TMNT Last Ronin Sends the Turtles Off With One Final Blaze of Glory
Warning: contains spoilers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #5
The blood-spilling has to stop somewhere, and, for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, it stops here. There’s a point during the long-awaited final issue of The Last Ronin where the reader feels pity for Michelangelo, forced as he has been through a gauntlet of battle and loss. The title reaches its peak, a mesmerizing extravaganza that is not only a stand-out book but an amazing testament to the rock-solid foundation Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird built for their creation almost three decades ago. How did this team accomplish this feat? Simple; they allowed a sad story to reach its natural, tragic conclusion without sacrificing any of the action that made it great.
The Last Ronin ends as it began: with Mikey making a suicide run into Oroku Hiroto’s Manhattan stronghold, a task that nearly killed him before. This time, however, buttressed by his recent victory alongside April O’Neil’s resistance army in knocking out Baxter Stockman’s power grid, Mikey makes the decision to try again on his lonesome (with maybe a touch more finesse than last time), leading to what can only be described as one of the most brutal and magnificently sequenced comic book fights ever between the titular Last Ronin and Shredder’s grandson. A true free-form fight to the death, the sheer viciousness of battle is almost overwhelming, with bloody blow upon blow dealt against fan-favorite Michelangelo at the blades of a murderous tyrant at the end of his rope. This is the very definition of full-throttle action, and for a late-season masterpiece to come at the pen of the original creative team, the circumstance is nothing short of spectacular.
Related: Ninja
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