After powering my way through a truly awful comic book mini series, it’s such a relief to pick something up and actually, properly enjoy it.

With the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles celebrating their 40th anniversary in 2024, along with their current publisher, IDW, reaching their own quarter of a century anniversary, it feels like there’s an awful lot of TMNT series around right now.

There tends to be a pretty high bar of quality to maintain, and somehow, often regardless of the series or creative team, the Turtles generally come through with fun, satisfying reads.

Black, White & Green is a 4 issue anthology series by a wide range of writers and artists, all of whom are new to the TMNT franchise. The one consistent element between stories is that they’re told in black and white, with varying uses of the titular green too.

This first issue is superb, showcasing a massive variety of styles, tones and content across its numerous stories, with some really clever usage of the green colour aspect. Stories take in more traditional TMNT adventures, alongside more comedic tales and even a high fantasy story with Leonardo as a great swordsman in a land populated by anthropomorphic animals that need his protection and leadership.

I was left very impressed with this first issue, and even though one of two of the stories themselves aren’t completely satisfying in terms of their narrative, the stylised artwork does a lot of work to make them worth checking out regardless.

If you’re not a TMNT fan, this probably won’t convert you; however, this first issue is a fantastic, stylish experiment that has an impressive mix of different visual styles and intriguing turtle tales.