Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2024] #8 - IDW Publishing

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES No. 8, April 2025

Largely focusing upon Leonardo’s misery following his inability to save a colony of soft-bellied reptiles from the Ganges River, this comic’s plot will doubtless cause many a bibliophile to wonder whether Jason Aaron actually intended to pen “the leader and strategist of the turtles” as being quite as disagreeably insufferable as he appears. True, the katanas-wielding warrior does eventually see the error of his ways, and resultantly deeply regrets attacking Donatello on an apartment block’s roof. But for some readers this regret may well come a little too late to ever care for the supposedly “most mature and disciplined” of Splinter’s students again.

Indeed, quite a considerable portion of this twenty-two page periodical appears to go to great lengths to show the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as an easily dislikeable, incessantly argumentative and dysfunctional quartet – with only a clearly emaciated Donnie, who repeatedly hears the voice of their dead master in his head, apparently being the sole sane one. So dark an atmosphere really does make for a depressingly grim reading experience, and without any of the titular characters’ famous wisecracks and humorous exchanges, soon begins to grind upon the senses.

Far less disheartening, and much more intriguing, is April O'Neil’s investigation into the possibility of the Big Apple’s rat population coming together so as to form some sort of gestalt intelligence. Whether or not the vermin are being ushered together by the spirit of Splinter is not revealed. However, the possibility of the dead Sensei returning from his grave in some manner is enticingly dangled in front of the audience – and really seems to gain extra weight when Leonardo realises that the night-time crying he has head coming from Donatello’s corner is actually emanating from the corpse of a long dead sewer rat; “All right, master… I… I’m listening.”

Also far more engrossing than the heroes' endless loop of boisterous bickering are Juan Ferreyra’s layouts, which definitely bring a sizeable amount of much needed energy to this publication’s proceedings. Of particular note has to be the Turtles’ battle against a train load of Foot Clan ninjas on a New York City underground tube, as this adrenalin-fuelled sequence really gives the artist a chance to show off how well he can sketch the deadly, acrobatic skills of Leo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The regular cover art to "TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES" #8 by Jorge Fornes