The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started life as a gritty, black-and-white comic book based on an idea from co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Different iterations of the brothers have seen them as bright, colorful cartoon characters and hulking Michael Bay-inspired mutants, but the comics have generally always had a more grounded portrayal of Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. This darker take will be further explored in IDW Publishing’s recently announced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin.
The Last Ronin will be a five-issue miniseries and is actually based on an idea Eastman and Laird had decades ago, way back in 1987. Its official synopsis reveals how three of the Turtles have seemingly died, with a “lone surviving Turtle” going on what is described as a “hopeless mission” to obtain justice for his fallen family and friends as he navigates a future version of New York City.
Eastman shared how he rediscovered a twenty-page outline detailing the story’s plot points. At the time, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle story was set thirty years in the future, which would have made the comic set in 2017. At the time of writing, it is unclear which Turtle is the surviving brother. The cover art depicts them with their back towards the reader, all of the Turtle's weapons stapped to the back of their shell (as seen above).
He admitted how reading through the outline, he “drifted back to a very different time in TMNT history — back when it was all about the comics, mostly just Peter and I writing and drawing the issues, pre-everything the world would soon come to know about these characters that we'd created and called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” The series will be written by long-time TMNT scribe Tom Waltz. It will feature layouts by Eastman and be inked by Andy Kuhn.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #1 will be released this summer with multiple cover variants.
Source: IGN