News · 2026-07-22
TMNT #300 Hits Comic Shops Today, Launching The City That Never Dies
Forty-one years after Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s 1984 original, the mainline Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series reaches issue #300 today. IDW Publishing’s landmark comic arrives in shops on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, the same day Comic-Con International: San Diego opens with preview night.
Cover art: Frank Miller / IDW Publishing.
The City That Never Dies begins
The oversized issue launches The City That Never Dies, written by Eisner Award winner Gene Luen Yang with art by Freddie E. Williams II. Per IDW’s announcement, Splinter and Tang Shen, the mother of the Turtles, have magically come back to life, and they are not the only ones who returned from the land of the dead. The publisher bills the arc as one of the biggest TMNT stories yet, with consequences for the future of the whole IDW Turtles universe. The ongoing volume is tracked issue by issue in our IDW TMNT ongoing series catalogue.
The milestone also carries a backup story from co-creator Kevin Eastman and longtime series writer Tom Waltz that sends the time-traveler Renet through the many eras of Turtles history, drawn by classic TMNT artists Ben Bates, Eric Talbot, Chris Allan, Frank Fosco, Jim Lawson, and Dan Duncan, plus new pinups from longtime series architect Sophie Campbell.
A cover program 40 years in the making
IDW built a full cover event around the number. Frank Miller, one of the two artists Eastman and Laird have long cited as the inspiration for the Turtles, has drawn his first-ever TMNT cover for the issue. The blind bag program adds multiple versions of a never-before-seen cover by Eastman and Laird themselves, alongside a J. Scott Campbell variant and more. Bleeding Cool reported in June that the issue had passed 200,000 copies ordered ahead of release.
Landing mid-convention
The release date is no accident. SDCC 2026 runs July 22 to 26, and IDW has teased a major TMNT announcement for the show, per AIPT. Paramount Games’ Friday, July 24 panel also celebrates the 300th issue alongside the PlatinumGames The Last Ronin video game. The Last Ronin corner of the franchise is catalogued in our Last Ronin series page, fresh off this month’s Training Day one-shot.
Sources
- IDW Publishing - TMNT #300 Kicks Off Blockbuster Storyline (press release)
- IDW Publishing - TMNT #300 Features Frank Miller’s First-Ever Ninja Turtles Cover (press release)
- Bleeding Cool - First Look At Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #300 With 200,000 Orders
- NickALive - IDW Previews ‘Shredder’ #10 and ‘TMNT’ #300, Teases Big News Set to Be Announced at SDCC 2026
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