4 out of 5

The lead-in to Jason Aaron’s takeover of the IDW TMNT line, as well as an entire first issue’s worth of comic of “Monster Island” – a lead-in to Tom Waltz’s ‘Mutant Nation,’ and looking to be like a Mutanimals book.

I was legitimately excited way back when IDW started publishing the Turtles; it took me… about fifty issues to be fully disabused of that excitement, and then a long while after to kind of recover and just accept the new status quo. (As it became the longest running iteration of the boys to date, and likely the definitive version for plenty of readers.)

I was cautiously excited again by the announcement of Jason Aaron as writer on the book. I’ve had great experiences with some of Aaron’s stuff, but more importantly: his pitch for the series just sounded right. It allowed for the IDW history but made bids to bring back some of what felt more like the original feel, and I’ll… sincerely not go into my rant on that for the Nth time, except that “original feel” does not mean gritty or not-colored masks or something or other, just almost more simplified. My big gripe with IDW was making the Turtles 100% a comic book full of crossovers and empty characters, and Aaron – from my lifelong fan tunnel visioned POV – seemed to get that streamlining things was a good way to go.

The few pages of preview we get in this intro book help to maintain my excitement. IDW has never been short on amazing artists, but Chris Burnham’s crunchy style is a great complement to old-school Eastman / Laird, and even though Aaron’s starting point of giving us a memory-wiped Donny is reminiscent of where IDW started, it’s mired in so many less writing stereotypes, while still allowing for some legit personality in Donny’s voice. It’s a succinct action scene – Donny has been captured, and muscle memory has him escaping – that’s backed up by “what’s going on?” intrigue, and just enough detail to give us that aforementioned personality. Only complaint: this is an over-sized book, and I was hoping for half-and-half Mutant Nation and TMNT, but… it’s a full issue of the former half the latter. Harumph.

The latter is acceptable. It’s essentially a continuation of IDW overplottings, and Tom Waltz still cannot escape some of his writerly habits, but I’m overly critical of the guy: he’s ultimately got a good sense for story and keeping spinning plates up and running, and this is a pretty streamlined version of it, with a pretty brutal setup as our hook, although that’s ultimately a MacGuffin to get our Mutanimals gathered on “Mutant Island” with Old Hob. This is “gritty,” mind you, with Gavin Smith’s terse character art and open scenery giving us a nice Marvel house style-adjacent look. (Our two male, human leads look like clones of each other, though – maybe that’s purposeful?)

For me, the weight of pages towards Mutant Nation makes this more of an average book, but I accept that it’s in line with what IDW fans have been reading, so that plus the Aaron pages bumps it up. Bonus points for a title page for each tale – plus a role call for the extensive cast in the Waltz part!