Spoilers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #13
IDW Publishing has been promoting the book with a blind bag promotion for months since announcing that a new creative team, consisting of author Gene Luen Yang and Freddie E. Williams II, would be taking over the lead title for the ongoing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Most notably, the publisher is teasing the introduction of a new magazine named Ujigami in TMNT #13, the creative team’s first issue on sale today. Fortunately, readers have avoided certain sites that tend to leak early spoilers (namely Bleeding Cool).
In his debut film, Ujigami kills Xiang Fei Tong, the leader of the Chinatown gang Ghost Boys, and establishes himself as a force likely to deal a fatal blow to the current mayor of New York City, Dr. Baxter Stockman. By the end of the issue, it turns out that the Ujigami who evaded capture is actually Master Splinter, the recently resurrected rodent teacher of the TMNT!
As avid TMNT readers may know, the previous creative team of writer Jason Aaron and artist Juan Ferreira brought Master Splinter back from the dead, ending his critically acclaimed run. In the current IDW continuity, Splinter met his death in 2019 at the end of the epic “City at War” storyline. Back in October, I actually speculated that Ujigami might actually be Splinter. At the time, I had no inside information or prior information. There wasn’t much substantive evidence to support my theory other than the fact that both characters had four digit numbers in each hand. Before the final page is released, TMNT #13 provides early clues about Ujigami. For example, the fact that he declares himself an ally of the Hamato tribe and has a brief heart-to-heart with Donatello, the turtle with whom Master Splinter has the most spiritual connection.
The exact circumstances of how and why Splinter adopted this new guardian remains a mystery that is later revealed. Given that Karai, the current leader of the Foot clan, dabbles in mysticism and is responsible for Splinter’s resurrection, it seems certain that there will be some involvement.
Something like this:
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