The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were inescapable during the early 1990s, when Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s indie comic exploded into a cross-platform juggernaut that was omnipresent at every comic shop, toy store, mall, and supermarket in America. The early 2000s belonged to Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, a blockbuster series in Japan that only got bigger when the manga and anime made their way to the United States. This fall, two global brands join forces in a crossover event uniting two generations of ninja teens and their fans, with IDW Publishing rolling out the trade paperback Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Naruto, written by Caleb Goellner and illustrated by Hendry Prasetya. We spoke with the duo about how East met West, ramen met pizza, and “Dattebayo!” met “Cowabunga!”

How did this ninja union come about?

Hendry Prasetya: At first, all my editor told me was that this project was top secret, and that the Turtles were part of it. Then they revealed that it was a Naruto crossover. It was very intimidating. So many people have drawn the Turtles in so many ways, but when it comes to Naruto, I think I’m the only artist apart from Masashi Kishimoto and his staff. That’s a lot of pressure!

Redesigning the Turtles to fit into Naruto’s world was a tremendous challenge. East meets West. Japanese style meets western style. Naruto’s style is already perfect, and I did not want to change that, but finding the middle ground between those styles for the Turtles—that was the difficult part. I didn’t want anything to look out of place.

Caleb Goellner: Talking animals and characters like that already live in Naruto’s world, so the approach for me was to make an awesome Naruto movie. It can fit in canon if you want it to, but it’s just going to be an awesome, fun side adventure if you want it as a standalone thing.

“Movie” is a great way to describe this story, which almost felt like an all-out-action animated movie.

CG: We had four issues to tell the story, and that’s kind of the right amount for this one. Don’t get me wrong! If they asked me to do a hundred issues, I would have jumped at that. But I like that rhythm in comics storytelling. The Turtles have been around forever, and there are a ton of Turtles movies, and Naruto has hundreds of episodes of the anime and hundreds of chapters of the manga. It feels good to take everything you like about these characters and put it into one big adventure.

How do you strike a balance with a crossover like this?

CG: The balance was intuitive. From talking with the copyright holders, the interest on the Japanese side was to introduce Naruto to new readers. They wanted a proper introduction of the characters to the Wednesday comics crowd in America, which hasn’t necessarily read the manga or watched the anime.

Naruto fans are probably already familiar with the Turtles, but here, they get to enjoy them in a whole new context. Fans love seeing these two groups have fun together. And when those groups have fun together, that means they’re beating up on somebody who deserves it.

HP: When they made the decision that this story was the Turtles as part of Naruto’s world, I decided New York had its own “Naruto” village, a place that combined aspects of Naruto’s world with the Turtles’ New York City. I really enjoyed blending those worlds and bringing them together. My biggest worries came whenever we got new notes from the Japanese publisher, but when my editor told me that Masashi Kishimoto made it known that he was pleased with my work, I was so relieved! Everything was easy from then on.

CG: I’ve had these characters in my life for such a long time, too. Turtles since I was born, Naruto since ninth grade. Nothing felt like it was inspiration, necessarily—it was more like everything was already there, as a part of me. The plot beats, the fight names... we knew we had a certain version of the Naruto cast that we’d be using, and we knew we’d have a certain amount of freedom on the Turtles’ side.

When you’re introducing two fanbases to each other, you don’t have much time and you’ve got to include everything that makes the characters fun. You’re doing your own jitsu moves to make that happen. I knew which era and which versions and which ninja moves from Naruto were going to be included, then I had to go in and put that Turtles sauce in there. Put some ooze in Naruto, put some Naruto into the Turtles’ world. And every page that Hendry drew, every minor design concept... it all came to life, like magic.