There’s never been an easier time to get into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics

Adding this element to the lore enriched the stories of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by adding in more mystical elements. Combined with the sci-fi and action-oriented storytelling that had always been there, it allowed this particular version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to endure longer than any other incarnation of the characters. Even today, 15 years later, this same TMNT continuity is still pumping out new stories.

That said, catching up on any long-running comic can be intimidating. People think that, to read anything you have to read everything, which is generally one of the biggest barriers to entry for getting into comics. Fortunately, some recent moves by IDW and a monster-sized upcoming release make now an especially good time to get into TMNT comics without having to do too much homework.

After 150 issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, IDW decided to roll out a “soft reboot” in 2024 by releasing a new issue number 1. While this restart didn’t erase the continuity, new writer Jason Aaron told a story that didn’t require any knowledge of what came before. It focused on the Turtles who had gone off in different directions after a family break-up and the arc was all about them reuniting in the end. Aaron’s run lasted for 12 issues and saw the series sell more than it had in years.

Then, starting with number 13 this past December, writer Gene Luen Yang was paired with prolific artist Freddie E. Williams II (who has extensive history with the franchise) to begin another new arc. Once again, this story doesn’t require homework as the now-reunited Turtles are again a functioning team. After Aaron's darker run, Yang’s Turtles are a bit lighter and have the brotherly banter that is the hallmark of the franchise and makes the characters feel relatable.

“The four Turtles are archetypes and I think that's why they're so resonant: we all recognize them from our own lives,” Yang tells Polygon via Zoom. “We all have a Raphael in our lives. We all have a Donatello and a Leonardo and a Michelangelo. The archetypical nature of them comes out best when they're interacting with each other as a family."

At the end of Jason Aaron’s run, he revealed that Splinter, the sensei and father of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, had returned to the land of the living after dying back in 2019 with issue number 100. While it wasn’t Yang’s decision to bring Splinter back, it's up to him to figure out the why and the how.

To justify Splinter’s resurrection, Yang looked inward.

“I leaned into the fact that Splinter is a father, and my own experiences as a dad of four children,” he says. “One thing I really wrestle with is fear. As a father, I just constantly worry about the safety of my own kids. At some point, we talked about how, in the afterlife, maybe Splinter gets a glimpse of his kids' futures and maybe those futures are not so great.”

This motivates Splinter to return to his sons, but with a surprising twist. He’s now taken on an alter ego as the ruthless vigilante Ujigami, who goes after the enemies of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, forcing the heroes to defend their own rogue’s gallery.

“We wanted some kind of tension between the brothers and their father, and we thought that this would be a natural way for that to happen,” says Yang. “Splinter’s fatherly instinct, taken to an extreme, would make him into something of a villain.”

As for Splinter’s new alias, Yang explains that “Ujigami, within Japanese mythology, is a protector spirit over a family.”

While, obviously, I’m giving away some spoilers here, all you really needed to know going into issue number 13 is that Splinter was dead. Beyond that, while the new comic brings back some of the resurrection themes that launched the series, it acts as a standalone story. And, with issue number 15 going on sale Feb. 11, there’s really only three issues to catch up on. (Or if you want to take it a step farther, going back to number 1 in Jason Aaron’s run isn’t too hard either.)

But 15 issues of a comic book can be caught up on in one weekend — a blissfully ideal weekend by my definition — so what happens if you get hooked and want to explore this universe from the beginning? Tom Waltz, the writer of the first 100 issues of IDW’s run, was on the same Zoom call with Yang and offered an exciting answer.

“With Jason Aaron’s run and now with Gene’s, a lot of people are curious about how we got to where we're at, so IDW is releasing these big compendiums of the first 150 issues, 50 issues at a time,” Waltz says. “There'll be three of them.”

The first compendium, containing issue number 1 through issue number 50, arrives on May 5 for just $59.99, which comes out to about a dollar an issue. In it, the Turtles go on all sorts of wild adventures, from the streets of New York City to outer space to other, more mystical realms. The centerpoint though, at least for Waltz’s first 100 issues, is the same one that is driving Yang’s story right now: Master Splinter.

“When I was writing the Turtles, I found that, if you stick with it long enough, then you kind of leave the Turtles behind and you become Splinter,” Waltz says. “You kind of oversee the Turtles as a dad. In my case, that's who I relate to the most now, which is something I didn’t realize until I was getting close to issue number 100, when I knew Splinter was going to die. That’s when I realized that I’d been writing Splinter’s story that whole time.”