YMMV / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW)

• Arc Fatigue: While generally enjoyed by some fans, the Mutant Town arc was seen as dragging on after a while, since the series shifted into a quasi-Slice of Life format as the Turtles and their allies settled into their new situation, with no immediate movement for the Myth Arc in the meantime. Also, the temporarily-suspended production of new issues dragged it even longer during this time. What's more, nothing particularly significant even happened until the introduction of Dr. Barlow and Venus. It didn't help that the entire arc purposely served as buildup for The Armageddon Game, which is equally lengthy.
• Base-Breaking Character: Jennika has divided the fans in half. One side likes her for being another attempt at adding a new female turtle to the cast after the 1st failed attempt. The other half loathes her, accusing her of being the author's self-insert OC and stealing spotlight from the turtles after her mutation.
• Catharsis Factor: Fans who wanted to see some long-standing villains finally suffer karmic justice got their wish in The Armageddon Game, particularly with the deaths of the Utrom warlords Krang and Ch'Rell.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Designated Hero: Karai is a criminal and a murderer who has hurt and killed many people, both innocent and evil. However, the comic initially presented her as the "reasonable" member of the Foot Clan and she is rarely ever called out for her actions. This appears to have been rectified in issue 92, when discussing the fate of the orphans currently in the foot clan's care she wants to conscript them into warriors or kill them for seeing the inner workings and she is shown to be a violent zealot for it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Through the reveal of their backstories and their character development throughout the comic, both Alopex and Old Hob have become this.
  • And then there are Bebop and Rocksteady. Fans are delighted to have them in the comic, and even more so when they are revealed to be incredibly dangerous while still keeping loyal to their dumber-than-a-sack-of-hammers characterization.
  • The Mutanimals in general are this, thanks to their constant badass moments, variety of personalities and how, much like the turtles, they have become a true family all their own. At least until Ray enthusiastically helped Hob create a mutagen bomb that turned a quarter of New York into mutants...
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Don/Alopex, particularly for those that feel that Raph has enough female mutant/anthro love interests in other continuities (Mona Lisa, Ninjara, Mezcaal) and that the other turtles deserves a chance with a female mutant/anthro love interest as well.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: At Slash's funeral, Old Hob mocks Michelangelo's eulogy for saying he's in a better place, but given the turtles themselves are Reincarnations and they sometimes communicate with their deceased mother, it's already confirmed this universe has an afterlife.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • There is no doubt that Old Hob is a complete jerk with violent tendencies and one very deep-seated grudge, but after seeing his backstory, it's really hard not to feel sorry for him.
  • Alopex applies for this as well, since it's revealed that Shredder wiped out her old pack so that she'd be left with nothing but the Foot Clan. She's only remained loyal for so long because she's been looking for a chance to kill him.
• Mis-blamed: Jennika's turtle form looks like Artemisia, the female fifth turtle from Sophie Campbell's Secret of the Ooze fan comic, leading many fans to accuse her of trying to egotistically put her DeviantArt OC into the main comic. In reality, Jennika becoming into the fifth turtle was Tom Waltz's idea (with Eastman's blessing) and he asked Campbell to redesign the character to as a mutant turtle with a yellow mask, unaware that she already had a fan character that fit that bill. Campbell did make a small push to rename Jennika and canonize Artemisia before deciding that trying to shoehorn her character into the comic was a silly idea.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Dumber-than-a-sack-of-hammers they may be, Bebop and Rocksteady hit this when they nearly killed Donatello, Bebop holding down the turtle while Rocksteady smashed his back with a sledgehammer.
  • Bishop after he kills his own father, a defenseless elderly man, with zero hesitation.
  • In issue #98 Hob and the Mutanimals, alongside Raph, invade Stockman's acceptance speech as the new mayor, revealing the existence of mutants, as Hob rants about how humans have put him and his friends through so much pain, then crosses the MEH when he says humans should feel the same pain and terror that mutants have felt, and proceeds to throw a briefcase into the crowd, which explodes into a cloud of mutagen that mutates the grand majority of those present.
  • In The Armageddon Game, Rat King finally tosses away the few shreds of neutrality he has shown throughout the series by teaming up with various villains and plunging New York City into chaos, as the first target of his world-ending game.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: The first 100 issues were co-written by Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz, while the remaining isssues until #150 were written by Sophie Campbell, whose stories weren't as well-received as the stories written by Eastman and Waltz. Part of why The Armageddon Game spinoff was well-received was because Waltz returned to write it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Baxter Stockman saves Shredder from dying during the battle at the Technodrome and forges an alliance with him to kill their mutual enemies, making it seem like they will perform a Villain Team-Up like they often do in other TMNT incarnations. Instead, Karai, disgusted by the idea of the Foot working with outsiders to kill their enemies, has the Hamato clan challenge the Shredder to the Gauntlet to settle their issues once and for all and an annoyed Stockman decides to leave.
  • Jennika gradually accepting her mutation and becoming the new ninja turtle would make for an interesting storyline. Instead, her initial angst over her transformation only lasts for one issue before she accepts her new position as a ninja turtle without issue. It's brought up some during the arc after City Fall, along with her own miniseries, but it was still very downplayed.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Savate were built up as being a major rivals of the Foot clan and reoccurring enemies of the Turtles, only to be easily killed off to cement the Foot clan's control over New York's organized crime. The same goes for for Darius Dun and the Street Phantom who were taken out by Splinter for similar reasons.
  • Darius Dun does get a major role as the villain of the second TMNT/Ghostbusters crossover.
  • Don Turtelli, Big Louie and Rufferto, all recurring gangster antagonists from the 1986 and 2003 cartoons, all appear just to be easily killed off by the Foot Clan in Issue 96 without contributing anything to the plot.
  • The Slash clones. Bishop made them using Slash's DNA after his death to be two mindless attack dogs. No one, least of all those who knew and loved Slash, are ever given any time to comment or dwell on them, and they both die anticlimactically in issue 100. Worse, one of them showed evidence of gaining the real Slash's memories seconds before it expired, negating any chance of him being reborn through it.
  • Zodi the scorpion mutant presented one of the most interesting contrasts to the Turtles in both fighting style and philosophy in her first appearance. She could have been a more recurring character in the series who could have presented to the Turtles the ultimate conundrum for mutant warriors living in a potentially hostile world. Do you do whatever you have to do, including ruthless acts, in order to stay alive and save those you love? Or do you continue to fight with honor and morals even against foes who don't share your scruples, even if it ends up seriously costing you and both your family/friends? However, these questions are never raised again and in the rare instances Zodi appears again, she's just back to acting like a minor henchman for Null and not much more.
• Unexpected Character:
  • In Issue #51, Darius Dun and the Street Phantoms, antagonists from the Fast Forward retool of the 2003 incarnation, are introduced. To put things into perspective, Fast Forward wasn't one of the more popular seasons of the show and even then, fans gravitated more towards Viral and the Dark Turtles as the Ensemble Dark Horse characters of that era, not Dun or Jammerhead. As such, seeing Darius Dun and the Street Phantoms get reimagined as modern day characters for the IDW series can take one by surprise.
  • Considering Shredder already exists in this continuity as a (resurrected) human male and Krang also exists as the main tentacled alien villain with a robotic power suit, it's likely not many people were expecting Ch'rell of all people to show up in Issue #56.
  • While foreshadowed in Issue #110, the Punk Frogs debuting in Issue #125 was a pleasant surprise for fans, since there already was an incarnation of them in the second TMNT/Ghostbusters crossover (from a parallel universe, anyway).
  • Venus de Milo debuting in #127 comes as a big surprise considering how controversial her character inclusion was from a very negative entry of the franchise, and Jennika technically was a substitute for her as it is.
  • While Fast Forward characters have shown up in this series before, The Armageddon Game # 2 introduces Torbin Zixx. The character himself never really became an Ensemble Dark Horse or Breakout Villain, with fans leaning more towards being annoyed with his swindling antics than anything else. And ultimately, he hasn't really appeared in any other TMNT adaptation for fifteen some years. Because of that, seeing Zixx again can be surprising.
    • Surprisingly, that same issue also introduces a new version of the 4kids villain Garbageman, who only appeared in the 2003 series twice and was never considered all that memorable.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The scorpion mutant Zodi has some of this going for her. She's not portrayed as a mono-maniacally evil villain as she does team up with the Turtles and her goal is to survive against human soldiers trying to kill her. However, the Turtles are still portrayed by the story narrative as being in the moral right for the most part, being unwilling to seriously maim or kill any of Bishop's commandos, and Zodi is eventually made to listen to them during their teamup. Her ruthless approach to fighting becomes much more understandable considering the Turtles walked into the room where she had taken down several of Bishop's troops and tried to attack her, despite not fully understanding the situation and in fact, it's because Raphael went after her and began to second guess himself after mistakenly thinking he maimed a human soldier that he suffered a brutal beatdown at the hands of Bishop's commandos. Later on, Zodi mockingly criticizes them for their approach and Raphael punches her, initiating a fight with her despite Zodi not being wrong at all about how Raphael had almost gotten himself and his brothers killed or captured for their hot-headedness. Considering how the Turtles had taken some heavy damage from Bishop's commandos due to holding back and second-guessing themselves in battle over their moral code and Zodi being much more efficient at fighting the human soldiers due to her no-holds-barred approach, Zodi ends up being more sympathetic of a character than originally intended despite not being as morally upright as the Turtles and had the Turtles actually listened to her and seriously considered her point of view, there's a strong chance that Zodi could have actually helped the Turtles fight through Bishop's commandos much more efficiently without having to take the kind of unnecessary punishment that they did.