Home NEWS Exclusive: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Naruto crossover comic’s variant cover revealed for Issue #1

Exclusive: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Naruto crossover comic’s variant cover revealed for Issue #1

Kim Jacinto draws variant cover for issue #1 shipping on November 13


IDW Publishing has provided ANN with an exclusive first look at the variant cover for its and Viz Media’s upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Naruto crossover comic series with four issues.

Kim Jacinto drew the artwork for the below variant, which will be a 1:50 variant (meaning that retailers receive one copy of the variant for every 50 copies they order of the inaugural issue).

Image courtesy of IDW Publishing

(Click on the thumbnail below to see a larger size.)

Caleb Goellner, writing the comic, and Hendry Prasetya, drawing, alongside Raúl Angulo (coloring) and Ed Dukeshire (lettering), have been working on the crossover series. Jorge Jiménez and Prasetya drew the main cover art for issue #1, which will ship on November 13.

Goellner provided a comment regarding the above variant cover:

Can you believe Kim Jacinto’s awesome cover? It’s beyond humbling to get to be part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Naruto crossover and to see artists like Kim, Hendry Prasetya, Jorge Jiménez, and others put their respective spins on Masashi Kishimoto and Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s creations. We’ve been working hard to deliver pure fun with the power of friendship and can’t wait to show everyone what we’ve got cooking.

IDW describes the story of the crossover comic:

It’s the coolest ninja matchup you could have ever dreamed of, had you dared! The Heroes in a Half-Shell meet the host of the Nine-Tailed Fox in the crossover everyone will be talking about.

When teenage reporter April O’Neil has a clandestine meeting with Tsunade, the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, it garners the attention of Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi. They aren’t the only ones who are wondering what the two women were discussing, though. The sinister Foot Clan have their own interest in April’s visit, as they think she might hold the valuable information on mutation research being conducted by the scientist Baxter Stockman. With April caught between the forces of the Hidden Leaf Village and the Foot Clan, it can’t be long before the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show up to lend her a hand!

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Naruto franchises have previously collaborated for merchandise at the Box Lunch retail chain.

Masashi Kishimoto launched the ninja manga Naruto in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1999, and ended the series in November 2014. The manga has spawned the Naruto and Naruto Shippūden television anime series, OVAs, several anime films, spinoff manga, the Boruto sequel manga and anime series, a series of novels, stage plays, and video games.

Source: Email correspondence