Stemming from a lost 1987 storyline by TMNT co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the highly anticipated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin will be available in the summer of 2020.

The oversized five-issue miniseries is set in a future New York City that is fairly different from ours where a lone surviving Turtle seeks justice for his fallen family and friends. It features layouts by Eastman, a script by longtime TMNT writer Tom Waltz, and inks by Andy Kuhn.

“About ten years ago, I rediscovered a 20-page outline for a TMNT story that Peter and I wrote together back in 1987. The story was set 30 years in the future, which (as written then) was set in 2017. Reading through it again, I drifted back to a very different time in TMNT history – back when it was all about the comics, mostly just Peter and I writing and drawing the issues, pre-everything the world would soon come to know about these characters that we’d created and called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Eastman said.

“It has been an incredible 36-year journey, thanks to the brilliant talents of so many that brought new visions and TMNT stories to life, and especially the fans who supported all of them. Nine years ago, I was invited back into the TMNT comic universe, via my friends at IDW Publishing. Aside from the original run with my friend and co-creator Peter Laird, working on the IDW TMNT universe has been the best time I have had with the Turtles for a very, very long time.

“A little over a year ago, as the ongoing series headed towards issue 100, I showed a rough revised and updated version of the story outline (now set in the year 2040) to Tom Waltz, who equally fell in love with the possibilities of it. The Last Ronin is a heartfelt love poem to all the TMNT universes of the past, and offers up an intense look at one possible future – firmly based on and adapted from an original 33-year-old idea, from the original creators,” Eastman said. “Trust me – Tom, Andy, and I have just started on a two-hundred page journey… and it is going to be one hell of a ride…”

“When Kevin first showed me the outline that he and Peter had created back in the ’80s, I was gobsmacked,” Waltz said. “Beyond Peter Laird’s eerily prescient technological and sociological predictions, the story idea itself was exciting and versatile, designed in a way that it could be easily modified to fit into the many different TMNT iterations that have existed over the years, without losing any of the core elements injected into it by both Kevin and Peter. I have the absolute honor to join these legendary creators to craft a TMNT story set in a chaotic future, rife with revenge, honor, tragedy, hope, and over the top ninja-action sequences that’ll blow any Turtles fan’s mind, no matter what version of the beloved franchise is their favorite.”

“After hitting TMNT #100 last year, we were interested in doing something even larger in scope and also something that really plays to everyone’s strengths,” editor Bobby Curnow said. “The Last Ronin is that project: the future New York we’re building is a perfect place for Tom’s immersive world-building and characterization, and Andy’s art is more innovative and engaging than we’ve ever seen. This is Kevin and Peter’s vision, but the entire team is making it their own and that’s really exciting to see.”

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #1 will have multiple cover variants, including cover A by Eastman and two retailer incentive editions by Eastman and Mateus Santolouco (TMNT: Shredder in Hell). Each of the five issues will be 48 pages long and in a 7-1/2” x 11” trim size.