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The recent trend with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics has been to lean a little more towards the dark side of things. There's an obvious reason for that: TMNT: The Last Ronin was a monster hit for publisher IDW, one that pushed the comics in a tougher, more mature direction. The currently ongoing sequel series, The Last Ronin II: Re-Evolution, has taken and run with that tone, and the upcoming Jason Aaron-led relaunch of the main series, while different in many ways, also looks like it's leaning into a grittier approach to Turtle Power.
IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 40th Anniversary Comics Celebration, which publishes next week, is very different. For a start, it's an anthology, containing 11 new strips from a myriad of different creators. And while some of the stories have a harder edge, the comic as a whole is an all-encompassing celebration of the diversity of tones that this franchise is capable of.
All of the TMNT's different comic eras are evoked here, from the earliest Mirage Studios days to the current IDW era. The issue opens, as it should, with a piece from TMNT creator Kevin Eastman - a four-page retelling of the Turtles' early days set against the poem 'Alone' by Edgar Allen Poe. The Mirage era is further evoked with Jim Lawson and Steve Lavigne's 'Monsters,' and Tales of the TMNT: Gang Wars by Tristan Jones and Paul Harmon.
That story in particular smartly sums up the approach the special is taking, when journalist Lauren Stanton muses, "All the stories... all the different versions of them... they start to make sense." The Turtles' adventures are often contradictory and strange, but that's part of what makes them so much fun.
From there all of the disparate versions of the Turtles get a story. 'Downtime' by Gary Carlson and Frank Fosco takes place within TMNT: Urban Legends, IDW's reprints of the Image Comics series. Chris Allan's 'The Man Behind the Mask' is set within the TMNT Adventures continuity. Erik Burnham, Sarah Myer, and Luis Antonio Delgado's 'What About Tomorrow' is part of the Saturday Morning Adventures strand. Later, Lloyd Goldfine, Khary Randolph, and Emilio Lopez's 'Splinter Forever,' Ciro Nieli's 'Kraang Among Us,' and Andy Suriano's 'Farewell' all move away from the comics and into the cartoons.
Finally, Tom Waltz and Michael Dialynas's 'Father's Day' and Ronda Pattison and Pablo Tunica's 'Teen Spirit' bring us firmly into the IDW era, with the former a melancholic piece about the boys visiting Splinter's grave, and the latter looking back to The Armageddon Game event which marked the beginning of the end of IDW's first era.
It's hard to pick highlights when there's so much good stuff here, but I especially dug the moody '90s flavor of Paul Harmon's art on 'Gang Wars,' the sheer fun of 'The Man Behind the Mask,' and the outright weirdness of Ciro Nieli's tale. You'll have your own favorites, as there really is something for every fan here, in a comic that does what every anniversary issue should do: remind you why you feel in love with these characters so much in the first place. Here's to another 40!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 40th Anniversary Comics Celebration #1 is published by IDW on July 10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 by Jason Aaron, Joëlle Jones, and Ronda Pattison follows on July 24.
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