Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Jason Aaron Teases Brand-New Villain and "Grit" In Series Relaunch

A new era of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics is nearly upon us. In January, IDW Publishing announced that it would celebrate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' 40th anniversary by relaunching its TMNT ongoing series with a new first issue. Eisner-award-winning writer Jason Aaron, a former Marvel architect known for his runs writing Thor and the Avengers, will write the new series. Aaron's run will begin with a 10-page prelude story in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha #1 in June before the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 ships in July. Each of the first four issues of the series focuses on an individual Turtle, with art from different artists. Crucially for fans, the new series is a continuation of IDW Publishing's long-running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe, which includes the longest-running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book series ever.

ComicBook.com had the opportunity to talk to Aaron over video chat and discuss his vision for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a series with "grit under its nails." He also hinted at answers to questions that some TMNT have been wondering about, including the fate of Jennika, the fifth Turtle introduced to the group in the IDW continuity. Here's what he shared with us:

Let's start with a simple but important question: We've got our four Turtles. We know which ones your artists are into based on which ones they drew here. Which one of these Turtles do you identify most with out of the four?

Jason Aaron: You're not the first person to ask me that, and I can't say I have an answer. I shouldn't have an answer, right? You don't want me to pick one Turtle over another. Certainly, at the beginning of the series, we're doing the first four issues, each one focusing on a different Turtle, drawn by a different amazing artist, so it's very much me getting to dig into each one of them. And I am enjoying each one of those stories for how very different the Turtles are, how very different the story is, the situation we find those guys in. So, I don't have a favorite yet. I would say at this point, this exact point in time, I haven't written all four of those yet, so technically I haven't written all four Turtles yet, but I will be there very, very soon. But I'm still not going to have a favorite, or at least I'm not going to tell you if I do.

Well, let's talk big picture then. This is a big relaunch. It's the 40th anniversary. When you started talking to IDW about relaunching the Ninja Turtles series, what was the vision you expressed to them? What's the big idea behind your take on the Ninja Turtles?

To me, it was nothing too overly complicated. I have loved the IDW run. I've loved how the books have expanded the cast of characters, the world, and the timeline with the Last Ronin stuff. Just as a fan, I have been reading those books the entire time from the very beginning and loved all that. I think for me coming in, especially here in the anniversary and launching a new book, you want to do something that is – not a reboot, that's the same continuity, it's a continuation of that story that's been going on for so many years now – but I'm just trying to go back to what is my connection point with the Turtles, which is that original Mirage Studios. Before the cartoon, before the movies, or anything.

I'm just going back to that original book. The first issue of Turtles I picked up was four in the original oversized format and started reading the book from there. That was the point where I just started to get into comics, and I was reading a little bit of everything, reading superhero stuff, but during that period in particular, in the '80s, it was just this explosion of smaller publishers, and I was eating all that up, and Turtles was at the forefront of that. And I just responded to this book because it seemed so completely different from anything else I read. It looked different, felt different. It felt like a book that was grungy and raw and had dirt and grime under its fingernails, and I loved all that.

So, if anything, I'm just trying to make this book feel like that. This is a new number one, a celebration of the Turtles' anniversary, honoring everything that's come before while also pointing back to where things started. And for me, just trying to do a book that has some of that same grit under its nails.

You mentioned that there was this explosion of indie comics at the time, and Turtles is the biggest success story to come out of that. I was wondering if you had thoughts or ideas about why Turtles? We're still talking about Ninja Turtles 40 years later when that is not the norm for what eventually became with those books.

It's not an accident. One, it was a cool idea that hit at the right time with a book that struck a nerve, and that, again, just seems so in your face and punk rock. And then everything that's come since then. What I have built my entire career on doing is taking characters that have been around for usually longer than me, for decades and decades, and there have been countless different stories told with them, and it's a question of how do you keep these characters relevant? How do you honor all those great stories from the past without just picking the bones of them but bringing something new to the table, bringing something of yourself, something that connects with you in a real emotional way and tells a new story?

And I think that the Turtles have been able to do that time and time again in all different ways, not just in comics, but in movies and TV and everything, which I think is... It's not just by accident. That takes a lot of people doing a lot of hard work. So, I love all that stuff. I love it when characters and stories are able to continue to grow and evolve over the years and stay relevant. For my part, I'm just excited to get to add my name to the list of people working to keep the Turtles alive.

So, you mentioned that this is not your first time coming in and working on storied characters, or long-running franchises, and in a way, it almost seems, at least from the outside, that it could have been easier to just hit the reboot button and start over. But instead, you're continuing the same continuity as the last 150 issues of this series. So, I'm wondering what extra challenges does that potentially pose? Are there those extra challenges? Was reboot ever a possibility, or were there just things in those 150 issues that you wanted to get to play with even as you're bringing Turtles back to that first brush you had with them?

In all my years in comics, I don't think I've ever really been a part of a straight-up reboot. I think it's always a matter of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There's nothing broke about the Turtles comic universe and what IDW has been doing, people like Sophie and Tom Waltz, and all the awesome stories they've been telling. So why? There's no reason to do a reboot. Again, everything that I've done my entire career is how do you take all these years' worth of continuity and create a story with a number one on it that somebody can pick up and read and enjoy if they've never read any of that stuff before? So, I think it's always about we don't need to throw out everything that's been done. You take what is relevant and important and exciting about all those stories and you distill it down and put it on the page.

Even if you've read every single issue of the IDW run so far, or if you've read none of them, I want your experience with this first issue to be the same, with this new series, and I need to show my work, right? Pretty much everybody picking this up has a connection to the Turtles in some way or another, but maybe you've never read any of the comics. It doesn't matter. I need to distill, in the form of this story, why I think these characters are cool. What about each of them excites me? What about this world interests me, and what do I have an emotional response to? It needs to all be on the page so you can pick this up, again, regardless of your experience with the Turtles, and get exactly what you need right here in the form of this new book.

You wanted to show in this book the things that resonate with you from Turtles stories. What can you tell us about what some of those things are? The Turtles have done tons of different stories even just in the IDW universe from street-level crime stuff to space-faring stuff, and you've written all those kinds of stories. Where are we starting in terms of tone and genre when you launch the new book?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's a little hard for me to answer without giving away too much more, more than I would want to give away. I would say that the tone, in particular, is set right out of the gate in the alpha issue that comes out in June where I've got a 10-page story in that, a 10-page Donatello story with Chris Burnham. The most important part of that story for me was, this sets the tone. This tells you what my run on the book is going to be like. I don't want to tell you how it does that, where that story is set, or what it's about. Really, any of these first four issues where we pick up with each of the Turtles, I don't really want you to know where they're at, what they've been doing since the previous book ended, where we pick up with them.

I will just say that those four stories – five, really, including this alpha issue story – are, I think, stories, on the one hand, that point back to all the things I talked about that I love about that original Mirage Studios series while also taking those characters to places we haven't seen them in before. So, I think that the tone is really an important part, and also just where we can take these guys and how we can explore each of them at the core of who they are as they're each presented with challenges, unlike anything they've ever faced before.

The promotional art so far is focused really on the four Turtles who are the core, have been the core for 40 years of this franchise, but I know a lot of fans were immediately wondering, where's Jennika? Where are the other supporting characters? Can you say anything about what role those secondary characters are going to play in your run? Are they being sidelined a little bit to change the focus in the short term, or long term? Do you have plans?

Yeah, all I can say without giving everything away is, for Jennika in particular, there certainly are big plans, and I'll leave it up to IDW to reveal what those are as we go. In regard to the rest of the cast, certainly, there are plans for characters beyond just the four brothers, but coming out of the gate with this book, that's where the focus lies, really on exploring, again, who these guys are at this point in time, where they are in particular, which will be surprising in some cases in where that's going to lead things going forward. But like I said, I'm very excited about being a part of this universe that IDW has built with Sophie and Tom and everybody else who's worked on the series over the last several years, and none of that stuff is going away. None of those characters are going to be sidelined. That world will continue to stay rich and vibrant going forward.

You're coming to Turtles having spent years working on superhero stuff with their massive, shared universe. I'm wondering, given that Turtles is a long-running series but as far as the number of characters, relatively small in scale compared to the Marvel Universe and how vast that is, do you feel like your time working on those big superhero universes, the lessons learned there, are serving you well with the Turtles? Or is it a very different beast?

I don't think it's a different beast. I haven't really felt that about, I guess, anything I've done. Like you said, I worked at Marvel on an ongoing series for about 15, or 16 years, I guess. I worked at Star Wars during that time. Now I'm starting to do stuff at DC Comics for the first time. Especially, the last year for me since I stopped being exclusive to Marvel has been about spreading my wings and working in a lot of different places. So, I'm working for more companies now than I ever have at any point in my career. But none of it feels like something that's out of left field. Certainly, each character is its own challenge of just figuring out, "Who is this character to me? What is this world? What story do I want to tell?" That's always its own thing, but it's all still about telling good stories.

I've been reading comics obsessively since I first learned how to read. Below where I'm sitting here in my office is my basement which is filled with lots and lots of long boxes. Believe me, when I moved here, you appreciate just how many you got when you have to pick them up and carry them. So, I've been researching. I've been working towards this job literally my entire life; I've loved comics, and I eat, sleep, and breathe comics. So that part of me is just something that I've always done that I love to do. So, it all just, to me, it feels like comics, right? Tell good stories, craft interesting characters, and do something cool that we haven't seen before while, again, paying homage to what's made characters like this important and exciting in the first place.

We touched on Jennika and supporting characters, and I get the impression you're not going to tell me too much here, but obviously, all heroes need villains to clash against. I know in recent Turtles comics, Shredder has had a redemptive arc, they're going up against bigger threats. What can you say, broadly speaking, about the villains you're going to put the Turtles against in the coming series? Are you interested in recontextualizing old villains, or are you going to be introducing some new ones? What can you tell me about that?

It'll be a little bit of both. Certainly, there's a brand-new villain who's at the heart of the story that launches in issue one, but we're also not trying to completely reinvent the wheel there. I think part of going back and looking at what made me fall in love with Turtles in the first place in that original series, the Foot Clan is a big part of that right from the get-go. So, this is going to be a book that is still in some sense about mutant turtles fighting ninjas in the streets of New York City. We'll just get there in different ways, and there'll be a brand-new villain who, again, is at the heart of all that.

Can you say anything about the scale of this relaunch? You're writing this series, but traditionally, IDW has had at least two, maybe three Turtles series going at once. Are you pretty laser-focused on this one relaunch book? Do you have bigger plans in store, or is that more a question for IDW's editorial staff?

Certainly, there are big plans in store. I can't speak to the bigger publishing plan. In terms of me and what I'm doing, I am writing this one main title. So that Alpha issue that comes out in June will have a story by me, I believe stories by other folks as well, pointing the way towards what the overall plan going to look like. Then in July, you get Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 by me and Joelle Jones and we're off and running from there.

Speaking of Joelle Jones, you have an absolutely ridiculous lineup of artists here. As someone who currently has Leonardo socks on, the idea of Cliff Chang drawing Leonardo feels like a personal gift to me.

You're welcome. It was just for you.

Can you talk a little bit about assembling this art team? Were they all immediately eager? Did you handpick them? Did IDW already have them on call? Was there any fighting over who got to draw which Turtle? What was the situation like there?

I guess some of that, in terms of if there was any fighting, you'd have to ask my editor, Jamie Rich, and he's definitely responsible for putting together such an all-star team. He would just email me and say, "What about this person?" I'm like, "Are you kidding? Are you asking me? Yes. The answer is yes." It's an excess of riches. To launch with these four issues with these four artists is pretty insane. You get Joelle Jones doing issue one, Raphael Albuquerque doing issue two, which is the Michelangelo issue, and Cliff Chang, as you said, doing Leonardo, and then Chris Burnham doing Donatello in issue four and then also in the Alpha issue. So yeah, that's a pretty amazing list.

I've worked with Rafa on a short, 10-page Old Guard story. I think it's the only story I've done with any of these folks. I've known Cliff Chang pretty much my entire time in comics. We've never been able to work together. Joelle is just someone I've been a fan of her entire career, and I've tried to work with her and wanted to work with her on other occasions. This is the first time we've been able to make it happen. And Chris Burnham, the same way, I've always loved his stuff. He actually lives here in Kansas City, so we had lunch yesterday. He lives 10 minutes away from me, so that's good. We'll probably be hanging out and having more Turtles lunches in the future. But yeah, that's a ridiculously stellar lineup of artists, and to me, it just makes this launch, how we're doing it, all the more exciting that this is the group of artists we've got on board.

I'm going to leave you with one question that I think is fun. I want to lead in by saying this is hypothetical, so we're not leaking anything IDW has secret plans for. But IDW has done a lot of very cool intercompany crossovers with the Turtles – Batman/Turtles, Power Rangers/Turtles, that kind of stuff. If they handed you the reins, and they were like, "All right, let's do Turtles and X, something that you think it would be fun to mix the Turtles into," what would be your pick? What would be your pitch for a Turtles intercompany crossover, hypothetically speaking?

That's a good question. There've been so many good ones over the years. I'm not sure exactly which boxes have all been checked and which haven't. I think for me personally, if you're signing me up to write one, maybe if we wanted to do Turtles/Thor, I feel like I'm well-equipped to write that one. I think that'd be – I don't know, now my mind is jumping to Turtles and Asgard. So yeah, I think that'd probably be my pick. Although, has there been a Turtles/Godzilla book? Has that happened yet?

I don't think so, but that would be fairly incredible.

Well, there we go. Let's make that one happen. I'd write that too.

Although, I'm going to put you on the spot now because now you have me thinking about it: Which Turtles would be worthy of lifting the hammer?

Well, that's a great question. I think we have to answer that in the pages of the story, not here now before it even exists. Maybe all of them, maybe none of them. I don't know. If you've read my Thor stuff, that's always a big question of if Thor himself worthy to pick up the hammer.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Alpha goes on sale in June. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 follows in July.