In the late 1990s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book entered its third volume as Image Comics took the series over from Mirage Studios. The notorious series by Gary Carlson and Frank Fosco made major changes to the characters, was never finished and ended up being retconned, functionally ignored as the franchise lived on in various permutations. Now, IDW Publishing has released the series in its entirety -- and in color -- as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Urban Legends.

Over the course of a final few issues, Carlson and Fosco were finally able to complete the story they originally set out to tell, and the conclusion leaves the Ninja Turtles in a drastically different place than they've ever been before.

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Shattered Image

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- Urban Legends IDW cover

The third TMNT volume took the original comic's dark and gritty nature and upped the ante to heights still otherwise unseen for the franchise. The first arc sees the Turtles' underground home destroyed by a team of merciless cyborgs, which resulted in Splinter's kidnapping and Donatello's grievous injury. Donatello becomes a powerful yet violent cyborg himself, while Splinter is turned into a seemingly mindless mutant vampire bat. Karai and the Foot Clan return, but in a surprise twist, Raphael chooses to take over the group as the new Shredder, hoping to bring peace to the streets.

The Turtles, now officially in Image continuity, interacted with different characters from the publisher, such as the similarly verdant vigilante Savage Dragon. They also encountered Lurch, a shapeshifting alien who temporarily bonded with Donatello's cyborg components. The overarching villain of the series is Go-Komodo, a Japanese businessman who intends to use mutagen to transform himself into a humanoid dragon. Meanwhile, Raph would defend his role as the Shredder from Pimiko, the true Shredder's daughter, as well as a mysterious Lady Shredder.

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The Final Mutation

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was eventually canceled before its planned conclusion and subsequent volumes of Turtles ignored the Image series and its continuity. The retcon was due to TMNT co-creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman not wanting to continue the story that was laid out by other writers.

The comic's 1999 cancellation was due mainly to low sales, which can partially be attributed to the series taking the TMNT franchise in such a dark, relatively weird direction. By then, the Turtles had become most well-known for the '80s cartoon, which catapulted the terrapin quartet into pop culture stardom. With the classic cartoon show having long-since faded into memory, this series was arguably destined to fail.

In the wake of its successful relaunch of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics line, IDW listened to growing fan demand for the third volume of this series to be completed. This resulted in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Urban Legends, which reprints the original 23 issues in full color. It's also brought back Carlson and Fosco for a concluding three issues, to finish the story out.

The climax has seen numerous unexpected twists, such as Master Splinter being trapped in the comatose body of the human Cheng. Meanwhile, Lurch returns and is revealed as being related to both the identity of the Lady Shredder and Karai's daughter Amai. In the end, the Turtles take on the Foot Clan, Komodo and a powerful cyborg Lady Shredder. While the gruesome battle and the road there certainly aren't Saturday morning cartoon caliber, the series as a whole is one of the most interesting of the franchise's various mutations, and it gave the Turltes one of their most distinctive endings.

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