Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2024] #12 - IDW Publishing

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES No. 12, October 2025

For those readers who have successfully navigated the debatable ups and downs of Jason Aaron’s year-long narrative for “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, this ongoing series’ twelfth instalment probably proved a bit of an anti-climax to the Alabama-born author’s lengthy storyline. Indeed, considering that a heavily mutilated District Attorney Hale is well and truly defeated just half-way through the twenty-two page periodical, this comic’s ambience genuinely smacks of its creative team simply just wanting the book to be over; “They said they had something important they needed to handle. Just the four of them.”

So disappointing an atmosphere is arguably best seen by the still bickering titular quartet supposedly finally setting aside their differences so as to conjure up a monstrous four-armed turtle spirit, whose ghostly presence in the night sky indicates that the ‘heroes in a half shell’ are once again fully committed brothers-in-arms. Unfortunately, none of this co-operative temperament is actually on show as Raphael continues to angrily ignore Donatello’s plea for a short-loved meeting of minds, Michelangelo repeatedly bad-mouths his fellow fighters, and Leonardo is once again hurled into the action, so his fellow siblings don’t have to listen to him anymore.

Admittedly, this sequence does show the main cast somewhat working together – especially when they employ the aforementioned Leo fastball special. But they simply don’t appear to be any more at peace in one another’s company as they were when they first begrudgingly came back together to fight the injustices overshadowing the Big Apple several issues past, and yet the audience are suddenly told to trust Donny when he conveniently claims “We did it. We fought our way home.”

Perhaps this book’s biggest head-scratcher though is at its very end, when artist Juan Ferreyra has to pencil the dead Master Splinter momentarily appearing before his 'children' during a sewer-based séance. Initially, it appears that the humanoid rodent is about to make some story-stopping proclamation, or perhaps even step back into the physical world from beyond the grave. However, instead Aaron decides to have the Sensei shockingly reform in the secret headquarters of “Jonin of the Foot Clan” after the sorceress has unsuccessfully tried “to pillage the secrets of the Afterlife, the Yomi-No-Kuni!” without any sort of rhyme or reason whatsoever.

The regular cover art to "TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES" #12 by Jorge Fornes