How a Second Printing Tipped Creators In on the Last Ronin's Success
Tom Waltz revealed in his interview the exact moment he realized The Last Ronin would be a hit. As said in his own words:
"When I first realized we were heading to a second printing even before the first printing was out to stores, my first hint that The Last Ronin would be far bigger than we had planned. Ironically, IDW was accused of purposefully shorting the first issue; the fact was that IDW had purposefully OVER printed the issue in hopes its sales figures would exceed the first pre-orders once inquisitive people saw it on store shelves...and we still lacked sufficient to satisfy demand, not even close!
"It Still Shocks Me How Popular It's Become": Last Ronin Writer Shares the Moment He Knew It Was Going to Be Huge
As typical Turtle fashion demands, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a Daredevil parodies; The Last Ronin imitated Frank Miller and Klaus Janson's Dark Knight Returns. The Last Ronin became rather popular, and even the authors were surprised by its success.
Uniting Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Tom Waltz, Esau and Isaac Escorza, and Ben Bishop, the all-star creative team of The Last Ronin produced The narrative centers Michelangelo as a jaded warrior traveling the planet alone in a dystopian future when his brothers have been slaughtered. The Foot Clan confronts him for one last fight upon his return to New York City. Long-term writer of IDW's TMNT comic and co-writer of The Last Ronin Tom Waltz recently spoke with Screen Rant in which he discussed the experience of witnessing the series become a huge success.
Masterclass in Fan Service: The Last Ronin
Eastman, Laird, and Waltz brought all the main ideas of the series to their logical end in The Last Ronin. Daredevil, its magnum opus, was a spoof of Frank Miller's own masterpiece, The Dark Knight Returns, just as the franchise began with parodying Miller's early claim to fame. This makes the franchise complete circle, giving TMNT a cyberpunk-meets- Old Man Logan makeover. One of the most successful and profitable projects in modern comics turned out to be acquiring one of the most cheerful franchises in indie comics and darkening it.
Readers have more than enough of this dystopian Turtles future to chew on, with The Last Ronin II now on shelves as well as the prequel miniseries. Retaining the same creative team as the 2020 series, the first issue of The Last Ronin II has delivered on everything its fanbase could expect, so extending Turtlemania's darker path. The blockbuster success of the first miniseries and how the dark Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story rocked the comics industry define everything about the growth of The Last Ronin.
With an R-rated live-action adaptation of the well-known comic series The Last Ronin, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film universe is growing.
First author of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continuing series published by IDW Publishing starting in 2011, Tom Waltz wrote the first 100 issues. Few creators have given as much to the Turtles franchise after Eastman and Laird, and his work is still among the best starting point for the series.
Waltz's observation that he and Kevin Eastman "had high hopes for it from the very start," yet it's difficult to ignore the surprise sensation the show developed, beyond all expectations. In comics, the first issue's demand exceeded a planned over-printing from IDW is rare; however, conjecture concerning intentional scarcity is plentiful. Expanding on his experience penning the stealth hit, the author said, "It still shocks me how popular it's become. It truly humbles me and makes me most appreciative."
The realm of the teenage mutant Ninja turtles
Originally starting with Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's comics in the 1980s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a multi-media series. Their comic books grew over years to include toys, movies, TV series, and video games. Most famously, the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ran for almost ten years and have grown to be a nostalgic mainstay of the 1980s and 1990s. Apart from the trilogy of live-action films in the 1990s and the more recent movies Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, several other films have included the four anthropomorphic turtle brothers—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael.
Every child from the 1980s will dream about the upcoming crossover between the Master of the Universe and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
