‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Is 40 — And Somehow Bigger Than Ever

It takes a lot of work to keep a franchise alive for decades, and nobody knows this better than the co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kevin Eastman. For 40 years, Eastman has shepherded the IP that he and co-writer Peter Laird launched back in 1984, although there’s been ups and downs. Under their company, Mirage Studios, the duo famously self-published TMNT as an independent comic after being rejected by big names like Marvel and DC, and helped kickstart a movement of grassroots, creator-led books that would become big in the Nineties.

After its explosion in pop culture with animated series, live-action movies, and an endless stream of toy lines, the initial wave of “turtlemania” ultimately died down in the late 1990s, with both Eastman and Laird eventually stepping away from creative oversight at different intervals, although the Ninja Turtles never really went away. The franchise remained in flux, reborn in various adaptations and series, but found its footing again after being purchased by Nickelodeon in 2009, leading to a 2011 relaunch of TMNT comics under IDW Publishing that has since dawned a second golden age for the heroes in a half-shell.

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Now celebrating their 40th anniversary, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are here in a big way. Since relaunching with the 2011 mainline book, whose 150-issue run recently concluded, kicked off the TMNT renaissance that’s led to multiple spin-off and crossover comics, a hugely successful animated film (Mutant Mayhem, 2023) from writers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, and even a return to video games with acclaimed titles like Shredder’s Revenge (2022) and Splintered Fate (2024). In 2024 alone, more than two million TMNT comics were sold — with the newest title, a relaunch of IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flagship series that starts fresh from issue number one while following previous continuity — selling over 300 thousand issues, making it the biggest comic book launch of the year.

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With both a new creative direction for the OG series, as well as an entirely new cast of characters carrying on the mantle in tandem with The Last Ronin II, the potential for new TMNT stories that defy audience expectations appears vast. The franchise has been reinvented countless times over the last 40 years and is just now reaching what seems to be a second apex.

According to writer Jason Aaron (Thor: God of Thunder), who’s leading the franchise’s relaunch (TMNT “Volume II”), the key to its longevity is honoring the heart of the series that’s kept fans old and new showing up across generations, without letting that legacy become a crutch. “Never let go of the literal, tangible comic,” Aaron says. “It’s never letting go of what brought you to the part in the first place, but at the same time not being beholden to that, and not just picking the bones of those great stories from the past.”

Yet to remain in the public psyche for so many years, there must be a throughline — how else could a concept that feels thoroughly ripped straight from the Eighties still be thriving today? Rolling Stone recently spoke with Eastman and Aaron to discuss why the Ninja Turtles have such longevity, and where the franchise goes from here.

The underground soul

Despite what decades worth of merchandising would imply, the very concept of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began as something countercultural. Having pitched their idea to Marvel and DC — then the zenith of all things comics — Eastman and Laird were left disillusioned by the business of mainstream publishing. Beginning as an homage to Eighties action movies and Frank Miller’s seminal work on Daredevil, the TMNT embodied the underdog spirit of super heroics, while blending many of the themes that made characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men so popular with young readers.

“We took that Peter Parker aspect that we loved,” Eastman says. “‘I’m a teenager. I just want to be a teenager, but I have these powers, and when the forces of evil raise their head and need to be dealt with, I’ll deal with them. Even though I really need to be doing my homework. And one of the things that I loved about mutant comics, X-Men or New Mutant was the misfit aspect. Rolling that all up into a concept [with] those kinds of elements, it was something very different.”

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Unlike the cartoons that would quickly define the tone of the turtles in popular media, the original 1984-1993 Mirage run of the comics were undeniably gritty, and often poignant. With a raw, unpolished aesthetic, the early black and white illustrations were a stark contrast to what was being done in the industry at the time, featuring long stretches of dialogue-free action punctuated with more somber moments.

The stories were often subdued — even melancholy — despite centering around a group of martial arts mutants, and emphasized the humanity of the turtles, who were struggling with finding their own identities in a world that didn’t want them. Under the weight of immense responsibility both as protectors of New York and unwilling participants in a blood feud with the Foot Clan, the turtles were portrayed as teenagers forced to grow up too fast.

There was a kind of fearlessness to the writing in the early days that stood apart from mainstream offerings. For Eastman and Laird, it wasn’t about targeting any audience other than themselves. “Pete and I wrote these stories for us,” Eastman says. “We weren’t trying to create something manufactured for a specific type of audience, because we were that audience; we wrote something that we wanted to read and what we enjoyed and loved. The first issue of the turtles was a massive love poem to all the things we grew up with and loved about comics.”

Jason Aaron, 51, was just a kid when he came across TMNT. Growing up in a small town in Alabama, he says he spent his childhood playing in the woods, making up fantasy sagas in his head, which later he carried over into his writing. The TMNT arrived right at that pivotal moment and became a part of his creative consciousness. “[TMNT was] this sort of grungy, gritty, black and white book that felt very punk rock,” Aaron says. “And it was just two dudes who, nobody else wanted their idea. So, they were like, ‘Let’s just do it ourselves.’”

“People talk about the Sex Pistols,” Aaron adds, “and how everybody who went to see [them] in the late Seventies went out and started their own band. I think there’s something to the turtles where it felt so DIY — anybody can do this.”

A family dynamic

A huge part of the mass appeal of the TMNT hinges on its characters, each with their own individual outlooks and personality traits. Leonardo is militaristic in his focus and poise, while Michelangelo is more of a free-spirited goof. Donatello is introverted and analytically-minded, whereas Raphael is impulsive and hard-headed, often to the detriment of the team. Together, they create a powerful dynamic mined from simple parts. Together or solo, there’s personal archetypes and themes that everyone can identify with.

Eastman points toward the “outcast” mentality, something shared in books like X-Men or New Mutants. But one key aspect that is rarer in many other superhero stories is the family dynamic, a framework that TMNT shares with just a handful of other big examples, namely The Fantastic Four. “Each had individual powers and strengths and interests, and they would bicker, not always agree,” Eastman says. “But when they came together as a team or a family, they were stronger.”

The idea of found family pops up in all kinds of comics, but there’s a difference between pulling together a bunch of characters with opposing perspectives for a team-up and writing a group that is, at its core, a cohesive unit. To Aaron, who’s written just about every kind of superhero mashup, there’s a clear line. Aaron mentions Star Wars, a comic he wrote from 2015 to 2017, as being similar, saying that while it’s “technically” a team book, it’s also about a happily dysfunctional family. “When I was working on Star Wars, and looking at that first film, the heart of us falling in love with those characters was watching how they rubbed each other the wrong way,” he says. “I think the turtles are very much like that.”

“In my experience, team books are a challenge,” Aaron adds. “Writing The Avengers, writing the X-Men is a challenge. When you’ve got all these different big [personalities] and are trying to give everybody their moments, that’s always a bit of [that]. But writing families, to me, feels different.”

Eastman thinks that the family dynamic is key, but it’s also about how each reader clicks with a certain character. “They were of no specific race, creed, or color,” he says. “Fans of [any] descent can imagine themselves as these characters. I would often ask fans that come up, ‘Who’s your favorite turtle and why?’ You can tell a lot about a person’s personality by their favorite turtle.”

“I’ve heard more over the last couple of years [is] people saying things like, ‘When I first found the turtles, my favorite was Michelangelo, I was six. As I got older, I really gravitated more toward Lenardo. I’m more like Donatello, as opposed to Raphael.’ The ones that are fans of Raphael usually stay fans of Raphael,” Aaron says. “You know their turtle resonates so deeply with them. It always comes down to that. If you don’t care about these characters on a human, emotional level, then ultimately it doesn’t matter. No amount of punching and ninja flips [will] keep the property alive for 40 years if you don’t really feel invested in who these people are.”

Both writers have been pressed by fans who ask them to divulge their personal favorite of the turtles, but it’s tough for them to say. Eastman says that they each embodied different aspects of the writers early on, but he admits that’s keen on writing for one in particular.

“Raphael has always been one my favorite characters to write because he was more unpredictable than the others,” Eastman says. “You could really take him places and do things that you couldn’t with the others, which was why, with the first turtle one-shot Raphael (1985) — the introduction of their human ally Casey Jones — I always felt that was a character for the first time meeting [someone else] that was as crazy or crazier than he [Raphael] was. To me, they felt like two crazy cousins, because when they weren’t beating up bad guys, they were beating each other up.”

Eastman identifies most closely with Raphael and Jones, but has a special affinity for the latter, who he says shares a likeness with another big Eighties icon, Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton from John Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek martial arts classic Big Trouble in Little China. “I’ve never written Casey without thinking, ‘What would Jack Burton do?’”

The next generation

To their credit, the creators of the TMNT have never been shy about bringing in other voices to steer the ship. After their initial run on the comics, the pair stepped back for other writers to take over the day-to-day creative while they managed the rapidly expanding IP.

That spirit of collaboration continued after Nickelodeon’s acquired the brand in 2009, which led to Eastman’s work with lead writer Tom Walz for 100 issues of IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 2011 to 2019. Eastman and Walz then passed the torch to writer Sophie Campbell for the remainder of the series, concluding with 2024’s issue 150. Now, Jason Aaron has picked up the mantle with the relaunch, beginning with an all-new issue one.

Aaron’s run began in June and has included five issues total, with a sixth on the way in January 2025. The series has been yet another milestone for the TMNT, with the first issue selling over 300 thousand copies, making it the biggest comics launch of the year.

For his take on the TMNT, Aaron wanted to remain in the ongoing continuity, which allowed him to pick up with the characters after they’ve already lived through their teenaged years. “They’re at a point where they’ve started to go in four different directions,” Aaron says. “Initially, I pictured them sort of like The Beatles around Abbey Road, where it looks like these four dudes are from four different bands, but they’re somehow still trying to come back together and figure out, ‘How do we make this work in the way that it used to, even though we’re all different and [being] pulled apart?’”

Going back to a structure that was introduced early on by Eastman and Laird, and later seen in the IDW series, Aaron’s run kicks off with individual one-shots that serve as an introduction (or re-introduction) to each of the turtles, all illustrated by different artists that give each tale its own distinct tone.

And although he was consulted on the new volume, Eastman isn’t directly overseeing its creative direction. Instead, he’s working on what could someday be considered his defining work, co-writing with Tom Walz on the “Ronin-verse” series that’s become a beast of its own. Based on an idea that Eastman and Laird had in the late Eighties, The Last Ronin is conceptually similar to stories like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986) or the movie Logan (2017), depicting a tragic vision of the Ninja Turtles’ final days.

When it launched in 2020, The Last Ronin was a shock to readers. How could you possibly kill the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Well, pretty gruesomely, but not without the deft emotional touch that marks the best of TMNT. As revealed in its first issue, the story of The Last Ronin revolves around Michelangelo, the sole survivor of the group who has spent roughly 17 years preparing to avenge the deaths of his family and friends at the hands of the Foot Clan. It’s dark stuff, but aligns perfectly with the vision and aesthetic of the original Mirage comics, to which it’s a spiritual sequel.

After expanding beyond the initial miniseries with a hybrid prequel-sequel called The Lost Years (2022 to 2023), the now-called “Ronin-verse” continued in 2024 with The Last Ronin II: Re-Evolution, which follows a new generation of mutant turtles ascending in the wake of Michelangelo’s absolution. The new turtles — Uno, Obyn, Moja, and Yi — are very different from the originals, each having their own individual designs and abilities (as well as being a mix of brothers and sisters this time around). Their origins and early trials are more complex than what their predecessors had to deal with back in 1984, revolving around their dubious creation at the hands of now-elderly April O’Neil, playing god.

Soon to become both a live-action movie and a video game, The Last Ronin has taken on a life of its own among TMNT mythos. And although it was always intended as the end for the TMNT, the concept evolved over time as Walz and Eastman continued writing, leading to the creation of the new family. “It was to be the final story. It was to end the feud, stop the war, the hate, the violence that was based on this blood feud,” Eastman says. “That led to some of the longest discussions about The Last Ronin II: Re-Evolution, not recreating the blood feud; we’ve closed that door. Let’s put it behind us, but find a new purpose and a new goal, and something that — as you and I, and anybody today is still trying to — find that place and space to do the right thing. To fight the good fight.”