4 out of 5

This has really been the perfect vehicle for writer Erik Burnham. Though he’s been attached to a few nostalgic properties, the shtick of SMA (especially in Burnham’s hands) of being in continuity with the 80s / 90s cartoon, and written with the same type of 4th-wall awareness as that show – updated to modern standards – but without a detached tone that might make fun of the property hits all the right buttons for a successful, ongoing read. It’s really no surprise this went from a mini to an ongoing, because you don’t run out of material when you’re not basing it around riffing on the concept you’re writing. At the same time, Burnham doesn’t go in for try-hard nostalgia either, something the main IDW series can be guilty of. It really is, for the most part, just like the old show had continued into the modern day.

And so in this one-shot we get a logical followup to Usagi Yojimbo, where the brothers (or Donatello) have discovered a way of returning UY back home, and the rabbit – deciding instantly to ditch this Earth – invites the TMNT to his dimension / timeline / whatever. When they arrive there, it seems that a village has been beset by raiders coated in shadow in Usagi’s absence, and of course the Turtles join in to fight the baddies.

Burnham’s great for this stuff because his writing style leans into puns and a kind of forced plotting that’s totally of old school cartoons; sometimes that doesn’t work, but he has enough to play with here that it’s really fun, and provides for some nice in-universe lore expansions. Jack Lawrence’s art mimics the cartoon’s bubbly art style but with enough interpretation to be the artist’s own; colorist Luis Antonio Delgado really makes things pop with a judicious use of bright colors and shadows.

My only real complaint is that this doesn’t really feel deserving of an oversized one-shot. While the extra pages are nice, you get the sense we could’ve boiled this down a bit more (or, oppositely, expanded it); besides the appearance of Usagi, it just doesn’t feel very “special,” and maybe two shorter stories would’ve had more punch. That aside, it’s a sufficiently entertaining lead.

Bonus points to the cover I got, from Chris “Mista Jonz” Jones, as it is a delightful mess of perspectives, like a completely bonkers cut and paste 80s movie poster.