The Turtles are broken up and scattered across the world: Donnie is enslaved and forced to fight cage matches against mutant-haters; Mikey’s starring in a hit Japanese TV show about his life; Raph’s in prison; Leo’s in India, meditating with non-mutant flesh-eating turtles. Meanwhile in New York City, a brutal new mayoral candidate seeks to consolidate his populist anti-mutant platform with the help of the Foot Clan.
When I heard that Jason Aaron was thankfully moving on from his stagnation at Marvel, I was expecting better comics from him either at DC or Boom, which didn’t happen (so far) - but it did at IDW on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of all places! Return to New York is both Jason Aaron and the Turtles’ best comic in years.
Look at that insane lineup of artists - those aren’t cover artists, they’re all artists that drew at least one issue in this book: Joelle Jones, Rafael Albuquerque, Cliff Chiang, Chris Burnham, Darick Robertson, Juan Ferreyra. All of them incredible artists, and all of them lending their talents to this book - this is such an amazing comic to look at because of this many top-tier creators on it.
And it also makes sense to do it this way too, to highlight the team’s divided self. Each artist draws a different character, including the villain of the story, the Penguin-esque DA Hale, running for mayor of NYC. I like that Aaron took the time to write the character’s background and motivations properly so that the story feels more fleshed out and understandable.
That said, this isn’t totally a perfect jumping on point for new readers. We don’t know why the Turtles have gone their separate ways, what happened to Splinter, and Donnie was a real surprise to me - he seems to be much older than the others for some reason and he’s got a metal shell?! So I feel like if you haven’t been following TMNT for a while, aspects of the story are going to seem somewhat puzzling.
Speaking of Donnie though: despite having known about the Turtles since I was of single-digit age, I don’t think I ever had a favourite Turtle, for whatever reason. Jason Aaron made it very clear to me though who that one is: it’s Donatello. Of course he’s the best. In fact, if this book had been entirely about Donnie only, it might’ve been even better than it was - his storyline was by far the most compelling while the others were… just ok.
The slightly uneven quality of the others’ stories - Mikey and Leo’s were the weakest - and the fact that this is basically an entire book of table-setting, are the only real critiques I have of this one. If Aaron had gotten the gang together sooner and provided a storyline that went beyond mere setup, this would’ve been a more satisfying read.
Otherwise, I thought Jason Aaron’s writing was near-perfect. The tone is exactly what it should be, the voices are dead on - yeah, this is what I’m looking for in a Turtles comic. And I didn’t even know I wanted to read a Jason Aaron Turtles comic!
IDW might have the single worst logo of any comics company ever and be on the verge of bankruptcy, but I really want them to stay around if only for this series to continue.
Jason Aaron’s back and he found his mojo again on a Turtles book - this Turtles book! One of the comics highlights of the year, I found TMNT, Volume 1: Return to New York both unexpectedly moving (luv ya Donnie) and enjoyable. Turtle power indeed.
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