Grab a piping-hot slice of ‘za and read our review for the Leonardo-led Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #3!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #3
Written by: Jason Aaron
Art and Main Cover by: Cliff Chiang
Variant Covers: Danny Earls, Kevin Eastman, J. Gonzo, Darick Robertson, Lee Bermejo, Lee Weeks, Alexis Ziritt, Rob Broussard, David Nakayama
Page Count: 28 pages
Release Date: October 23, 2024
We’re three months into IDW’s new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series – a “getting the band back together” story with a revolving door of in-demand artists. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #3, Leonardo ventures to India to protect snapping turtles from poachers. The results are in for writer Jason Aaron’s experimental take: can isolated Ninja Turtle stories work under the same umbrella? Shell yeah!
IDW’s bold strategy is especially effective because they lean into what makes these characters unique as individuals, pairing them with an assigned artist’s own unique style. Let’s take a step back into the classroom; remember your parts of speech? In school, prepositions [the relationship between one noun/pronoun and another] were explained to me with an analogy: you’re walking through a forest when suddenly you find a felled tree in your path. You can dig UNDER it, you can climb OVER it, or maybe you can even bash THROUGH it. What does this have to do with reptile warriors? Well, the true mark of one’s character is how they live their life; not what they say but what they DO. For engaging fiction, characters must DO something, and the way they go about DOing it reveals their true self.
At the onset, the Hamato brothers have the same metaphorical tree in their path – the disbanding of their clan. How do they continue on their own, and what does that approach say about them? In prison, the righteous Raphael fights anyone who looks at him, just to expel his anger and pain. On a soundstage in Tokyo, Michelangelo wears the mask of a toothy smile and distracts himself with glamour and fame. Leonardo, the most level-headed and self-serious, journeys to the banks of the Ganges River… to meditate.
The de facto team leader without a team to lead, Leonardo spends months living on the shore, kept quiet company by his unmutated cousins, journeying inward. But much the same way they attacked his estranged brothers, the murderous Foot Clan ambushes Leo and bursts his transcendent bubble. Oh well, that’s the life of a crime fighter. So how does Leonardo cross this new tree in his path? I’ll give you a hint: with a sharp blade and a sharper mind!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #3 stands out from the previous entries as much as its protagonists do, thanks to the brilliant Cliff Chiang (Paper Girls, Catwoman: The Lonely City). Chiang defines his digital work with firm, thick ink lines and a tetratic color palette. Somehow his spirited style fits the pleasant turtle-burdened beach setting just as much as the later danger of the dusk-lurking Foot Clan. On that note, his occasional foray into jarring primary hues serves as a lever from representational art to expressionism – a focus on feeling, not facts.
The Ninja Turtles are almost whole once more, but they’re still missing one piece of the puzzle. Issue #3 makes us yearn for #4 – we’ll see you at the family reunion next month!
