, who had died of a heart attack earlier in volume 4, was actually a parallel universe doppelgänger different from the character seen at the beginning of volume 1. The two alternate versions of Splinter met in the Battle Nexus at an unspecified point of time between the beginning of volume 2 and the beginning of volume 4 and traded places with each other, with the original Splinter going on to become the daimyō of the Battle Nexus, outliving his doppelgänger. *MNT Gaiden* assumes that no such doppelgänger swap takes place before Splinter's death during the Prologue and that neither the original Splinter nor an indistinguishable doppelgänger will ever be seen alive again in the story. The *permanence* of Splinter's death and how it affects his loved ones is a major underlying theme of *MNT Gaiden*.

### Splinter's clone

What Mirage *TMNT* and *MNT Gaiden* do notably share in common, apart from the death of Splinter, is the revelation that his son Donatello has cloned him in a laboratory and kept this a secret from everyone he knows, until another character accidentally stumbles over the clandestine laboratory.

What's notable about this shared plot development is that the revelation in *MNT Gaiden* happened in Chapter 18: *A Little Deeper in Donatello's World* (published in 2007), but the Mirage *TMNT* version of this revelation in Volume 4 Issue 32 was written in 2011 and not published until 2014. It has never been resolved whether the two stories' plot developments are a coincidence or whether the earlier *MNT Gaiden* plot influenced the later Mirage *TMNT* plot.

The two stories do differ in Donatello's motivation for cloning his dead father:

* In *MNT Gaiden*, Donatello has been steadily going insane under the curse of Yamata-no-Orochi, delusionally believing that the Splinter he himself cloned is actually his father who did not die and is merely recovering in a tank. But in reality, the already dead and skeletal clone is functioning as a host for the spirit of Yamata-no-Orochi in a similar way the Tōtsuka Sword previously did before the sword was destroyed by Leonardo and Splinter (an act that would result in Splinter's death).
* But in Mirage *TMNT*, Donatello kept a genetic sample of the recently-deceased Splinter and grew a mindless mutant clone to use its tissues to help him develop a cure for Raphael's secondary mutation that had occurred earlier in volume 4, but Donatello discovers instead that the father who died was actually a doppelgänger and not the same person who raised him and his brothers; *that* Splinter was revealed to be alive and well and had been living in the Battle Nexus for quite some time.

The two stories also differ in how Donatello handles the intruder's discovery:

* In *MNT Gaiden*, NYPD officer Tony Howard—someone who is not at all socially acquainted with any of the turtles—stumbles over Donatello's lair while investigating the sewers looking for recently-sighted mutant turtles. Tony does discover the lair and the secret cloning lab deep within, but is discovered, attacked and blinded by the insane Donatello. When Tony shoots his firearm at the Splinter's clones tank and shatters it, the police officer is savagely murdered by the vengeful turtle.
* In Mirage *TMNT*, it is Donatello's brother Raphael who discovers the secret cloning lab. Raph is so enraged by the audacity of Donnie's apparent disrespect for their father that he attacks and tries to kill his brother. But that unusually fierce eruption of rage is actually the catalyst that spontaneously reverses Raphael's secondary mutation, which the cloning lab itself was set up to cure in the first place. Once Raph is restrained and calm, Donnie shares his discovery that the Splinter who died was not the same Splinter that raised them.