Not gonna lie, anyone who's read or knows of Mirage TMNT, especially all the "Volume 1" stuff (TMNT volume 1 itself, Tales of the TMNT volume 1, various one-shots like the Micro series or Challenges, anthology books containing stories of them like Turtle Soup and Plastron Cafe) is cool in my book. I'm gonna give thoughts on it all as a retrospective due to an interview I discovered that may have revealed a true, canon ending to them Eastman and Laird thought up decades ago.
I think the Mirage TMNT are something special. It was the indie book that exploded in success yes, but looking at it from an outside view, it really captures everything people loved about comic books then and in general. The turtles' very concept meant they could go from street-level urban crime fighting to the very reaches of the galaxy and back again, and they did. It's also funny in retrospect seeing Eastman handling and loving the gritty street level stuff (if his Bodycount mini and eventual helming of IDW or the revised Last Ronin plots means anything) and Laird the sci-fi and really comic-booky stuff (like Donatello's Microseries issue and all the weird stuff in volumes 2 and 4). Yet somehow it molded together perfectly when they worked together for volume 1. Further, the fact volume 1 had tales and stories in the future showing the turtles shockingly split up on seemingly bad terms - we got to see Raph in exile in a bayou, Don bitterly alone in Japan with an AI for company, a hint of Leo in a city keeping watch on it, no real clue on Mikey - as adults was, and is, pretty unfathomable for franchisable characters... but then it hit me the Mirage versions were
never the franchised ones. There's also the fact that they clearly had an ending after all via the original, conceptual Mirage version of The Last Ronin and not the published version.
The original concept document of The Last Ronin that Eastman
pulled out for an interview, back in 1987 and when it was fully in continuity, explains where Mikey was and WHY the turtles split up in the canonically published stories we did read - Raph had a spergout and attacked Splinter, left in shame, and Don and Splinter went to Japan for Splinter to die there. Leo and Mikey split up in turn. No clue who the villain in this original version would be, but Eastman confiming the basic plot of the published self-standing Last Ronin was very much the same as the OG '87 idea of the blood feud of Foot and turtles continuing only until death gives us an idea the truce at City of War was to be broken by a Foot anyways. And Eastman specifically confirmed the published ending of Mikey dying but avenging his family and becoming forever young with them in a sort-of Vahalla was completely unchanged since decades ago. And that ending ties wonderfully with a famous phrase Mirage coined from Donatello's solo issue - "Life is at best bittersweet."
In today's world, how often do beloved modern characters get to have bonafide ENDINGS to their story? Much less thematically appropriate ones?