Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Kevin Eastman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sixteen years ago, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had their final battle with The Foot Clan and lost. Now, the last Turtle is back and looking for payback...

I'm not the world's biggest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan, but I was into the cartoon, the movies, and the Archie books in the late 1980s/early 1990s. People were talking this up on Twitter so I nabbed it.

Aside from some garbanzo spoiling the reveal of which Turtle The Last Ronin was, I enjoyed this quite a bit. Set in a dystopian future where the Foot Clan controls New York, the last of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles connects with some old friends and gears up for the final showdown with Iroku Hiroto, grandson of the Shredder.

The writing by Tom Waltz is poignant for a book about a humanoid turtle walking around kicking ass. I haven't read any of the IDW TMNT books but felt right at home. I felt sadness at the loss of Splinter and the other three turtles and a growing anticipation for the final battle with Iroku Hiroto.

The art by Esau & Isaac Escorza, Ben Bishop, and Luis Antonio Delgado was moody as hell. It was obviously computer colored but the coloring suited the story very well and wasn't overdone like I find a lot of computer coloring these days.

My only gripes with the book are that I found the storytelling a little awkward in places. There were a few times I had to reread a page or two to figure out what exactly I was looking at. I also thought the final battle could have been a little longer and Iroku Hiroto could have been a little more fleshed out. Overall, it was a great book, though.

Four out of five nunchaku.

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