TMNT Co-creator Kevin Eastman On Why The Last Ronin Is Being Made Into A Game [Video]

In 1987, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird developed a storyline for their creation that never came to fruition. Titled “The Last Ronin,” Eastman and Laird envisioned it as the final Turtles story set 30 years in the future. While Eastman and Laird never got around to creating that storyline in the original run of their comics under their company Mirage Studios, the idea stuck with Eastman through the years, and decades later, as part of the franchise’s new life with IDW Publishing, he worked with his longtime collaborator Tom Waltz to bring the idea to the pages of a five-issue miniseries that ran from 2020 to 2022.

The story is bleak and gritty, establishing a universe where the four beloved brothers have been taken out one by one. It’s set in an alternate future where New York has been ravaged by constant battles under the …