After the original 62-issue run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mirage continued the series with a new #1 in 1993 and it ran for 13 issues in total. This 13-issue run by TMNT veteran Jim Lawson is now known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vol. 2.
Picking up after the events of “City At War", Donatello and Splinter recuperate in Northampton while the rest of the Turtles are in New York City with April. Meanwhile, Baxter Stockman wreaks havoc in the desert at a top-secret D.A.R.P.A. facility. As the family drifts apart a killer robot controlled by Stockman has April in its sights and the boys have to come together to fight it off!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Mirage Years (1993-1995) by Jim Lawson will be published on February 18, 2025. IDW Publishing provided an early galley for review.
I remember when the Turtles came on the comic scene, but at the time I was not very into independents. While I was dabbling a bit more in that space when this run came out in the early to mid-90's, it still did not hit my radar. Looking at it now, though, I can see why this was a popular series. There is a charm to it with its storyboard approach to the narrative and its often utilization of dialogue-less pages (letting the artwork do all the talking). That is something that can be missing in more modern-day comic books.
You can also see the influences of manga and anime in Lawson's work here. The Turtles owe their origins to the Eastern art forms, and elements from those come into play in these early stories.
The story builds over the course of the issues, but it then comes to a rather abrupt ending in the thirteenth issue. I suspect that the end of the series was an unexpected occurence which forced Lawson to wrap it all up quickly. It seems like he was building to something even bigger prior to that.
For fans of the medium interested in the evolution of the format in the US during this time period, I would recommend checking this volume out when it is released.
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