Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW Publishing)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The cover of issue number 2. Art by Dan Duncan; colors by Ronda Pattison.
Publication information
Publisher	IDW Publishing
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Genre	Superhero fiction Science fantasy Supernatural fiction
Publication date	August 2011 – present
Number of issues	122 (as of October 2016)
Main character(s)	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Creative team
Writer(s)	Kevin Eastman Tom Waltz Bobby Curnow
Artist(s)	Kevin Eastman (8–11, 13–15 2012 Annual, 16–17, 19–28, 30–37 2014 Annual, 38–48) Dan Duncan (1–12, 23) Andy Kuhn (13–16, 23) Ben Bates (17–20, 23) Mateus Santolouco (5, 22–28, 33–36, 38–40, FCBD 2015, 45–50) Sophie Campbell (23, 29–32) Cory Smith (37, 41–44, 48) Ken Garing (51, 52) Michael Dialynas (53–54)
Colorist(s)	Ronda Pattison (1-54)
Creator(s)	Kevin Eastman Peter Laird

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an ongoing comic book series published by IDW Publishing. Since its inception in August 2011, it has been the first new comic version of the turtles to debut after the sale of the franchise to Nickelodeon in October 2009. The initial creative team consisted of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman (who collaborated on the plot and the page layouts), Tom Waltz (who scripted the series) and artist Dan Duncan.

In August 2014, the Russian publisher "Комильфо" bought the rights to publishing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Hamato Yoshi is a member of the Foot Clan led by Oroku Saki during Japan's feudal period. After seeing Saki act ruthlessly, Yoshi leaves the Clan and is marked a traitor. Saki orders Yoshi's wife and four sons to be put to death. Yoshi's wife, Tang Shen, is attacked and severely wounded, and with her last breath she beseeches Yoshi to protect himself and the children. He flees with the boys and remains on the run for several years. Saki, who will later be known as Shredder, eventually finds Yoshi and his children then murders them all.

Yoshi and his sons' spirits are then reborn, reincarnated as a gray rat and four green turtles in a research laboratory called Stock Gen", owned by , a scientist who has secretly allied himself with Krang. Members of the Foot Clan break into the facility to steal an alien mutagen. The animals are taken by mistake, and when they and the stolen mutagen get lost in the sewer, they are covered with the spilled mutagen and transformed into enlightened, humanoid beings.

Yoshi, now called Splinter, remembers his past life and begins to train the turtles in the art of ninjutsu. An assistant at Stockgen, April O'Neil, names the turtles after Renaissance artists: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. Unfortunately, the seemingly trivial event which led to the creation of the Turtles and Splinter is part of an escalating conflict between several powers trying to take control of the Earth: