Via The Hollywood Reporter, IDW Publishing has announced the main Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series will have a new creative team, beginning with issue #13 this December: writer Gene Luen Yang, and artist Freddie E. Williams II. The pair will take over from Jason Aaron and Juan Ferrerya, who relaunched the series (along with several other artists) during the turtles’ 40th anniversary last year. Little was said about the premise of their run, although it will see the reunited brothers face off against the new assassin Ujigami, who poses a “personal danger” to the four heroes.
In a statement, Yang described himself as a childhood fan of the turtles, who grew up watching the 1980s cartoon and playing with the action figures. He said he first read the comic at a friend’s house, and was “blown away by the melding of gritty martial arts action and wild, out-of-left-field ideas.” He elaborates, “All of us from that [independent] corner of comics owe a huge debt to [TMNT creators] Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Their talent and creativity, both as comics creators and as businessmen, carved out a path for the rest of us to follow. In fact, the very first comic I ever self-published was funded by a grant from Peter Laird’s Xeric Foundation.”
Unlike Yang, who is working on TMNT and at IDW for the first time, Williams is no newcomer to creating the turtles’ comics, having penciled the crossovers Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2015-2019) and Masters of the Universe/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024), as well as various covers and other spin-offs; however, this marks the first time he has provided the interior art for the main series. He adds, “I love the Ninja Turtles, the original Mirage comics were instrumental in making me fall in love with the comic book medium. And, of course I am super inspired by the power and texture in that early Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird art!”
Issue #13 will be released on December 10, with a main cover by Williams, and a variant by Dustin Nguyen (which you can look at below). A blind bag variant, featuring covers by creators like Daniel Warren Johnson, David Nakayama, and Clayton Crain, will also be available. Aaron and Ferrerya’s run will conclude in the meantime with issue #12 on September 24.
