Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW Publishing)

• 1. Introduction

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  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, published by IDW Publishing, arrived in August 2011 with a premise that surprised longtime fans: the four brothers had lived and died before. In feudal Japan, Hamato Yoshi and his sons were murdered by the ruthless Oroku Saki. Centuries later, their spirits returned, reborn as a rat and four turtles inside a corporate research lab. That twist on a beloved origin raised a question the series would spend years answering: what does it mean to be a family across lifetimes?

  The series launched as the first new comic incarnation of the Turtles after Nickelodeon purchased the franchise in October 2009. It was the fifth comic book series in the franchise's history, and it arrived with a mandate not just to continue but to rebuild the story from the ground up. The creative team behind it included Kevin Eastman, one of the Turtles' original co-creators, alongside writer Tom Waltz and artist Dan Duncan. That combination of new publisher energy and original-creator involvement set the tone for what followed.

• 2. A Rebooted Origin

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  April O'Neil, working as an intern at a research laboratory called Stock Gen, gave the four turtles their names: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael, each named after a Renaissance artist. She had no idea she was naming four souls that had already lived once before. The lab was owned by Baxter Stockman, a scientist who had secretly allied himself with an extraterrestrial warlord named Krang. When members of the Foot Clan broke in to steal alien mutagen, the turtles and a gray rat were caught in the chaos. Spilled mutagen in the sewer transformed them all into intelligent, humanoid beings.

  The rat, now known as Splinter, carried memories of his past life as Hamato Yoshi. He remembered the Foot Clan, the betrayal, and the murder of his family. That memory became the engine of the series: Splinter training his four sons in ninjutsu, preparing them not just for the dangers of modern New York but for a reckoning with a past life they could not fully recall. The shape-shifting witch Kitsune had kept Oroku Saki, now known as Shredder, alive into the modern age, ensuring the old conflict was far from settled.

• 3. A Universe of Factions

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  Shredder and the Foot Clan were only one threat among many pressing down on the Turtles from the opening issues. Krang, the Utrom warlord, planned to xenoform Earth into a refuge for the survivors of his race. Old Hob, a mutant alley cat embittered by his experiences with humanity, launched acts of terrorism aimed at making mutantkind the dominant species. A government agent named John Bishop led the Earth Protection Force, dedicated to eradicating both mutants and aliens. Madam Null ran a business conglomerate that deliberately created mutants as slave labor. Above them all loomed the Pantheon, a group of immortal demigods who had once bent humanity to their will.

  This structure gave the IDW series a scope its predecessors rarely attempted. No single villain served as the series' axis. The Turtles found themselves caught between power blocs with incompatible agendas, any one of which could destroy the world through its own logic. The central conflict culminated when a Pantheon member named Kitsune attempted to resurrect a being called the Dragon to end humanity. The Turtles and their allies managed to thwart the plan, but the cost included the death of Splinter and, remarkably, the redemption of Shredder.

• 4. Mutant Town and Issue 100

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  Old Hob detonated a mutagen bomb during Baxter Stockman's inauguration as New York's new mayor, exposing the existence of mutants to the world's public. The city's response was a quarantine zone called Mutant Town, erected in the heart of Manhattan. Hob and his Mutanimals held loose political control over its residents. The Turtles, starting with issue #101, shifted their mission from global crisis to something more intimate: making Mutant Town livable, and building bridges between its inhabitants and the outside world.

  Issue #100 itself concluded an eight-part arc called "City at War," a narrative endpoint that had been built across the series' first decade. Issue #73, published in 2017, had already made history by pushing the series past the run of Archie Comics' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, which ran from 1988 to 1995. At that point, the IDW series became the longest-running comic in the franchise's history. Writer and artist Sophie Campbell took over as sole lead writer beginning with issue #101, steering the series into the Mutant Town era with a focus on community, belonging, and what it meant to build something worth protecting.

• 5. Spinoffs and Crossovers

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  The Micro-Series, which began in December 2011, launched a tradition of spotlight issues featuring individual characters. The first run of eight issues covered each of the four Turtles, Splinter, Casey Jones, April O'Neil, and the Fugitoid. A second Micro-Series run in 2013 turned its lens on the main villains: Krang, Baxter Stockman, Old Hob, Alopex, Karai, Hun, Bebop, Rocksteady, and Shredder. The spinoff format allowed stories that the main series could not accommodate, and it persisted in various forms throughout the run.

  Crossovers became a signature of the IDW era. Batman crossed paths with the Turtles across four separate miniseries, the first of which launched in December 2015 and was later adapted into an animated film. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers met the Turtles across two miniseries, pitting them against an alliance between Shredder and Rita Repulsa. The Ghostbusters appeared twice. Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, a longstanding crossover partner for the Turtles in other media, showed up in the IDW continuity as well. The Turtles also encountered characters from Street Fighter and Stranger Things, and a crossover with Godzilla was announced for November 2025.

• 6. The Last Ronin and the Relaunch

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  The Last Ronin, which began in October 2020, occupied a separate continuity entirely. A lone Michelangelo survived in a futuristic New York controlled by Shredder's grandson, Oroku Hiroto, seeking vengeance for the deaths of his brothers and father. The five-issue series concluded in April 2022 and generated its own expanding line: Lost Years in 2023 introduced Casey Marie Jones, April O'Neil's daughter, raising a new generation of Ninja Turtles. Re-Evolution launched in March 2024, following those new Turtles as they faced fresh threats.

  The main ongoing series concluded with issue #150 in April 2024, after the announcement in January of that year that a new volume would launch in July 2024 with Jason Aaron as head writer. The first five issues of the new volume each featured a different artist: Joelle Jones, Rafael Albuquerque, Cliff Chiang, Chris Burnham, and Darick Robertson. The first four spotlighted a single Turtle in turn, Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Donatello, before the fifth issue reunited all four. Juan Ferreyra took over art duties beginning with issue six of the second story arc, carrying the series into its next phase.