Review: TMNT: The Last Ronin #4 (of 5)

TMNT: The Last Ronin #4 has some of the best art seen in comics. Featuring Kevin Eastman on layouts and pencils by Esau and Isaac Escoza shows more creativity and depth in each panel than most books show across an entire series.

It is so amazing that it’s almost worth owning just to be able to flip through the massive, beautiful pages. Unfortunately the story itself is something to be suffered through. Watching Mikey, or Mike as he calls himself here, deal with life without his family is interesting. Having to flashback through the details of each teammates fall is painful.

There is nothing interesting about watching the deaths of our heroes one by one. There is no need for it from a story-telling perspective. We get that the new enemy warriors are ruthless. We get that the heroes tried their best to battle them but failed. We get that the experience haunts Mike. It’s now issue four and we still have barely made a dent into how our Last Ronin is moving past this.

We get hints of this as Mikey helps train April’s daughter Casey but honestly don’t get much beyond him becoming a mentor. The action is amazing, the art is some of the best in modern comics, but the story is just bland and repetitive.

Each sequence is full of different forms of art and create an amazing whole, but the story would have done better to just focus on Mikey’s fight with Hiroto and Baxter Stockman. The massive battle and seeing him take on the mouser army is the least artistic but most memorable part of the book. Unfortunately next issue is the last and this series has still only scratched the surface of its artistic and story-telling potential.

Writing: 2 of 5 stars
Art: 4.9 of 5 stars
Colors: 4.6 of 5 stars

Overall: 3.8 of 5 stars

Writing: Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Peter Laird
Art: Kevin Eastman, Easu and Isaac Escorza, Ben Bishop
Colors: Luis Antonio Delgado, Samuel Plata
Publisher: IDW Publishing

Author Profile

M.R. Jafri

M.R. Jafri was born and raised in Niagara Falls New York and now lives with his family in Detroit Michigan. He's a talkative introvert and argumentative geek. His loves include Star Wars, Star Trek, Superheroes, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Transformers, GI Joe, Films, Comics, TV Shows, Action Figures and Twizzlers.