Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Mirage, nickelodeon, tmnt

Mirage Studios Says Goodbye, and Cowabunga

Published Thu, 09 Sep 2021 18:32:08 -0500

As the old saying goes, you either die a hero, or live long enough to be sold to a global entertainment megacorp and turned into an immortal corporately-owned intellectual property that will be exploited ad infinitum until the end of time, or until the copyright expires, which will probably be never due to the lobbying by global entertainment megacorps to prevent exactly that from happening. For the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that shipped sailed over a decade ago, when Nickelodeon purchased the rights to the Turtles back in 2009. But it's taken the 12 ensuing years for Mirage Studios to wrap up its affairs, and the company was only dissolved this year. And as of September 19th, they will cease conducting any merchandise sales, closing up shop and leaving behind a website as a purely archival resource for the comics published by Mirage in the past.

In a message posted to their website, Mirage writes:

September, 2021

Mirage Studios sold the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles intellectual property to Viacom/Nickelodeon in October 2009 and, after winding down business affairs over the last dozen years, the four Mirage corporations (Mirage Studios, Inc., Mirage Licensing, Inc., Mirage Publishing, Inc., Mirage Management, Inc.) were dissolved in 2021. Mirage is no longer conducting any merchandise sales, either directly through this site or via eBay as of September 19th, 2021.

This site will no longer be updated and is being maintained primarily as an archival resource related to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics published by Mirage between the years 1984 and 2010.

While Mirage has gone out of existence, but thanks to you, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes will live on forever. Thank you all for your years of support. It has been a pleasure sharing the Turtles' story and universe with you.

Cowabunga!

So if you did have any business left to conduct with Mirage, you've got a little over a week to do it, so hurry up! Of course, the Turtles will live on, in cartoons, movie franchises, a new video game next year, and of course the comics published by IDW (presuming IDW is able to stay afloat itself).

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