TMNT #115 Preview and Discussion

[TigerClaw]

Originally Posted by hypered1

Pretty good issue and I agree it was a decent skirmish. Also noticed the little nod to the '87/ Archie bandanas with the shorter tie-offs on Little Lita's new pink one.

Also Little Lita is playing with a stick made out to look kind of like the Time Scepter just like her older self.

[lonewarrior20]

I can see mikey putting on a puppet show out of karais window for tokka and Rahzar or the kids setting up a bunch of boxes and having tokka act out a gamera movie.

[CyberCubed]

The art during the Rahzar/Tokka fight was really nice as well as the end with the Turtles reflecting on their past.

The Turtles really do need a permanent truce with Karai and the other mutants because they've done this same song and dance so many times now. Even City at War didn't really put a stop to it, and I guess they can saw the sword was influencing Karai's soul or whatever.

[Allio]

Not often you get to see it but it’s nice to see characters actually tk their problems out. Not everything can be 555

[neatoman]

What is probably the most interesting thing about this issue is confirmation that yes, Lita is indeed a mutated human and not a turtle. I mean it's doubtful she was ever meant to be an actual turtle, it would explain why she seemingly had no backstory, but it just wouldn't make sense for a mutated turtle to run around in a slum full of mutated humans like that. The only way that would have made sense is if she's a runaway test subject like the Turtles or a copy of the good old "Butterfinger Chet" origin. But I have to admit, seeing it in a montage like this instead of her just admitting to it is... Weird.

[hypered1]

Pretty sure the child is meant to be Jennika as the montage appears to be from her perspective and we already know that she grew up homeless (and the kid is blonde).

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by hypered1

Pretty sure the child is meant to be Jennika as the montage appears to be from her perspective and we already know that she grew up homeless (and the kid is blonde).

Incorrect.

Aside from the pink color coding and the placement just beneath mutant Lita, the child depicted is clearly too young to be Jennika during her time being homeless. The image also strongly impies the child is being abandoned, a very different reason than Jennika had for being homeless. And if it was indeed meant to be Jennika, not only would the child be older and given yellow coded smoke, there would also be more aspects of her backstory reflected.

Now I certainly think the reader is meant to be tricked into thinking it's Jennika, what with her being right next to the image, but if you pay attention to how the visuals are constructed it does seem more clear it's about Lita.

[hypered1]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Incorrect.

Aside from the pink color coding and the placement just beneath mutant Lita, the child depicted is clearly too young to be Jennika during her time being homeless. The image also strongly impies the child is being abandoned, a very different reason than Jennika had for being homeless. And if it was indeed meant to be Jennika, not only would the child be older and given yellow coded smoke, there would also be more aspects of her backstory reflected.

Now I certainly think the reader is meant to be tricked into thinking it's Jennika, what with her being right next to the image, but if you pay attention to how the visuals are constructed it does seem more clear it's about Lita.

Yeah, you're right. I had to go back and reread 'What is Ninja?' to remind myself of those details. Jen was at least a teen when she left home, so the younger kid must be Lita, but whether those are Lita's thoughts or Jennika's assumptions are still unclear.

[neatoman]

Oh and I also forgot that we already saw Jennika's smoke flashbacks on the previous page, so clearly that must be Lita's.

[lonewarrior20]

so guess this means lita was abandoned way before she was mutated. i'm also wondering if this means she was an albino before too.

[Sophie Campbell]

That was Lita's flashback/trauma, yep! And her being human previously wasn't meant to be a mystery or anything, all the new mutagen bomb/Mutant Town mutants used to be human (including the Weasels and Tokka & Rahzar). Any that were animals first are animalistic creatures like the Slithery, since the bomb didn't include the psychotropic serum to give them sapience.

[lonewarrior20]

Originally Posted by Sophie Campbell

That was Lita's flashback/trauma, yep! And her being human previously wasn't meant to be a mystery or anything, all the new mutagen bomb/Mutant Town mutants used to be human (including the Weasels and Tokka & Rahzar). Any that were animals first are animalistic creatures like the Slithery, since the bomb didn't include the psychotropic serum to give them sapience.

So sophie, it looks like her hair was really white before she was a mutant, does that mean she was born albino?

[MikeandRaph87]

Wait...Razhar and Tokka are mutated human babies? Not wolf and alligator snapping turtle Hob got from the zoo?

[Mutant Ninja Anole]

Originally Posted by lonewarrior20

So sophie, it looks like her hair was really white before she was a mutant, does that mean she was born albino?

On my screen I’d probably have assumed it was a very light blonde, but I suppose that would make a degree of sense.

I wanted to say again the last page was a really well done piece, especially with how each character is shown with corresponding past regrets/trauma, and the turtles as a whole all have Splinter and Tang Shen to their left.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Sophie Campbell

... all the new mutagen bomb/Mutant Town mutants used to be human (including the Weasels and Tokka & Rahzar). Any that were animals first are animalistic creatures like the Slithery, since the bomb didn't include the psychotropic serum to give them sapience.

OK, that I did not think was the case. Their level of intelligence and restraint seems to be on par with Slash before the injection, so I just assumed they were some failed experiments Hob tried to do without Lindsey. That and the fact that Zink, Mushroom, Tokka and Rahzar hardly sounds like human names.

A bit of writing advice here, if something isn't meant to be a mystery, it's better to establish what's going on from the start than to leave anything about it ambigious. Since we know Hob has made other mutants in his makeshift lab before, then it would be reasonable to assume he made them personally, instead of just nabbing them off the streets.

The fact that Lita claimed to be nameless is what lead to me being a bit confused about this situation in the first place. On one hand it is very unlikely for a human to not have a name at all and never talk about her past, on the other it makes no sense for an actual turtle to be in this sitation, so I couldn't be sure which of the two was meant to be the case since both explainations came with their own can of worms.

Now that we know for sure she's actually human, I can't help but to think there is meant to be a mystery about who she is and who she actually is meant to be part of some conflict down the line. Something like she's Victor's daughter and is going to hate Shredder for killing her dad, or she is Dr. Miller's daughter and she has a beef with Jennika instead because of it, something like that.

[Zog The Magnificent]

Originally Posted by Sophie Campbell

And her being human previously wasn't meant to be a mystery or anything, all the new mutagen bomb/Mutant Town mutants used to be human (including the Weasels and Tokka & Rahzar). Any that were animals first are animalistic creatures like the Slithery, since the bomb didn't include the psychotropic serum to give them sapience.

[Sophie Campbell]

Originally Posted by neatoman

OK, that I did not think was the case. Their level of intelligence and restraint seems to be on par with Slash before the injection, so I just assumed they were some failed experiments Hob tried to do without Lindsey. That and the fact that Zink, Mushroom, Tokka and Rahzar hardly sounds like human names.

A bit of writing advice here, if something isn't meant to be a mystery, it's better to establish what's going on from the start than to leave anything about it ambigious. Since we know Hob has made other mutants in his makeshift lab before, then it would be reasonable to assume he made them personally, instead of just nabbing them off the streets.

I can see why it's a bit confusing, yeah. Even I get confused sometimes about which character underwent which mutation method in the past or who has what mutation means available to them at a given point etc. etc. Hob has never had mutagen lying around that he can use whenever he wants, the only time he made mutants was that initial batch of Herman and Mondo (with Lindsey's help like you said + the psychotropic serum), he didn't have any extra mutagen after that otherwise he probably would have made even more mutants. After the Mutanimals raided the tech from the Null building, they put all of that into the mutagen bomb, which was meant to turn humans into mutants, which was why it contained a bunch of random animal DNA in addition to the mutagen. That's how human-to-mutant mutation has worked in IDW TMNT since Bebop & Rocksteady, so I've just been following that. Introducing animal DNA + mutagen into normal animals makes weird creatures like the Slithery and those other messed up mutant sea creatures the Turtles found. Except for Null and whatever mutagen secrets she's keeping, no one has had a way of producing new intelligent animal-born mutants since that first batch (Herman, Mondo, Koya, and Bludgeon).

Thanks for the advice. I meant mystery as in like a narrative mystery, though, not just something in the story that isn't explicit. When something isn't revealed about a character right off the bat doesn't mean it's going to be a big reveal later on. Like Lita, just because she says she didn't have a name doesn't necessarily mean that's true, or maybe she doesn't remember what her original name is, or doesn't want to remember it. Who knows!

I don't usually like to spell everything out about a character when they're first introduced, that feels unnatural to me, so I like to reveal things when they're important to the current story, or when it feels like the right time. It's fun to leave some things unexplained or implied, it feels more real to me and leaves some things open to interpretation or speculation. But yeah, in any case, Lita being human originally wasn't supposed to be a big mystery.

[neatoman]

Obviously I get why it might seem pointless to have everything spelled out for the reader at the start. The roughly 600 words dedicated to describing what role smoking has in Hobbit society at the start of FotR, before the book even got around to the summary of the Hobbit, is something that always bugged me. That sort of thing definitely comes across as something that ought to be explained by the characters over time in small bursts.

A central concept regarding a character on the other hand ought to be clear as soon as possible. So while we might not need to know when Frodo thinks it's the right time to blaze it, we do need to know he had a comfortable life in the Shire and understands he needs to carry the evil ring to it's destruction so he can protect the Shire, which is something the book does make very clear.

Understanding that Lita was abandonned before she turned into a turtle and might be uncomfortable talking about it is something that should be important for the audience to understand the character. A bit of dialogue like this would have worked to establish it:
"Where are your parents?"
"I don't know, they left me two years ago"
"I'm sorry, do want to talk about it?"
"No..."
"That's OK..."

That would have taken maybe a panel or two, it wouldn't have blurted out everything about her and there is still plenty of room to build on it. It's a good idea to weigh what details might be important to reveal and what aren't. Some ideas within this series itself are revealed way in advance. Ch'rell was explicitly kept in stasis because the Fugitoid wasn't comfortable releasing a war criminal, now he didn't have an active role to play until exactly 30 issues later but when he appeared it didn't come across as confusing. When he did show up to fend off the EPF, we already knew who he was and why he might be a problem, he didn't just poof into existance without the reader being unsure if he should be feared or rooted for.

[MikeandRaph87]

I just don't understand how Razhar and Tokka can be human babies and not zoo animals that Hob was experimenting on. It's more plausible that Hob attempted to subconsciously replace Slash with Tokka and upon mutation realized the ooze substance may not fully take effect because the animal was an infant. Razhar same thing. It brings up too many red flags like where are the parents? Are they twins mutated into different random animals? It effects the story being told and bringing up more questions than answers by stating that Razhar and Tokka are human infants who are mutated due to the mutagen bomb Hob set off at Baxter's rally.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Tokka and Rahzar were human babies?

Oof.

I get trying to be consistent with mutagen's general availability, but I'm definitely not okay with that. Seems very weird, not cool at all.