The triumphant return of the immense creative team of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is finally here! Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Esau and Isaac Escorza, Ben Bishop, Luis Antonio Delgado, and Shawn Lee are all back with TMNT: The Last Ronin II #1, and it’s surpassed my expectations.
The Last Ronin remains a massive best seller, continuing to top the charts year after year and it would be easy to use that book as a formula and just swap out characters every time. Part of me expected that to be the case, not only for this book but for the Lost Years series they did after The Last Ronin. Instead the team has created three distinct series that feel like events, each with their own flavor. These are big books that exist within a huge franchise but are led by creative endeavors not by the traditional big comics conveyor belt. I’m not just talking about the non-traditional size of the book but also the release schedule and how IDW appears to let this team take their time which is something you don’t see often in comics. It’s refreshing and it could be a sign of things to come. Some of these other companies must be paying attention, right?
Re-Evolution picks up years after the end of the original series, Casey-Marie has trained a new quartet of turtles as the gangs of NY continue to bubble over in the power vacuum left behind after the events of the previous book. The opening of this issue focuses on Casey-Marie and she’s a total badass. Casey-Marie was further fleshed out in the Lost Years series which gave her a lot of depth and this issue builds on it. She’s a perfect blend of April and Casey– she has their passion complete with a hard edge.
Again, this could be a retread but it feels fresh and I’m genuinely excited by Casey-Marie. If the book was just her, it’d be outstanding. Instead we shift to her disciples, the terrapin turtles– Uno, Yi, Moja, and Odyn, which could also be a retread of the classic turtles but they aren’t. The dynamics feel more complex and as much as I love the original four, sometimes it feels a bit lazy due to how easily they are slotted into one note roles. The depth of these new teens is only being scratched in this issue, between the reveal of new abilities and the distinct interplay between them. They are teenagers through and through but it doesn’t feel like grown men doing impersonations of what they think teenagers should be today.
My favorite part of the issue besides checking in with the terrapins are the page layouts. Most of the book is set on double pages which makes it feel huge. And every time I turned the page I was wowed by the pure inventiveness of the layouts. Characters are constantly busting out of the panels and it feels like the artist teams are showing off. They are juggling so many characters here and it looks easy especially when they seem to pop in and out of the page.
Combine all this with the shocking cliffhanger ending and I don’t think it’s possible to be more excited about this book and the franchise as a whole. The greatest compliment I can give this book is I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
Re-Evolution is a fitting title for a comic that made me cheer, gasp, and shout expletives. This is “get up on your feet and cheer” comics. Wait until you get to Ben Bishop’s pages! I gasped!
Say it with me:
COWABUNGA!
