Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin
by
Kevin Eastman (Writer/Illustrator), Peter Laird (Writer), Tom Waltz (Writer), Esau Escorza (Illustrator), Isaac Escorza (Illustrator), Ben Bishop (Illustrator), Luis Antonio Delgado (Colorist), Samuel Plata (Colorist), Ronda Pattison (Colorist), Shawn Lee (Letterer)
My rating: 4.5 / 5
Who is The Last Ronin?
What happened to the other three Turtle teens?
How did things devolve into this dark, cyber-punkish, grim future?
This mini series was a monumental entry into the long-standing franchise as it crafted a broken down future NYC where a lone Ninja Turtle makes his way home – we can’t immediately tell who he is/was – and he carries the damaged weapons of all four Turtles as he follows the path of his journey of revenge. The mystery of which of the quartet he is and all the above was a bold new direction for the stories in the franchise and showed once again, the versatility of the world and its character when given a solid creative team.
The artwork was solidly enjoyable. It has been a hallmark of almost the entire output of comics from IDW in the TMNT line of books that at worst the art has been decent and this one is a uniquely fun because the artwork boasts an array of contributors from the main books, aside from the core creative team, and the look and feel seems to draw from a variety of feels – meaning I saw things that hearkened back to the old comics from the 80s and 90s and some that were reminiscent of the recent ongoing that concluded not too long ago. There is grit and grime and some solidly brutal action that suits the vibe of the book, but kudos to the artists for bringing some unique character that worked quite well to the quieter moments when our Ronin meets an old friend and starts to adjust his path of revenge and redemption as well as moments of inner turmoil when the voices of his lost brothers haunt him.
The story itself is a pretty simple and bare-bones one where the grizzled survivor makes his way back to avenge the fallen – in this case the enemy is (no real spoilers here, chill) the son of Oroku Karai who had taken over as head of The Foot and betrayed the Hamato clan and undertook a massacre/purge of everyone connected to them. Brutal stuff. So now out last man standing has spent years getting himself together far away, now returning to go on a one-way mission to avenge everyone he once loved. But on his way he finds people who make him take a beat and remember who he was and what he and his loved ones stood for… and to perhaps know that even now, he is not completely alone.
There are some familiar faces that come back into this story as our heroes’ journey goes along, but mostly the faces are all new ones and it works pretty well as the main couple of them are given enough space to be good characters. The writing team of the dynamic creators of the franchise along-side Tom Waltz who has had an admirable hand on the steering of the franchise for some years now works wonders as we get a solid spirit of the oft darker and grittier old TMNT comics along with a some of the more rounded character and polished narrative structures that the newer comics have; all making for a dynamic and emotionally charged book that I think will work well for fans old and new.
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One Happy Monk 
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