okay without going into too many spoilers, Mikey is a fascinating character in IDW because he desperately wants to do the right thing, but he and his family are at the center of conflicts that do not have clean solutions all the time.
he actually takes this in stride most of the time, for better or worse. what differentiates him from the other versions of Mikey, I think, is that he is a lot less naive. in general, he is less naive than most characters that always try to do good things. it is really refreshing to see a character who is so unconditionally good, and they are just as smart as everyone else. Mikey is much more impulsive than most other characters in the comics, but he is also shown to be very smart and determined when he sets his mind to something!
my favorite example is when he tries to save a group of children from being turned into soldiers by basically adopting all of them, and running away with them. obviously he has no idea how to take care of kids, but he knows what it's like to be a child soldier, and he doesn't want that to happen to anyone else!
even after he gets caught, Mikey still defends the kids, even though it means fighting a much more experienced character who could clearly overpower him if his sheer determination didn't change their mind.
what I love is that it's so clear that his heart is a kind of strength. not in a vague, hypothetical way either, there are many instances when Mikey's understanding of people and just his determination to do the right thing are the practical solution. see above, but there's another situation I want to hilight. one of my favorite characters is about 3/4 of the way through a redemption arc (sort of. it's complicated.) and they have information that the turtles need to stop something really bad from happening. Mikey uses his stellar people skills here too, in combination with Leo (because Leo had a similar experience to the other character and could relate.) and not only does it work, it's cool and important character development for the character they talk to!
Mikey's extroverted nature is a point of tragedy too, though, because of the whole mutant situation. basically the only people he has been able to maintain a relationship with are his family (including April), at least at the beginning. he needs people, and really needs his family.
so when something big happens with the shredder, and splinter does some pretty shady stuff in the wake of it, it is only downhill for Mikey from there. because the shady stuff splinter does sets off Mikey's moral compass big time, and he knows something is very wrong, and he leaves his family for the first time in the story. (for the record, he's right, I told you he was smart!)
separating Mikey from his family is actually fascinating, because at no point does he doubt that this was the right decision, even though it's clear he hates this. basically, you've got a character with the classic hero traits of 'loves his family' and 'always does the right thing' and you pit those against each other.
mikey chooses the right thing, at the cost of basically the only family he's ever known. at first, he tries to find a family in another group of mutants that he had met before, but his ironclad morals accidentally kind of split the group apart when a secret the leader has been harboring about some unethical stuff is revealed, and as it turns out Mikey has good reason to also not be around these people either. after that, he is mostly satiated by visiting his family to team up with them, and a scene where raph visits that I adore. basically Mikey is absolutely delighted until raph asks him to come back, and it spirals into an argument. obviously Mikey and his brothers don't stay apart for a super long time, but seeing how Mikey functions without them is interesting!
and Mikey losing people is actually a theme that gets a lot of focus! it is a recurring motif that many of the friends Mikey aquires outside of his family end up dead, evil, or just not up to dealing with the aliens and supernatural beings that follow Mikey and his family around.
the thing I love about this the most is that it never stops Mikey from loving them with his whole heart, he basically had no other option. right up until the end, (in at least one notable case that is seared into my brain,) Mikey loves all of his friends to the bitter end, even if it would be easier for him to let them go. he just needs people.
similarly, Mikey is the most relentlessly hopeful character in the comics. he wants the world to be better, and he fights tooth and claw to get it there. he wants it to be better to his family, to his friends, to him, and to the other mutants he meets who didn't deserve anything that happened to them, either. this is a trait that I think works beautifully in combination with his intelligence. Mikey understands the problems he and his family deal with as well as any of them. whether they be the aliens, the familially complicated ninja clan, or the whole mutant situation that gets explored later on in the story, he isn't naive. his hopefulness does not stem from thinking a problem or solution is simple, it stems from an understanding of the problem that includes a possible future. Mikey is kind of an aggressive denial of the idea that you should ever just lay down and take the nonsense. if hope is a thing with feathers, Mikey is an ostrich, also known as the scariest birds on earth
and Mikey manages to make the world better. he hardly ever fixes anything without other people, but he always does his level best and almost always makes something better.
basically the writers managed to make a moral paragon morally fascinating, constantly broke him down, and he's still doing his damnest to help as many people as possible. so yeah. favorite Mikey :]
