TMNT-verse: Sophie Campbell Talks Endings, Family, And More

After an amazing 150 issues, IDW Publishing’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, launched in 2011, has come to an end. For the past fifty issues of this series, Sophie Campbell stood as the writer and sometimes artist, helping bring the Turtles and their allies to new heights. While the IDW adventures of the Turtles are far from over, Campbell’s time on the main series came to a close with the publication of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #150.

I had a chance to speak with Campbell about her run early on, back in 2021, and she graciously agreed to speak with me about the ending, the run as a whole, and what comes next.

Note: Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the final issue of TMNT yet. Get to it!

Scott Redmond: Holy crap, 50 issues! There were some beats in the anthology minis, but the main series run has been 50 issues. It’s not often these days that creators get to spend so much time on a title and in a world, without it being relaunched at least one or more times along the way. Before we fully dive into things, now that you’re here at the end of the road, how does it all feel?

Sophie Campbell: I feel good about it! It took a while to sink in at first and I was emotional about it, I was sad about leaving but on some level I also wanted to leave because it’s a lot of pressure writing a book like that every month. I didn’t want to “abandon” the characters I worked so hard on and the ones I introduced to the series, but I also know that’s how these things go with long-running IPs like this, and I’d gotten to work on this comic for way longer than most people.

All my feelings about it are complicated and conflicted but right now as I’m doing this interview, I’m feeling good about it and optimistic about it all.

Redmond: When we spoke the first time, so many issues ago, your run was still relatively new and had to tangle with pauses from the pandemic amongst other things. At the time, you spoke of being happy with how it had gone so far and about the pressure mostly stemming from tackling writing (and sometimes drawing) a monthly book. Did those pressures lessen or just change as time on the book grew?

Campbell: The pressure of drawing definitely lessened because I only ended up drawing two arcs plus some small stuff here and there, like the astral plane scene in issue 128 and my Alliance #4 issue for Armageddon Game. I was really nervous at first, I’d written lots of my own creator-owned comics and a little bit of Jem & the Holograms stuff, but never a monthly series before, plus the fact that I was following up Tom Waltz‘s awesome run. It was a lot to take in and grapple with.

I think once I got to around issue 110 or so I started to feel better about things and I felt like I had a better handle on what I was allowed to do and what I wasn’t, what the limitations were, what sort of tone we were going for, etc. Once I hit issue 113 and I got to introduce Tokka and Rahzar, it felt like full steam ahead. I know 12 issues is a lot to find your footing but I still like a lot of the stuff we did in that first year.

Redmond: Wow, that final issue. Ending where it all began is always emotionally and thematically powerful. When did you know that this is where you wanted to take and end this whole Donatello storyline, and how did it, if it did, grow over time?

Campbell: I knew pretty early on that I wanted to revisit the Turtles’ reincarnation in some way, but it always felt too big to do that right off the bat so I kept it on the backburner. One of my ideas in the beginning was doing something with feudal Japan and having a bigger storyline take place there and involve the Hamato family as humans, the Turtles meeting their human selves, I even started picking out names for their past selves.

There’s a scene in issue 50 where Krang visits the scene of the Hamato massacre and he talks about obtaining QNA from the bodies, and it was something that was never touched upon again so I really wanted to go back there and figure out what QNA was and what Krang was doing there and so forth, that was the original seed of the idea. If I remember right I had wanted all four Turtles to end up performing the reincarnation somehow, making it a causality loop bootstrap paradox where they realize they’re responsible for their own existence, that sort of thing. Temporal paradox stuff is like catnip to me, haha.

Initially this storyline was going to be right after Armageddon Game, and the “Damage Done” storyline in 140-144 was going to be the end, I had originally wanted a much more downbeat mundane sort of ending in issue 150 where the Turtles are like “well I guess that’s it, then, huh?” and they all pursue their own interests outside of New York City, reminiscent of the tone of the final City at War issue of the Mirage series.

Somewhere along the line my editor suggested reversing those two storylines which I think was the right call, even though it put me in a tough spot where the Turtles had gone off to do their own things but Donnie was still dealing with the Armaggon stuff, so that, for better or worse, led to it being mostly him having his own adventure while the Turtles were kind of oblivious to it (with Raph and Jenny entirely absent). I still feel that the final storyline is a bit awkward because of those changes but ultimately I think I threaded that needle pretty well.

Redmond: As noted, this final storyline, despite featuring everyone, was very Donatello heavy. It’s one you were building for quite some time. Were there particular things that drew you to Donatello as the anchor for this storyline? Also, what intrigued you about really tapping into magic with the usually heavy tech using character?

Campbell: The Don-using-magic storyline came about because of an idea I had pre-Armageddon Game where Donatello becomes sort of a dark sorcerer after losing himself in his maddening study of the arcane and eldritch truths mortal beings were not meant to know. That didn’t pan out but I still really liked Don’s long-running arc of grappling with the supernatural, going all the way back to the first 12 issues of Tom’s run where Don refuses to believe the reincarnation stuff.

It’s revisited a handful of times over the series, he slowly comes to understand that there are mystical things that he can’t quantify or fully grasp, and I really dug that about the character and it seemed like a no-brainer to go in that direction. I wanted to lean into that and have him start to realize that magic and the supernatural are just another facet of the natural world, and that the energy called “magic” could be quantified and measured.

I also liked the juxtaposition of the “tech” character trying to learn magic, that seemed super fun to me, as well as getting to do all sorts of made-up science like Don using magic glyphs and symbols to form magical mathematic equations and weird quantum theory stuff.

Redmond: Speaking of themes, a major one through this entire run has been family. Every variation of family there can be from biological to adopted to found. It’s been very prominent through this final arc, exceedingly so in this final issue. Naturally it’s always been baked into the DNA of the Turtles, but what made it something you wanted to explore so thoroughly and regularly?

Campbell: The main running theme that Tom set up was “change is constant but family is forever,” which is great and reflected in things like the Hamatos’ reincarnation, their family crossing time, but I kept thinking about my own family and friends’ families in real life and how often family ISN’T forever, so how can I explore that? The core idea I wanted to do was Donatello accepting that inevitability, that his family will eventually drift apart because of the natural ebb and flow of relationships, not to mention loved ones dying, and that there’s nothing he can (or should) do about it.

Armaggon was meant to represent that inevitability, that even when he is defeated, he’ll always exist at the end of time no matter what, so the Turtles simply have to appreciate the time they have and make the most of it because one day their family will end, and that there’s nothing wrong with that because that’s life. I think a lot about Peter and Kevin’s Donatello micro-series issue with Kirby and the warp crystal, the letter that Kirby leaves behind to Don that says “life at best is bittersweet” has always stuck with me and I wanted to bring some of that tone to the IDW series.

Redmond: In comics, especially modern shared universes, there is often a desire, whether communicated or not, for runs to sort of “put all the toys back in the box” so that the next run has a full clean slate. That’s not what we get here. Instead everything that the series built before your run, and everything built in your run still not only exists but is important to the universe. What does it feel like to know that all the stuff you worked on all this time not only was greatly successful but will continue to resonate even with the whole line relaunching?

Campbell: I honestly haven’t really thought about that, when I was writing the last couple arcs I wasn’t thinking about how my stories would reverberate down the line after I’d left, but when you put it that way it would definitely be awesome and humbling if future writers decide to use or expand on the things I did in the series.

There was one point during an earlier draft where I tried to put the toys away neatly, but my editor actually pushed me in the direction of not totally putting the toys away, which was my initial instinct anyway, so I’m glad he was there to guide me in the right direction. I don’t really know what Jason Aaron or other future writers are planning to do with the characters and ideas I introduced, if anything, but I’m certainly curious to see how they expand on it.

Redmond: A run of this magnitude is quite an accomplishment, but it’s one that you were not alone in bringing to reality. There have been a multitude of tremendous artists that have graced this book. Amongst your creative partners though the most stalwart through this run would be of course Ronda Pattison and Shawn Lee. What has it been like to work alongside them this whole time, and what makes both of their work so special?

Campbell: I love Ronda and Shawn! It’s mind-boggling to me that Ronda has colored every single issue of the ongoing since #1, it’s bananas! Working with them was a delight. One thing I love about Shawn’s work is that he’ll pick fun and weird fonts for certain things that I wouldn’t expect, like for example in the Punk Frogs arc sometimes he’d use cool punk- and heavy metal-styled lettering for things the Frogs would say, I love that sort of thing.

I think what makes their work so special, other than just being good of course, is how consistently solid it is, it’s crazy to think about for me because I always think about my own work fluctuating in style and quality over the years, but somehow Ronda and Shawn have gotten their craft down to a science and they always seem to know exactly what they’re doing. I really admire that.

Redmond: As I mentioned previously there were numerous artists on this run, yourself included. What is it like as a writer to work with such a wide swath of artists, who have such a variety of styles?

Campbell: I love it! I really love being surprised by new artists, and how artists always seem to do something totally different than my script or they interpret it differently in a way I hadn’t expected. It’s always such a fun surprise to see how they put their own spin on it. There were times I even went back in and changed dialogue based on an artist’s interpretation of a scene, I love doing that, I love the back and forth.

Redmond: Along the way you were able to dabble in so many genres from horror to time travel to politics. What tied them all together was the strong character work and unifying themes, as we watched the characters truly grow and develop along the way. Asking a creator to choose favorites is just cruel. So instead I’ll ask are there any of the genres/storylines that you would have liked to have spent more time on if possible?

Campbell: Probably horror, I’m a huge horror fan. I love doing stuff with creepy monsters and people being dismembered, haha. It’s tough in TMNT though because I’m also a bloodthirsty gorehound so whenever I would do stories with horror elements, there’d always be parts I’d have to tone down because it was just too violent and bloody for the series. But part of me liked that, though, it was always fun when I’d write something that would gross out editorial or Nickelodeon, getting notes back like “this is disgusting, can we not have this character’s eyeball being gouged out?” Haha.

My favorite arc to work on was #125-130, the one with the Punk Frogs and Dr. Jasper Barlow and Venus, I felt like we got away with a lot in those issues and managed to get some relatively stomach-churning stuff in there. I had a storyline I wanted to do where Baxter mutates April into a fly to silence her so she’d be unable to spill the beans about the truth of what he was up to, who would believe a disgusting fly mutant? I would have loved doing that story and exploring gross body horror stuff with April adjusting to her new revolting housefly form. There’s something about grueling horror that makes me feel like I’m firing on all cylinders.

Redmond: Recently the series was part of a massive months-long event. Tackling events is most definitely a very different beast in comics. One of the things that really stood out is how well you were able to weave the beats of the events with your own long simmering plot lines. What was the experience like with that collaboration?

Campbell: Armageddon Game was cool but I would never want to do it again, haha. That was probably the toughest period of my run, it was a blast working so closely with Tom but I had a really hard time juggling the different storylines and making things match up with what Tom was doing in the separate AG series. There were times I got super frustrated and almost quit, but I’m glad I stuck it out because I think it ended up turning out pretty good. Tom was accommodating with the things I wanted to do, too, and storylines I wanted to touch on during the event, and he’d rework his own stuff to match up to what I wanted to do, but it was still a stressful undertaking trying to make all those issues and different creative teams to synch up.

Redmond: This of course was not your first, and as we now know not your last, foray into the realm of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, both as an artist and a writer. What is it about these characters that speak to you so much that you want to keep coming back into their circle?

Campbell: I think most of it for me is what the Mirage folks set up, Kevin, Peter, Jim Lawson, AC Farley, and Rick Veitch in particular, there’s something perfect about the tone of those comics that has stuck with me and informed a lot of my own work. Even when the Turtles are doing outer space stuff with alien wizards and robots, there’s a down-to-earthness about the tone and feel of the comic, a sort of earthiness, that makes the characters feel real.

I like the Turtles trying to live their lives in peace but crazy shit keeps coming to their doorstep. All of that echoes throughout the IDW series. I also love the new characters we’ve gotten to introduce and how much time we get to spend with the supporting cast. In IDW TMNT it always feels like the sky’s the limit, like it’s been going for 10+ years at this point but it still feels like there’s a lot of gas left in the tank. That’s exciting.

Redmond: Quite a few things on the page spoke to your love of these characters beyond just the great emotional dramatic development work. Chief among them were the real deep cuts that included characters and concepts from other adaptations or time periods of the franchise from the films to the TV shows and elsewhere. Are there particular ones you were surprised were allowed into the run or that you were proudest of getting into the book?

Campbell: Venus! Even before I took over as writer I’d been hoping to get Venus into the IDW series somehow but it was always very complex behind the scenes. There were a couple false starts, things like at first Lita was supposed to be Venus but I had to change her at the last minute, and there were times when it seemed getting Venus into the comic would be impossible and I should just let it go, so it’s still amazing to me that it actually ended up happening. And not just that but that she ended up being a huge part of the story.

It’s super gratifying. Tokka and Rahzar are another two, I tried getting them into the comic in earlier pitches before I came on as writer but none of it ever went anywhere, and they were even originally supposed to be in my very first arc in 101-105 but it didn’t work out, so when I finally got them into the 113-117 arc I was super excited.

Redmond: Lastly, while much is still in the dark about the book save its announcement, is there anything you can tell readers to expect when it comes to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Nation, perhaps in theme or some exciting buzzwords?

Campbell: Honestly I don’t know that much about Mutant Nation except that it’ll have stories that follow up on some of the characters and dangling storylines from pre-relaunch. I haven’t talked much to IDW about what I might do for it, if anything, but I definitely have a ton of ideas to follow up on characters like Alopex, Venus, the Punk Frogs maybe, Koya and Bludgeon of course, but we’ll see how it goes.

Redmond: Thank you again for your time, and hopefully we get to speak more in the future about Mutant Nation and more. Is there any other upcoming work or things in your creative orbit you’d like to point our readers to checking out?

Campbell: Thank you so much, Scott, you’re very welcome! I really appreciate all the interest and support. Right now I’m trying to get another chunk of my Shadoweyes book done before I have to start working on my next big project, whether that’s TMNT or otherwise. I have a couple things potentially cooking at other publishers too but I can’t say anything right now. I’m also hard at work on sculpting kaiju toys that are made in Japan and released by Max Toy, that’s my current passion! Max Toy is at maxtoyco.com.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #150, Campbell’s final issue, is now available in stores. Previous issues are collected in TMNT: Reborn TPBs and TMNT: The IDW Collection Volumes.