A Life Full Of Violence: Reviewing ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ #3

Broken, separated, and lost. Far from his brothers, Leonardo struggles to discover where he belongs and how to carry on.

Too bad the Foot Clan has something else to say in the matter. All the pieces begin to come together as Jason Aaron and Shawn Lee are joined by Cliff Chiang for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #3.

I have to say, this was a bit of a strange one.

The idea of Leo trying to find salvation and simplicity is interesting. Out of all the Turtles, his shoulders have always been the weariest from the heavy loads he tries to carry. A leader, and elder brother in some cases, the losses that the clan faces and their troubles are taken on as his own failures and sins more often than not.

Even though it was a lot of actions from all of the clan — chiefly Donatello’s magical meddling — that drove things to a breaking point, he’s wearing that proverbial pie on his face and doesn’t want to deal with any of it anymore. Trying to ‘learn’ from common, actually genuine turtles and wanting to learn to live simply like them is also not that strange.

Where it gets odd is the whole thing about him actively believing they are teaching him a lesson. Oh, and the whole thing about them being the flesh of the dead. Which, based on some brief internet searches, might have been a real thing along the Ganges.  I get the symbolism, but not something I expected to read and see in a TMNT comic, but here we are.

I appreciated the fact that Leo ponders on the darkness that has been around him forever. Also, how it always comes back to violence, no matter how much he tries to be different or walk away from it all. We see him reach a point of potential peace, only for his old life (Foot Clan soldiers) to come crashing into the new.

In an interesting turn-of-events, this issue goes through the whole Leonardo story only to spend a good chunk at the end picking up where the last one (Mikey and Raph under attack) left off. We are getting four solo issues, as promised, but they are still part of an actual story arc, and with each subsequent issue we’re seeing that weaving much clearer.

The choice of Chiang makes a lot of sense here. Leonardo is by far the gloomiest, darkest, and hardest of the Turtles. We really feel that heavily within the work Chiang puts on the page,. There are some really rough textures and tones showing off here.

Much of the dramatic energy comes from the framing choices, chiefly the really well used black gutter space to border panels. It allows things to feel heavier, while the action really darts quickly between panels to give everything that fluidity.

Color-wise, the palette that Chiang uses (which is very similar to many of his works) has a very toned-down, lighter approach to most spaces. Giving everything this sort of faded but also strong tone to it. So that particular colors, such as the blue of Leo’s mask of the fire and other elements, can pop with far more vibrancy. Darker shadows are at play through it all which plays into the overall tone of the story but also to help with that heaviness mentioned before.

No matter who is driving the overall ship writing or artistic wise, the voices of these characters continue to hit because of Lee. I was glad to see that he was still on board with the change, having provided lettering for these characters for pretty much the entirety of their IDW Publishing life. Making sure that the right emotions are echoing with every word, bubbles flow around the page as smoothly as the river, and various other lettering bits hit with all the right power and impact.

Leo’s narration is strong and focused, like him, and has a deep energy just from the content of his thoughts/words. Additionally, the way that the boxes are presented really makes that clear. Just the way that Lee adds the drop shadow to give it that darker 3D appearance takes the words up quite a few notches. It’s little visual shifts and cues that make the words so much more than just words on the page, especially as we hear and create these voices in our minds.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #3 is now available from IDW Publishing.