The Last Ronin is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles storyline in the making since 1987 and comes from the minds of the TMNT co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The story is now coming to comics this summer thanks to IDW Publishing in an oversized 5-issue miniseries. This sounds so epic!
In a future New York City far different from the one we know today, a lone surviving Turtle goes on a seemingly hopeless mission to obtain justice for his fallen family and friends. Kinetic layouts from Eastman, atmospheric inks from Andy Kuhn, and a thrilling script full of surprises from longtime TMNT scribe Tom Waltz all combine to make this one of the most memorable TMNT stories that fans will ever read.
The Last Ronin #1 will feature covers by Eastman and Mateus Santolouco and have 48 pages of gripping story. Talking about how The Last Ronin came to be, Eastman said:
About ten years ago, I re-discovered a twenty page outline for a TMNT story that Peter and I wrote together back in 1987. The story was set thirty years in the future, which (as written then) was set in 2017. Reading through it again, I drifted back to a very different time in TMNT history — back when it was all about the comics, mostly just Peter and I writing and drawing the issues, pre-everything the world would soon come to know about these characters that we’d created and called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
It has been an INCREDIBLE thirty-six year journey, thanks to the brilliant talents of so many that brought new visions and TMNT stories to life, and especially the fans who supported all of them. Nine years ago, I was invited back into the TMNT comic universe, via my friends at IDW Publishing. Aside from the original run with my friend and co-creator Peter Laird, working on the IDW TMNT universe has been the best time I have had with the Turtles for a very, VERY long time.
A little over a year ago, as the ongoing series headed towards issue one hundred, I showed a rough revised and updated version of the story outline (now set in the year 2040) to Tom Waltz, who equally fell in love with the possibilities of it. The Last Ronin is a heartfelt love poem to all the TMNT universes of the past, and offers up an intense look at one possible future — firmly based on and adapted from an original thirty-three year-old idea, from the original creators.
Trust me — Tom, Andy, and I have just started on a two-hundred page journey… and it IS going to be one HELL of a ride…
You can find a preview for The Lost Ronin #1 below.
