Free Comic Book Day- IDW Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2024

 By Mark Rodriguez

After hitting comic stores in 2011, the long-running IDW TMNT series has coming to an end at issue 150. Or at least what we would call 'Volume 1', since a whole new number 1 will be coming out soon which will potentially serve as a soft reboot to the series. That makes this year's Free Comic Book Day issue exciting since we have the question of wether or not takes place after the 150th issue. Not only that but it brings in the Nightwatcher persona from the 2007 TMNT movie, except this time it might not be Raph under the mask. Let's check it out.

I got this one from Third Eye Comics, but now that I think about it, there should be previous Free Comic Book Day books that will say Bent Wookee and Comics World on the covers.

The issue opens with several mutants, a bear, a horse and a bird, walking through the night, as narration explains that a year ago a mutagen bomb went off, mutating a portion of the population. The mutants sneak into a vault where one of them used to work before they were mutated, with plans to rob it. The mutant bird of the trio wants to leave as soon as possible in case 'that thing' shows up. The mutant horse asks about the odds of that happening, as we see the Nightwatcher sneaking behind them.

The Nightwatcher starts to fight with the mutants. One of them pulls a gun from his duffle bag and starts to shoot, but the vigilante's armor protects him from the gunshots. The Nightwatcher says the money belongs to the people in the area and they need it. The horse mutant continues to shoot at him saying those animals will just use the money to run the city into the ground. The Nightwatcher disarms the mutant bear and horse and starts beating them down, as the mutant bird watches on. The bird grabs a drill but looks up to see that the Nightwatcher has vanished.

The mutant bird runs away and hides in one of the nearby shelters as the Nightwatcher watches from a distance. The bird yells out that he's sorry and didn't think things were like that. The Nightwatcher crashes through the roof and pins him down. The vigilante disarms him and the bird takes off his mask, revealing he was a regular human in disguise. The man says he thought nobody would care and didn't think the Nightwatcher would get so angry. The vigilante says the man doesn't get it so he will spell it out for him. The Nightwatcher says mutants aren't there for them to use anymore.

'Splinter's Day Off' opens with the gang relaxing in the sewers. Michealangelo is playing videogames, Raphael is hitting the punching bag while listening to music, Leonardo is flipping pizza dough and Donatello is tinkering with a Mouser. Master Splinter meditates among them. 

Leonardo accidentally drops the pizza dough onto Donatello. Raph complains about how loudly Mikey is gaming, and he kicks the punching bag over to him to quiet him down. Splinter gets angry and tells the Turtles to work on their vigilance. He asks if they'd even know if their enemies were to attack tonight. Leonardo says they were just goofing around. Splinter sends them out to patrol and observe their surroundings. The Turtles head out and leave Splinter to meditate.

As the Turtles leap across the rooftops, Raph and Mikey blame each other for making Splinter angry. Splinter is meanwhile, taking advantage that the kids are gone to play some videogames. Don starts making fun of how Leo was narrating his pizza dough slipping. Leo trips him up with a low sweep. Meanwhile Splinter is flipping pizza dough in a similar manner.

The Turtles fight each other and Mikey says the last one standing pays for pizza. Donatello asks if they're going to pay for pizza that Woody normally gives them for free. Raph says they should fight for the pride of victory. Leo adds that the winner can get first pick at the chore wheel. As they fight, the Foot show up and start attacking them. Meanwhile Splinter starts tinkering with the Mouser Donatello was working on, and backs off when it starts to spark.

Leo tells Raph that more vigilance would have prevented the Foot from getting the drop on them. Mikey says he hates it when Splinter is right and Donnie says he usually is. Elsewhere, Splinter is jamming to the music with Raph's headphones. 

The Turtles defeat the Foot Ninjas while being kinda battered themselves and Donatello says things could have gotten real bad. Leonardo suggests they head back to the lair. Back to Splinter, the Mouser activates and leaps off the table it was on. Splinter is still dancing around so the Mouser catches him by surprise. As Splinter swings his cane around, trying to break the Mouser, he makes a mess out of the lair. With the Mouser finally out of commission, Splinter notices the mess he made. He hurries to hide all the junk and also cleans up the lair.

The Turtles arrive and agree to tell Splinter that nothing happened during their patrol. Splinter meditates and acts as if nothing happened as well. Michealangelo wants some pizza and decides to check the freezer. Splinter is shocked when he hears this, and sure enough when Mikey checks the freezer, the broken Mouser as well as the rest of the garbage spills out. 

The Turtles repeat Splinter's lines back to him 'if his enemies struck tonight, would he have known' and so forth. Splinter says the time to goof off is when his teenage sons aren't around. Splinter sits on the couch and grabs a controller and asks which one thinks they can defeat him.

My Thoughts-

It seems the Nightwatcher is getting his own series, so the secret of who is under the armored outfit is still a mystery. For those that don't remember, the Nightwatcher was Raphael's vigilante alter ego in the 2007 TMNT movie. It was Raph's own issues with Leo, as well as Leo disapproving of the Nightwatcher that led to their big fight, which was everybody's favorite part of the movie.

It could possibly still be Raphael under there, but I doubt there would be a lot 'who is the Nightwatcher' hype, if it was just going to be him anyway. The story takes place a year after the Mutagen Bomb went off which led to the creation of Mutant Town, so I guess Nightwatcher has been running around early into the town's history. 

The narration goes deeper in how we treat things that different from us, and how the Mutagen Bomb now turned a lot of people into 'the other'. Even as mutants they still need to fight for survive and have a right to live. The Nightwatcher will be a sort of guardian angel for the town against people seeking to do them harm. I have to say, the idea of regular people sneaking into the town to rob it while disguised as mutants surprised me, but it is the kind of thing people would do to take advantage of the chaos.

The second story is more light-hearted and takes us back to the days when Splinter was still alive and the Turtles were still united as a family. I mean, they still are, of course, but this was at a time before the series had so many side-characters where the Turtles felt like guest stars in their own book.

It was fun seeing Splinter partake in all of the same activities the Turtles were doing before he sent them away. I especially liked when Splinter was tinkering with the Mouser and was wondering about Donatello's idea of fun. 

It's been a while since I've seen the classic IDW Foot Ninja, as I'm sure they've had design changes over the years as both Splinter and Karai got to lead them. I don't know if this was a shout out or just my wishful thinking, but the Foot Ninja in this story looked like the 2012 TMNT designs. 

The Turtles are also wearing a much more simpler design, not even using the 'IDW fighters' tape' the IDW Turtles started out using. It was a bit odd seeing Leonardo have the 'loop' in his shoulder strap, since that reminds me more of the way Donatello's 2012 shoulder strap looks. Then Donatello had the 'regular' strap, which is how Leo's strap usually is designed. Maybe the artist wanted to do a 2012 shoutout and got the strap designs backwards?

Overall a fun read, especially the back up issue. It was just nice going back to a simpler time in the IDW Turtles series before things got so complicated. I'm still not completely sure if I'll be grabbing the actual Nightwatcher series as my pull box is already plenty full, but we'll see.