The comic created the Turtles franchise of five television series, seven feature films, numerous video games, and a range of toys and merchandise.

Notable for its black and white format and darker tone compared to the rest of the adaptions that followed, the series follows the exploits of four genetically-mutated turtles who were trained under the orders of Master Splinter, a pet rat, to combat various foes, most notably involving the likes of the Foot clan and their leader Oroko Saki, who secretly takes on the identity of the Shredder.

Over the years, the Turtles have appeared in numerous cross-overs with other independent comics characters such as Dave Sim's Cerebus, Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, Image Universe series including Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon and Todd McFarlane's Spawn.

In October 2009, Peter Laird sold the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise to Viacom, the parent company of Nickelodeon.

The concept originated from a comical drawing sketched out by Kevin Eastman during a casual evening of brainstorming with his friend Peter Laird.

The drawing of a short, squat turtle wearing a mask with nunchaku strapped to its arms was humorous to the young artists, as it played upon the inherent contradiction of a slow, cold-blooded reptile with the speed and agility of Japanese martial arts.

The success also led to a black-and-white comics boom in the mid-1980s, wherein other small publishers put out animal-based parody books hoping to make a quick profit.

Among them, the Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, the Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos, and the Karate Kreatures were obvious parodies of TMNT.

Even Marvel Comics featured an advertisement for Adult Thermonuclear Samurai Elephants in 1986, but it evolved into an X-Men parody eventually released as Power Pachyderms in 1989.

The "Return to New York" story arc concluded in the spring of 1989 and by this time the Ninja Turtles phenomenon was well established in other media.

The breadth of diversity found in the various short stories had the adverse effect of somewhat disrupting continuity and gave the series a disjointed, anthology-like feel.

The Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen relaunched the series in June 1996, with the publication of a third volume under the Image Comics banner.

This volume was notable for having a faster pace and more intense action while inflicting major physical changes on the Turtles themselves; Leonardo losing a hand, Raphael's face being scarred, Splinter becoming a bat, and Donatello becoming a cyborg.

Published bi-monthly, the series took the opportunity to correct a persistent error: since the first issue of Volume 1, Michelangelo's name had been misspelled as "Michaelangelo".

Between 1990 and 1991, Mirage Studios published seven volumes of The Collected Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trade paperbacks, reprinting mostly consecutive issues #1-#29 and the four micro series one-shots, with all books featuring new cover art from artist A.C. Farley.

#1, where its intro sequence connects to the story from the Tales of the TMNT issue Vol.1 #7: "The Return of Savanti Romero", and in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo, where the previous encounters between Miyamoto Usagi and the Mirage Turtles[12] are mentioned in one scene.

In both specials, an interdimensional plot-launched by the 2003 Utrom Shredder in Forever and 1987 Krang and the 2012 Kraang in Transdimensional-involved the Mirage Comics world.