Mirage Studios originally published the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics.
Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the characters and published the first issue through Mirage Studios in May 1984. Mirage was an independent comic-book company rather than a large mainstream publisher, and the early black-and-white series began as a self-published project in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The company’s name came from the creators’ joking description of their small studio: they had no traditional publishing infrastructure, so the business was effectively an artistic mirage. The first comic’s success gradually led to licensing, toys, animation, and films.
Archie Comics later published a long-running series based largely on the 1987 cartoon, while Image Comics published a darker continuation in the 1990s. IDW Publishing began a separate ongoing TMNT comic in 2011, so none of those companies was the original publisher.