Co-creator Kevin Eastman and his co-writer Tom Waltz tease what's ahead for the popular comic series.
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| Michelangelo and Casey Marie Jones return in 'The Last Ronin — Training Day' prequel comic. | Credit: IDW Dark |
- The Last Ronin — Training Day comic brings back Mikey to the "Roninverse" for the first time since 2023's The Lost Years.
- Scribes Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz tease the new one-shot, as well as a formal Part 3.
- They also share their reaction to the live-action Last Ronin movie getting shelved — and why there's still hope for the R-rated film adaptation.
Fans of the "Roninverse," the critically-acclaimed dark reimagining of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles saga, have pondered the state of the franchise in recent months.
Paramount's live-action R-rated movie adaptation of The Last Ronin, the comic book that kickstarted it all in 2020, was put back on the shelf. While hope remains for that project (more on that shortly), the sting felt more painful after Judith Hoag, cinema's first live-action April O'Neil, said she'd been approached about reprising her role before the movie stalled.
Separately, there hasn't been a concrete update on the video game adaptation that was announced by THQ Nordic back in 2023.
However, there is some good news: the creators aren't done. Michelangelo is officially back from the dead in a new prequel comic, The Last Ronin — Training Day, Entertainment Weekly has revealed. This one-shot marks the character's first appearance in the ongoing comics since the conclusion of the Lost Years arc back in 2023.
"While we were going through what he called the Roninverse, there were so many back alleys and stories and things that we couldn't fit into the 200 pages that we had," Kevin Eastman, who conceived these comics with Peter Laird and wrote them with Tom Waltz, told EW. "One of the ones was just having Michelangelo spend time with Casey Marie Jones."
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| Cover of 'The Last Ronin — Training Day'. | IDW Dark |
Here's a quick recap of the Roninverse... The flagship issue reintroduces Mikey as the titular Last Ronin, the sole surviving member of the original Turtles, now in a brutalist alternate future loosely inspired by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. He manages to avenge the deaths of his brothers Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello, who were killed by Shredder's grandson and the new leader of the Foot Clan, but he loses his own life in the process.
The Last Ronin: The Lost Years, first published in 2022, served as both a prequel story, about Mikey's transformation into the Last Ronin, and a sequel that saw a new group of Turtles — Odyn, Moja, Uno, and Yi — emerge under the tutelage of sensei Casey Marie Jones, the daughter of Casey Jones and April O'Neil.
Then came The Last Ronin II — Re-Evolution in 2024, a formal sequel to The Last Ronin that followed the new Turtles and concluded with the death of April. Eastman and Waltz are now working on The Last Ronin III but see Training Day as an "interim" tale until that next installment.
"It's kind of funny to call it a prequel because it sits between issues 3 and 4 of the original series," Waltz said on a Zoom call with his creative partner. "In a way, this is a love letter to fans, but it's also, I would say, a conversation we're having with fans because the Roninverse just continues to expand beyond anything we expected. So in legal terms, I guess I'd call Training Day an addendum."
On sale this July, The Last Ronin — Training Day takes place over a loose 24-hour period. "[Mikey] could see the spark and he could see the light and he could see the beauty in what Casey Marie Jones felt and wanted to believe in," Eastman teases of the story. "He wanted to lean into Splinter's journal of what he trained and what he learned from that, and directing towards this protector of the city thing, which the Turtles originally grew into."
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| Inked pages from 'The Last Ronin — Training Day'. | IDW Dark |
Training Day features work from artists the Escorza brothers and Ben Bishop, colorist Luis Antonio Delgado, and letterer Shawn Lee.
Waltz says he took a lot of inspiration from Star Wars, especially the most recent movies with Daisy Ridley's Rey and the image of a Jedi-in-training.
"Why is Casey Marie Jones wearing that costume with the mask? How did that come about suddenly? Those are things that now we can answer," he adds. "But I like this idea that, if there's a threat, the threat's not gonna wait for you. You have to meet the threat. This shows Michelangelo acknowledging that and saying to himself, 'I'm gonna be this person's teacher. I better teach her as quickly as I can.'"
"There was just a hunger to see more of Mikey and Casey and a hunger to see more of what was at stake in the first issue," senior group editor Jake Thomas comments. "As we're building up to the big Arc 3, we felt like there needed to be something before that where we check in, remind readers where this came from, and what this means."
That appetite for the Roninverse has not dwindled since its inception. To date, publisher IDW collectively sold more than 2.5 million comics and graphic novels, EW has confirmed. It's something the creators are still coming to terms with.
"I use the word 'humbling' a lot, and it is quite humbling in every sense of the word," Eastman comments.
Waltz shares how he took his daughter into a Barnes & Noble the other day and found Funko Pops of the new Turtles they created for The Last Ronin decorating the graphic novel section. "That could've blown up in all our faces," he says. "People could've just absolutely hated them, and it's been the opposite."
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| Cover art for 'The Last Ronin — Training Day'. | IDW Dark |
And there's even more Last Ronin on the way. In terms of the Part 3 comic sequel, Eastman goes back to Waltz's Star Wars reference. Referencing Return of the Jedi and even Return of the King from The Lord of the Rings, the idea is "to set up a trilogy," he teases.
And in terms of that movie, Eastman is more hopeful for where things could go than perhaps the fans are at this point. "I don't think the movie's off the table," he says. "I think it's just delayed."
Eastman acknowledges Skydance's purchase of Paramount, Hollywood's home of the Turtles, and the transitional period the studio is currently in.
"Speaking with all the folks at Viacom and Paramount and Nickelodeon who love the Turtles and really have done a fantastic job, whether it be the 2012 series to Mutant Mayhem, I don't think it will not happen," Eastman continues. "I think it will happen. One of the things that anybody I've talked to at the companies, they know the fans love and support all things Last Ronin, as much as another group of fans love everything Point Grey [Pictures, production company], Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, everybody's done with the whole Mutant Mayhem series. We're not disheartened at all."
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