4 out of 5

I’ve not been here from the start, but I’ve been here… for a while. And I’ve not been exactly “there” when a new TMNT reboot hits, but I’ve been there for the zeitgeists.

All to say: like a lot of long-in-the-tooth Turtles fans: I’ve been around the block on the various iterations of the property over the years, and it still remains one of those oddballs in the industry: despite its many takes by this point, I don’t consider it an IP like Spider-Man or Batman that molds to the times, but nor is it the kind of walled garden of Judge Dredd, instead having elements of both: TMNT is clearly moldable like the former, but has a sort of core, unshakeable history and “self” like the latter. The success of whichever given reboot – to me – depends on how the rebooter juggles those aspects.

Almost every IDW-adjacent comic review of the Turtles requires me to say that I haven’t cared much for that run, gratingly acknowledging it as the longest run – as so, perhaps, a definitive one. (Even though I’d think the original has to be the definitive run… by definition?) When announced, the Jason Aaron reboot / reset – not ditching the continuity, but starting with a kind of day-one storyline – had me intrigued: I’ve really enjoyed Aaron’s creator owned works, and even if his works for the majors has suffered from a lot of churn / event exhaustion with which even our (by my opinion) best modern writers struggle, I think he’s brought unique points of views to his takes. So I figured it could split two ways: either he’d lean into grim and gritty, which was my big sticking point of the Waltz / Eastman TMNT stuff – i.e. this would be a reboot back to IDW #1 and not Mirage #1 – or he’d combine his uniqueness with a bit of the bombast he’d learned at Marvel, and land on an ideal tone for the boys.

‘Return to New York’ is much, much more the latter, although the difficulty with “rebooting” the TMNT franchise is apparent, as the high level beats of the story – the brothers have gone their separate ways from some event in then semi-recent past; a reignited struggle with The Foot Clan brings them grumblingly back together – are ones we’ve seen many time, and while Aaron does an excellent job of finding a great voice for each Turtle, I tend to loathe the “we punch each other when we disagree” scuffles between, say, Raph and Mikey, because we’ve been there and done that for ages. (Maybe because I tended not to scuffle with my brother when growing up, this stuff doesn’t resonate?)

But the skill of a good writer is turning the familiar into something fresh, so that first criticism is pretty much gone: by taking a Turtle-per-comic approach to the first four issues, with a different artist, and taking the last couple of pages to link one Turtle to the next – as the fight with the Foot moves with them from location to location – Aaron gets to write some of the truly best “micro-series”-esque issues ever, proving you can lean into the stereotypes of Mikey as the goof and etc. and still write the boys as fully fleshed out characters, and ones who have lived full lives!

So we pick up with Donny having gone a little kooky; Leo is on a spiritual journey; Mikey has become a movie star; and Raph is in prison. The Foot attack each, and connect us back to the new NY Mayor, who’s got a hate-on against mutants, confirming it’s all-out war on the boys and their kind, setting us up for the next arc.

The baddie is a little weak – an archetype we’ve seen many times – but some mystery box connections to Karai and his mustache-twiddling over-the-topness make it work, plus Aaron leverages the effect of using the Foot as the police force to up the stakes, overwhelming the Turtles with numbers and an enemy who is no longer relegated to the shadows.

The art is fantastic all around. These are all all-stars – Joelle Jones, Darick Robertson, and more – chosen to align well with their issues, until presenting series regular Juan Ferreyra, who shows he’ll be able to knock layouts out of the park. It’s amazing how good you can make a page look when you have a writer who understands how to be selective and purposeful with dialogue.

And look: I know this will be a bumpy ride. Casey Jones is shoved into this kind of oddly, and you can already sense, at a high level, where the sublplots and some twists are gonna be. But that’s the price of the Turtles living in a major publisher ecosystem. What will be most important is whether or not the characters feel right, and Aaron has nailed that, every step of the way.

It’s wonderful looking forward to a monthly Turtles book again.