What are 5 changes you'd make in The Last Ronin?
 

1. Make Casey Jr. a red-haired boy instead of a dark-haired girl. I’m really tired of this trend of the main male character passing the torch to a young female character. Yes, I know she was conceived by Eastman and Laird in the 80s but at this point it’s a tiresome cliche

2. Include more familiar faces like Leatherhead and Mondo Gecko. Mondo’s been Mikey’s best pal since the 80’s and he could use a good friend other than April to help him deal with the loss of his family

3. Expand on Hiroto’s backstory. We hardly know anything about the guy other than he’s Karai’s “bastard son” and was abandoned by her when he was little. Who was his father? And how did he become so mentally unstable?

4. Reveal why the truce between Clan Hamato and the Foot Clan was broken. Was it because the Foot are just a bunch of honorless backstabbers? Or did someone within the Foot object to the peace and deceived Karai in some way?

5. Have Mikey survive at the end of issue #5 so that he himself could train the new turtles and even adopt them as his sons. It would’ve been sweet and poetic to see Mikey become a father figure like Splinter did for the original turtles.

It's like we share a brain...at least as far as The Last Ronin goes! Every single thing I was going to type 1-5 is right here! As good as it was it was far from perfect because of these 5 items!

I'd have made them commit to it being Future Mirage or Future IDW. And a larger attempt to get Laird actively involved in it.

So it's just... random alternate future without fitting a certain continuity?

100%, yes. Which, to be fair, is The Dark Knight Returns in a nutshell, which this obviously is trying to be like. But I can almost guarantee you that 1987 outline Kevin and Peter wrote was never intended to be an out of continuity affair when they wrote it.

- Mikey is alive.

- Mikey didn't become an emo. He can still face his grief in other ways. He's still carefree, but when faced with something, like revenge, he become serious. And even if the assassination failed, he will not choose to seppuku. Instead, he will look for other opportunities, until he met Marie.

- Mikey will call Karai a liar and kill her while Hiroto cries like a dog. Hiroto's death moment would have been more satisfying. Mikey cut his head off, or let him fall from a building and he's still alive, but he can't move because of injuries, and then he's surrounded by mobs and beaten to death. Also, he won't get any decent burial, just some rats and maggots feast on his corpse.

- Marie is not a mutant, and doesn't have any superpowers, she's just gifted. She relies on martial arts and other high-tech equipment to fight her enemies. Not only her, but other young resistance members will also become Mikey's students.

- Mikey won't stay in New York forever, one day he left something to his students and left forever. He might go to japan or mongolia. If he goes to Mongolia, he will live in seclusion among a mongolian tribe somewhere, sometime leading a group of warriors to hunt down the Death Worm's remaning minions.

I’d figure he’d be crying for his mother in his final moments since he’s such a mama’s boy as mentioned by Mikey

Here’s how I think the final battle should’ve gone: Hiroto doesn’t kill Karai after breaking open her chamber as he had intended. It instead somehow awakens her from her coma and she secretly follows them to the outskirts of the city. Mikey starts to have the upper hand but Hiroto attempts to cheat his way into victory by using the shock device. Suddenly he is impaled from behind by his own mother and dies in her arms while Mikey looks on in shock. When Mikey asks her how she could kill her own son, Karai remorsefully explains that this was her penance for breaking the truce which led to Hiroto taking over the New York and ruling it with an iron fist. She will take back control over the Foot and regain their lost honor by having them move out of New York and back to Japan, where she will negotiate peace with Clan Hamato. Instead of taking revenge on her as he had planned for years, Mikey lets her go as he realizes that this is the only way to truly end the cycle and he finally finds inner peace

This would've been a way better ending!

I'm not sure how I feel about letting Karai go though. Would Mikey really want to leave any loose ends? At this point, that bitch has had plenty of chances, and how do we know she won't just break the truce again in 10 or so years?

I still prefer the traditional ways. She broke the truce, ambushed them and killed Raph, so she had to die and Mikey had no reason to trust her. Oroku family and Foot Clan deserve to be wiped out.

Yes! The whole Last Ronin story loses a lot of its weight if it's not tied to a familiar continuity. I'd go even further in that direction. Lock it in as the Mirage future, and change Casey Marie into Shadow Jones.