Spoilers for TMNT #12 now available

Last year, IDW Publishing relaunched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles title with writer Jason Aaron. It’s been both a critical and commercial success with the first issue. With the release of the TMNT #12 today, Aaron along with artist Juan Ferreyra are bidding adieu to the Heroes in the Half Shell with a new creative team of writer Gene Luen Yang and Freddie E. Williams set to take over the book with issue #13 in December.

It’s no exaggeration that IDW hyping up the first issue of the new creative team with a blind bag variant promotion already resulting in 100K in orders. It just goes to show with the right strategy, publishers don’t necessarily have to constantly relaunch titles with #1 issues every few years.   

Despite the penchant of certain sites (namely Bleeding Cool) to leak spoilers days ahead of comic releases, it seems they’ve actually refrained from spoiling the last page of TMNT #12. 

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Master Splinter is back! After much speculation, the Turtles’ sensei has returned to life thanks to a mystic ceremony performed by Karai, Shredder’s granddaughter and current leader of the Foot Clan. Throughout Aaron’s run, Splinter has been spiritually communicating with his sons but now has returned to the land of the living. 

As fans are well aware, back in 2020 Splinter sacrificed his life in TMNT #100 in order to resurrect perennial foe Oroku Saki aka the Shredder and save the world in the process. This isn’t the first time Splinter has died. Most notably, in the 2012 Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Splinter was killed in the fourth season.  

It goes without saying that both IDW and the new TMNT creative team will remain tight-lipped in regards to Splinter’s return and will no doubt launch fan speculation. In fact, it’s entirely possible that Splinter’s new role for the TMNT has been staring fans in the face the whole time with the tease of a brand new villain known as Ujigami. Though a variant cover has revealed an early glimpse of Ujigami, much is still unknown about the character. Based on the limited information available, most notably the character’s martial arts prowess and four fingers on each hand, there’s enough credence to hypothesize that Ujigami is in fact Splinter in disguise under the thrall of Karai.