A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic project recently came to the attention of this website, and its developers are looking for fan reactions before moving forward. The story takes the turtles into the future, 10 years after Master Splinter passed on the ninja way to his sons and left the world. What’s worse is that April O’Neil has been missing since 2007, and everyone believes she’s dead too. Everyone’s favorite heroes in a half shell are now into their 30s, and losing their friends and family has taken its toll. No longer the fun-loving teenagers that stopped Shredder and saved the world, the boys have a no-nonsense attitude about life and everything it holds. Fortunately, they’re the four individuals who haven’t given up on Ms. O’Neil, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to find her. Whatever it takes.

With the TMNT television show and new feature film handling the younger audiences that made the turtles a household name to begin with, this project wants to take a new direction and give the turtles some age and an edge. In a lot of ways, this makes them very similar to the original turtles of the 1984 comic book (who were not against killing Foot soldiers if they were in the way). The look and feel of the whole project will be more adult, and the turtles themselves will be losing their cartoonish appearance. You can view the pictures in more detail in the gallery below, but the turtles would now have a more realistic form. What immediately stands out is the head, with its more pronounced turtle beak, something that no incarnation has ever truly had.

Immediately, the nature of the project seems like a very good one. While the turtles are suppose to be teenagers, very few incarnations have ever dealt with that, so adult turtles aren’t so out of the ordinary. Additionally, with the turtles’ new attitude more in line with their old selves, nothing about this project should really be foreign to the TMNT universe. Add in an interesting plot that could go any one of a thousand different ways, and it would seem as if this is a hit waiting to happen.

This project was started up by Tom Hall of Wolf Hall Studios. Tom is an artist at Sony Pictures Digital (though Sony is in no way involved with this project), and a huge Ninja Turtles fan. Together with a sister studio, Tom has been developing this concept art for a few weeks, as well as coming up with the plot outline that this new project will have. The goal is to create a comic, and perhaps in the future a video game. As the project receives more feedback and there’s more work done on concept, Tom hopes to produce set locations and new drawings of the Foot clan, or at least what’s left of it.

What Tom and the others working on this project need now is to know what the fans think of the idea and the concept art. Before they proceed with the story and try to acquire the necessary rights from Viacom, they would like to hear how this spin (including the new look and feel) will go over with fans. So let’s hear what you all have to say; whether you like it, hate it, or have no opinion, let us know. You can leave a comment here, on Facebook or Twitter, or contact Tom with your thoughts and feelings about it (but please, be polite and civil – this is a project for fans, and they don’t have to ask for any input before moving forward with it). You can contact him at Tom@wolfhallstudios.com, using the subject line TURTLE HELP or TURTLE FEEDBACK. We’ll have more updates as the project moves forward, including artwork and information.