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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may have begun life with Daredevil but they’re ending their journey with Batman. While the TMNT are more widely known for the lighthearted and often goofy ’80s cartoon, the turtles first debuted as a parody of Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil. They even got their mutation from the same ooze that gave Daredevil powers. Given their roots, it’s no surprise then that TMNT: The Last Ronin is a riff on Frank Miller’s most famous work, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
The Turtle’s darkest future comes courtesy of original TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird along with writer Tom Waltz and artists Esau and Isaac Escorza. Last Ronin’s similarities to The Dark Knight Returns initially appear only surface deep. Both take characters previously known for more lighthearted adventures and puts them in a dystopian future where they’ve lost the people who matter most to them. The last remaining turtule, Mikey, has lost his brothers and father, while Bruce has lost Dick Grayson and Alfred. Additionally, both bad futures feature mega-cities infused with more than a hint of cyberpunk. Though these similarities are superficial, the real strength of The Last Ronin is what it takes from The Dark Knight Returns’ themes.
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The most obvious thing the two stories share is their goal. It might be difficult to believe now, but Batman was thought of as an incredibly goofy character for much of his life. Even though comic legend Dennis O’Neil had brought grit and crime back to the Caped Crusader in the late ’70s and early ’80s, public perception of the hero was still dominated by the Adam West T.V. adaptation. Though the major changes in perception came with Tim Burton’s 1989 film and the critically acclaimed Batman animated series, the seeds for those darker takes were planted by The Dark Knight Returns. It’s not too far off to suggest the TMNT have been in a similar boat for some time. There have been plenty of dark Ninja Turtles stories over their decades of relevance, but most people still associate them with the wide-eyed, pizza-loving goofballs who dominated the ’80s. Last Ronin completely flips the script on that.
On a deeper thematic level, both stories are about accepting age and loss. One of Bruce’s biggest conflicts in The Dark Knight Returns is trying to compensate for his aging body. Bruce’s mind might be his greatest tool, but Batman needs his body. Michaelangelo on the other hand isn’t experiencing physical deterioration, but mental rot. He states that his brain is foggy and he is constantly haunted by hallucinations of his three dead brothers. Though their experiences are different in many ways, Bruce and Mikey’s decline is meant to show the cost of their violent lives.
While these similarities are general enough that it’s entirely possible for them to be coincidental, it’s telling that these references come as Eastman and Laird reunite to the pop-culture phenomenon they started almost thirty years ago. There’s something poetic about the duo returning to their roots by riffing on another Frank Miller series. Whether intentional or not, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is doing for the turtles what The Dark Knight Returns did for Batman.
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