Last weekend during SDCC, IDW — the stewards of the TMNT comic license — revealed where the Heroes in a Half-Shell are headed next. Their plans for next year are headlined by, surprisingly, a third Last Ronin book. Actually, given how the first two sold I guess it isn’t that surprising.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin 3 – Return For New York will reunite the creative team of Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Isaac & Esau Escorza, Ben Bishop, Luis Antonio Delgado, and Shawn Lee for a new adventure featuring Casey Marie Jones, Odyn, Moja, Uno, and Yi….one they claim is the finale, but yeah right.
“It’s hard to believe this journey started nearly forty years ago with a simple twenty five page outline by Peter Laird and myself, finally brought to life with such an incredible creative team, the support of Nickelodeon and IDW, and most of all, the fans,” stated Eastman. “We couldn’t have done it without you! We all hope this final installment of this trilogy is worthy, we’re all working hard to bring this important part of this next generation of Ninja Turtles to a place we never dreamed we’d be able to when we first started. Thanks a billion trillion!”
Back in the main Turtleverse, the TMNT book will hit issue 25 in 2027, and once it does, regular writer Gene Luen Yang will depart and pass duties to Matthew Rosenberg (If Destruction Be Our Lot, Spawn, Uncanny X-Men) and artist Juann Cabal (Daredevil, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Elektra) starting at issue #26. It’ll be a while before we see what Rosenberg has planned for the Turtles, but he won’t make it easy: an early plot synopsis says “the greatest roster of villains, both new and old, have assembled to hunt down the Turtles over the course of a single night.”
“Before I was even a teenager, I was spending all my time reading superhero comics. But it wasn’t until a clerk at my local comic shop told me I had to buy an issue of the Eastman and Laird run of TMNT that I actually fell in love with comics,” Rosenberg says. “From my first introduction to those Mirage issues, I’ve followed the Turtles the whole way. It is truly an honor to not only add to the legacy of four of New York’s greatest heroes, but to follow in the footsteps of so many creators I love like Erik Larsen, Jim Lawson, Sophie Campbell, Tom Waltz, and most recently legends like Jason Aaron, Juan Ferreyra, Gene Luen Yang, and Freddie E. Williams II. I hope I can bring even just a little bit of what I love about the Turtles to this book. We’re making a book that has everything I love about TMNT: shells-against-the-wall grittiness, laugh-out-loud humor, non-stop intensity, and some genuine family drama.”
All things Turtles can currently be found at your local comics shop courtesy of IDW.
