Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Jason Aaron vol. 1: Return to New York

When “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was relaunched last year, its first issue was a blockbuster success.  The continued relevance of the comics franchise was made clear to all when it sold over 300,000 copies and paved the way for what will hopefully be another run as successful as the previous 150-issue one from publisher IDW.  Jason Aaron wrote that issue, and the eleven that followed, and an argument could be made that the issue’s success was just a case of being in the right place at the right time for the writer (not the first time this has happened, as he also wrote the one-million copy selling first issue of “Star Wars” from Marvel).  Yet Aaron still manages to tell a credible and serviceable story here, even as it’s more concerned with grinding its protagonists down than anything else.

Longtime readers will recall that I did read a large chunk of the first IDW run, and even liked a lot of it too.  As for why I stopped… that’s a good question.  Part of that was down to the fact that I was reading the series digitally as opposed to physically and so whenever I saw a new volume on sale, I made a note to get it when it was on sale.  Because at the rate IDW was pumping out these volumes and the ancillary miniseries, buying them when they were on sale was the only reasonable way to keep up with them in my mind.  That I started reading the series on the cheap in a big digital bundle from ComiXology certainly helped solidify that mindset too.

So when the series relaunch was announced, and that it was going to be written by Aaron, I figured now would be a good time to jump back into the world of the Turtles.  That’s true here as while this isn’t a hard reboot of the series’ continuity, very little mention is made about events from the previous run.  Master Splinter is dead, Donatello spent some (more) time time-traveling, and that’s all you need to know.  This might frustrate fans of the previous run looking for some proper follow-up on whatever happened at the end, but it does make for a more accessible start to this one.

That said, I did just have to accept that Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael had split up and gone in their own directions following Master Splinter’s death.  Leo is looking for peace with the softshell turtles on the banks of the Ganges.  Michelangelo has found superstardom as the star of a live-action sentai series in Japan.  Donatello is trapped in a compound where humans pay to fight mutants.  And Raphael, well, he’s in prison.

This setup gives Aaron the freedom to structure the first volume as a series of issues that each focus on a single character while also setting up a larger story at the same time.  That structure is the best part about this volume as the writer effectively builds on it from issue-to-issue.  Even as subsequent issues change perspectives, it never feels like the momentum is stalling as the plot keeps being advanced with each one.  It all leads to a final issue where the four brothers are reunited only for the cracks in their relationship to become clear as the scope of the threat against them is fully revealed.  (Which is the Foot Clan, of course, because it couldn’t be anyone else, and I don’t think we’d want it that way either.)

As for the stories in each issue themselves, they’re generally fine.  Raphael in prison feels like a story that I’m surprised no one has thought to do yet, and Donatello’s struggles in captivity with encroaching mental illness make for a compelling read.  Leo’s quest for enlightenment, however, seeks a level of profundity that it doesn’t hit.  Then there’s Michelangelo’s spotlight, which is the only one of these stories that I was really annoyed by.  While I appreciated the effort to show that things haven’t become completely terrible for at least one of the Turtles, Aaron still serves it up as a bog-standard fame-and-fortune are bad story where Mikey is effectively drowning in self-pity.  Even with diamond-encrusted nunchucks.

There is one other spotlight tale featured in this volume and it’s about the new villain the writer has created for this storyline.  Hieronymous Hale is a ruthless District Attorney in New York who becomes the public face for the Foot Clan’s agenda in the city.  Yet how did he get there?  Aaron lets us know that it’s a mix of personal insecurity, a lack of recognition, and two dead parents whose only clue to their murders was that the assailant “looked like an animal.”  The result is a solid character portrait of a villain that also features some effective supporting roles from previous franchise members and also furthers the ongoing story as well.  Any passing resemblance to current political figures is, I’m sure, entirely coincidental.

That issue was handled by Darick Robertson, and he was an excellent choice for what is easily the most grounded and character-driven one of this volume, thanks to his detailed and expressive character work.  The entire volume has great art from start to finish as it also features stellar work from Joelle Jones, Rafael Albuquerque, Cliff Chiang, Chris Burnham, and Juan Ferreyra.  I wouldn’t have minded seeing the rest of Aaron’s run illustrated by any of the aforementioned artists based on the work they do here.  However, it was already announced that Ferreyra’s detailed and textured work will be filling the entirety of the next volume, and that should be something to see.

It’ll also be the end of Aaron’s run as Gene Luen Yang has already taken over the series with issue #13.  I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing as this first volume of the writer’s run makes it feel like he was hired to transition the characters from one era to the next.  Which is why you’re seeing them ground down here so they can be brought back up in the next volume.  Definitely not the most original of premises, but it’s at least executed well enough that I’m willing to come back for vol. 2 to see how it’s all going to be wrapped up.