TMNT Nightwatcher #1 preview and discussion
 

It's



Because of course it is.

Overall, I thought it was pretty solid. The story was an interesting tease of what’s to come, I appreciated the news interviews, and the art and writing were pretty good. I was not thrilled with who the Nightwatcher was revealed to be, simply because I thought having Future Raph be the vigilante would provide more interesting story developments and character arcs. I’m not surprised in the least by who they chose to be the Nightwatcher; I’m just a bit disappointed.

Well that is extremely disappointing.

Yeah, by process of elimination it had to be. Probably not a great idea to make the Turtle with the greatest need to carve out their own niche amongst the other Turtles take on an entirely different persona from their own.

So this is just another Jennika mini-series then. Knew even with the new #1 they couldn't just drop Jennika entirely. IDW wouldn't allow their first female lesbian Turtle not to continue. I don't know why they used the Nightwatcher concept from the 2007 movie anyway, giving Raph's vigilante outfit to Jennika doesn't really make much sense.

"We don't know what to do with a character so let's make them into a different character" <-- pretty much the worst thing you can do, creatively.

I feel like the Future Raph thing was pointless from the start. His warnings didn't help much. We don't even know why Foot attacked him? Even in Karai's miniseries, he didn't appear. Not making him the Nightwatcher only remind us again of IDW TMNT's bloated cast problem.

Honestly? This does feel like a good twist.

"We have Batman at home."

Cover A is great.

Liked the art style.

The interviews were pretty fun. Especially the Cheetah trying to sell his book.

All the different text boxes were a little confusing but ultimately fine.

Advanced 'Toys' being circulated to make humans more like mutants could be interesting going forward.

Best Moment:
"I can tell you where to find them if you let me g--"
"I. DON’T. CARE."

This first issue was just random, no real plot. Just show Jennika beating up some thugs. I wonder what this series will even be about.

Well, that was predictable, wasn't it. I have nothing against Jennika, but honestly... why should she be important enough for her own series.

I knew it inevitability wouldn't be Raph, because we can't possibly let characters keep their individual traits and history as their own -- god forbit we don't now keep turning things on their head and reshuffling the same deck to redistribute different elements, because keeping with their history might be "boring" (and adding new suitable history is hard?) -- but with Raph having escaped prison I'd sort of hoped the Nightwatcher thing might be some side activity of his again.


Edit: She could have had her own secret vigilante identity. This happens way too much with female characters; choosing to just give one some mantle previously held by a guy, because they can't bother to be creative and give a girl a cool one of her own (without gender stereotyping).

I kinda just wish they write it so that the uncontrolled circumstances around her mutation leads to the mutagen wearing off somehow (or something along those lines), so she can just kind of get retired and hopefully along the rest of the pointless additions.

They are keeping the Mutant town stuff alive in all these miniseries even if the main series avoids it going forward.

Not really, The main series will still have Mutant Town, There just telling some different stories, such as the first issue being set in a prison, Eventually a story in the mainline comics will be in Mutant Town.

I'm not going to say you're wrong, because you're probably not in the long run, but none of the solicitations for the main series really says anything about Mutant Town and the one issue so far implies a rather different direction. I'm sure you'll get a bone thrown your way but right now, I'm not seeing Mutant Town returning to the status of being the main setting anytime soon or even in the long run, an issue here or there maybe but not the main focus.

Because it bears repeating, Mutant Town sucks and it sucks hard. It should have ended like six issues in (at most) and never been treated like anything other than an excuse to introduce a bunch of old Playmates action figures without needing to involve Null/Stockgen. The fact that it ended up being the main focus of the series for about four years, and nearly all of it was awful filler tier crap about soup kitchens and orphans at a dojo, made most of us annoyed with boredom. It's hardly farfetched to assume it's being phased out.

Mutant Town is here to stay whether you like it, or not.

But the readers aren’t.