Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 Advance Review: The Next Mutation Arrives

Jason Aaron and Joelle Jones kick off a brand-new era for IDW's TMNT.

By Jamie Lovett

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turn 40 this year, the perfect age for a midlife crisis. Indeed, after a stellar 12 years of publishing the longest-running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book in the franchise's history, IDW is relaunching the series with a brand-new first issue. Jason Aaron is writing the new series, which begins with four issues, each featuring a different artist, focused on a different Ninja Turtle. Joelle Jones goes first, drawing the Raphael-focused debut. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, Aaron and Jones offer longtime fans something that feels undeniably inspired by the original TMNT comics published by Mirage 40 years ago without being slavishly devoted to them, all while making the Turtles' wild and expansive universe easily digestible for new fans.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 finds Raphael in prison, having landed there after being caught doling out a particularly vicious dose of vigilante justice. He's brokered a deal with the warden to root out corruption among the security and staff at the facility. However, that plan becomes considerably more complicated when a group of new inmates turn out to be ninjas.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 featuring only one Ninja Turtle allows Aaron and Jones to tailor the story's execution to suit Raph's specific character. Aaron reaches back into his toolbox of noir tricks that he assembled during his Scalped days, giving Raphael an internal monologue illuminating what has happened to the Turtles in the months since the end of the previous Turtles series. More importantly, it lets readers into Raph's headspace and draws out his distinct voice, akin to a protagonist in a hard-boiled crime novel. Jones's artwork is slick and inky, with Ronda Pattison's washy colors giving everything a dreamlike, slightly liminal feel. The visual atmosphere helps reiterate that Raph is far removed from the world he knows and further establishes the issue's dark underworld atmosphere.

More than anything, having Raph spend most of the issue monologuing to himself while being visually set apart from all the other inmates highlights how alone he is, a recurring theme throughout the issue. One particularly melancholy page has a panel at the top that shows Raph's memory of leaping across the city skyline with his brothers, drawn with fierce, youthful energy. Beneath, we see Raphael in darkness, languidly dragging three inmates through a sewer tunnel like a mythic hero set a punitive task in the underworld after their death, emphasizing how far he's fallen since he and his family went their separate ways.

Some may be skeptical of the four-issues-four-artists-four-turtles approach but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 confirms that the format isn't some gimmick meant to produce airy one-offs to prolong the relaunch into a slow rollout. Rather, the structure is central to the narrative. Reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1—especially when taken in tandem with the prologue story in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha #1—it becomes clear that the Turtles have split apart and are individually weaker for it. They're imprisoned and now the prey of their enemies. In these first four issues, readers will presumably be treated to a showcase of what makes each turtle tick before ultimately seeing them reunite as a family, growing stronger in the process.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 shows that you can streamline a long-running series to make it inviting to new readers, drawing inspiration from the past and the familiar without creating a story that feels regressive. Aaron, Jones, and Pattison have produced a comic book that feels undoubtedly indebted to the original TMNT stories that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird made, channeling some of that same, as Aaron put it in an interview, "grit" that characterized the earliest TMNT era. And yet, the issue still feels like it is doing something fresh and new with the Turtles rather than simply playing the hits or becoming a pastiche, making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 one of the best relaunches I've seen in a long while.

Published by IDW Publishing

On July 24, 2024

Written by Jason Aaron

Art by Joelle Jones

Colors by Ronda Pattison

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Letters by Shawn Lee

Cover by Rafael Albuquerque

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