Last year, when I interviewed the creative team behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, talk turned to the sequel, Re-Evolution. Co-writer Tom Waltz dropped a very intriguing nugget that stuck with me. “One question on the panel, and one very good one, is “Why would April play God and create new Turtles?” We’ll explore that, the ethics of that and why she did that as a scientist.” he said. “There will be a purpose to all this.”
That purpose starts to unfurl itself in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin II – Re-Evolution #2, appropriately titled “Playing God.” The new generation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have their first real fight cut short when one of their members, Odyn, suffers a seizure. Wracked with guilt, Casey Marie Jones takes the teenagers back to her lair, where she learns that the mayor of New York intends to crack down hard on her and other vigilantes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, April O’Neil is dealing with the fallout of her choice to make a new generation of mutant turtles.
Waltz and Kevin Eastman spend the bulk of the issue detailing a debate between April and Zayton Honeycutt, aka the Fugitoid; this debate asks the question “was it really a coincidence that the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles happened to be in a spot where they’d get drenched with radioactive ooze?” This isn’t the first time they’ve tackled this kind of question before, with IDW’s 2011 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles revealing mystical underpinnings to the tried-and-true origin. But there are also moral questions raised, including the armor-piercing one that’s left lingering: did April make new Turtles to fill the void when she lost the old ones?
Throughout Re-Evolution #2, Issac and Esau Escorza continue to deliver the same gritty, yet futuristic style of artwork that shaped the world of The Last Ronin. It’s present in the vehicles used by police and resistance fighters, in the small but blocky devices that take the place of cell phones, and even in the masks the new Turtles don. Ben Bishop steps in to illustrate the April/Fugitoid conversation, placing the two in a solid steel lab that colorist Luis Antonio Delgado drenches in a sterile blue light. It has the unintended effect of making the Fugitoid’s holographic presence even more unsettling; he looks like a Skynet-approved version of the Wizard of Oz.
While the creative team hasn’t lost their luster, Re-Evolution hits one of the same snags its predecessor did: namely, the shipping. I understand that schedules can change, but those delays can affect the momentum of the storytelling – especially when an issue ends on a massive cliffhanger like this one does. Hopefully the rest of the issues come out and keep readers invested, as the world of The Last Ronin continues to surprise at every turn.
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