Jennika: Great Character Or Big Mistake?

[Cowabung-Gal]

What do you all think of Jennika, the newest female ninja turtle? Has she made the series better or worse? Is she a great female character or just another tasteless Mary Sue?

For me personally, I think she’s an embarrassment and a big mistake. She didn’t start out that way. She used to be an interesting character with a lot of potential, but of course that was before Tom Waltz left. She went from being an Ellen Ridley to just another Rey. And of all the potential partners out there, why is she sucking face with a PIG??

And keep in mind, I’m a female customer, the very one they are pandering to, and I hate this female ninja turtle. Like Venus before her, she drove away a lot of TMNT fans even though her purpose was to draw more in.

[Cloudrunner]

I hate her cause she stole plot points from a far more interesting character (Alopex) in order to create a cynical gimmick character they could use to get journalist attention. And now Alopex gets sidelined while Jennika takes center stage. And despite her being the primary focus for a good chunk of the Mutant Town 'saga' she's failed to really bring an interesting dynamic that justifies her place in the existing turtle family.

[Andrew NDB]

The idea of a fifth female Turtle isn't one that I'm vehemently against. I think there are ways to make it work. I think the ways she is being used/manipulated by differently minded people, her origin itself, carving out her own niche... eh, I think we could have done a bit better all around.

Also, flat out, I'm not super crazy about humans becoming mutants. But if you're going to do that, there needs to be a full-on body horror of one's life truly being at an end as they've known it, and then learning to cope with a new life. I'm not sure that was gotten into enough.

[Monty Mole]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Also, flat out, I'm not super crazy about humans becoming mutants. But if you're going to do that, there needs to be a full-on body horror of one's life truly being at an end as they've known it, and then learning to cope with a new life. I'm not sure that was gotten into enough.

Kinda like the episode "Dragon's Brew"? https://youtu.be/7onIpMZcVag

[CyberCubed]

At this point indifferent, remember she wasn't interesting as a human either from issues #51-97 and back then I remember people wondering what they were going to do with her.

[Bahamut810]

I dont *hate* her, but I don't like her. I completely agree with Cloudrunner on this in that most of the things she has done should have been Aleopex. 100% on board with that.

It really feels like she was changed for two reasons, to be better then the boys and to be a lesbian. Out of everything that has had her involvement, the stuff that Aleopex wouldnt really have anything to do with are those two things.

Instead of changing her, they should have left her human and the 5th turtle be Venus with the story she has right now. That would have been a lot more awesome.

[hypered1]

Originally Posted by Bahamut810

I dont *hate* her, but I don't like her. I completely agree with Cloudrunner on this in that most of the things she has done should have been Aleopex. 100% on board with that.

It really feels like she was changed for two reasons, to be better then the boys and to be a lesbian. Out of everything that has had her involvement, the stuff that Aleopex wouldnt really have anything to do with are those two things.

Instead of changing her, they should have left her human and the 5th turtle be Venus with the story she has right now. That would have been a lot more awesome.

They originally wanted her to be Venus but at the time there was still some legal/ licencing stuff going on. Obviously that's been resolved now.

[Coola Yagami]

The IDW comic moves too fast to let these moments sink in. It's why I like manga more, they somehow have fast neck break speed battles and action but now how to slow down. Fullmetal Alchemist is a perfect example of action but time out to reflect on things.

Jennika coming to terms with the fact she's technically a monster now was barely glossed over just like when Donatello barely had enough time to come to terms to potentially being an unfeeling robot forever before he got his body back.

I mean if this was real life the turtles would have dropped dead from exhaustion by now. There's never any real break. Like at hint they had a week off or something.

[Cowabung-Gal]

Originally Posted by hypered1

They originally wanted her to be Venus but at the time there was still some legal/ licencing stuff going on. Obviously that's been resolved now.

And we got a Franken-Venus in the process. And she used to be a human-frog mutant? Yeeeeah, that’s a bit weird, even for TMNT standards.

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

The IDW comic moves too fast to let these moments sink in. It's why I like manga more, they somehow have fast neck break speed battles and action but now how to slow down. Fullmetal Alchemist is a perfect example of action but time out to reflect on things.

Jennika coming to terms with the fact she's technically a monster now was barely glossed over just like when Donatello barely had enough time to come to terms to potentially being an unfeeling robot forever before he got his body back.

I mean if this was real life the turtles would have dropped dead from exhaustion by now. There's never any real break. Like at hint they had a week off or something.

This is generally how I feel. The book feels more concerned with having a fifth ninja turtle, who is female, in the group shots, then reflecting on what it might actually be like to mutate into a turtle. It's not something I can gloss over. It just feels artificial.

The turtles have encountered all sorts of allies, many of them mutated, but because Jennika mutated into a turtle, it feels oddly convenient that she essentially becomes a family member, as we all just roll with the change.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by hypered1

They originally wanted her to be Venus but at the time there was still some legal/ licencing stuff going on. Obviously that's been resolved now.

Not so obvious, I think. They're bringing in Venus but basically making her unrecognizable and a whole different character than the one from NT:TNM. Could be due to legal reasons. i.e., "has to be 25% different," or whatever it is in this case.

[neatoman]

Can't we just like... Leave this whole "fifth turtle" idea in the reject pile where it belongs? Like, it's not a good idea to flood the franchise with humanoid animal mutants in the first place but at least we can kind of pretend the integrity of the four main characters isn't being being compromised as long as they're like pigs, rhinos, alligators and a literal pile of walking waste.

[Bahamut810]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

This is generally how I feel. The book feels more concerned with having a fifth ninja turtle, who is female, in the group shots, then reflecting on what it might actually be like to mutate into a turtle. It's not something I can gloss over. It just feels artificial.

The part that kills me the most about this is that they started to do this twice that I can think of, both times with Mona Lisa. It gets like 4 or 5 pages and then abandoned.

The times,1. When Donnie let it slip to Mona Lisa that they were animal based mutants instead of humans. 2. When she calls home.

[Zog The Magnificent]

The main problem is with Jennika is that even back when Waltz, who we all generally agree knew what he was doing with these characters and stories, was writing her, she was one of the flattest, least interesting cardboard cutouts of a character in the whole series. She hung around for almost 50 issues doing nothing of consequence and adding nothing to the dynamic, except filling the role of "person Splinter talks to." But she doesn't bring antything out of Splinter, she has barely any personality of her own, and she there's nothing really all that compelling about her story, because the character never gets any chance to seriously reflect on it, and the plot never really fleshes her out. When she got turned into a turtle, that was literally the most interesting thing that had happened to her thus far, and even then, it was something that happened to her, not something she did. It came across as Waltz not knowing what to do with her after she'd been around for so long, and thinking "Well, I may as well try this, maybe that'll be something."

Following this, she's still a stupid nothingburger of a character, except now she's a turtle, which makes her important for some reason. Like someone mentioned earlier, there are many other mutant allies, but Jennika, despite being no more important than any of those characters, and arguably less so, is basically promoted to main character status, bordering on outright protagonist the way Campbell writes her, and it's all at the expense of the actual main characters, while Jennika herself still hasn't done anything interesting, had any interesting arcs, or done anything in the story to actually earn her reletively important position within it. The "plot" essentially just hands her important stuff to do, and she does them, but not because it makes sense for her to do it or because anything led to that, but because Campbell wants Jennika to be important, and is forcing her to be important by suddenly giving her all of the plot relevent tasks, while the characters we actually care about and want to see do things languish on the sidelines. Jennika is essentially a tool, not a character.

This brings us to the third primary aspect of her "character" that makes her so terrible: the fact that Campbell uses Jennika as a personal fanfic character. The comic is unconcerned with a 5th turtle, beyond being able to say "Look, we have a 5th turtle who's a GIRL, isn't that great? Put her on all the covers! She's one of the main characters now!" But as mentioned earlier, there's nothing about Jennika that makes her more "special" than any of their many other numerous allies. Jennika, unlike the others, is not a long established character of the franchise with a mostly definitive history, set of character traits, or any other sorts of expectations. That means that a prospective writer can kind of do whatever they want with her. Enter Campbell. Suddenly, Jennika is at the forefront of the plot, suddenly bisexual despite being straight being one of the few aspects of her character they did nail down, and being given an inexplicable amount of attention, including the truly terrible "Battle of the Bands" arc, two self-titled miniseries, and somehow being the key to so many plot points, again, at the expense of established characters like Alopex, who suddenly lost her place in the plot to the comic book equivalent of a diversity hire. This, combined with all the other tiresome woke elements that have been discussed numerous times in other threads, created an environment that came across as Campbell making the TMNT universe that IDW had built up into a sort of personal playground for all of the ideas that Campbell wanted to see happen, regardless of whether they should happen in this universe. If Campbell wanted to write an original comic like this, go for it, but don't mess with an established franchise, bending it to your whims to tell a story you like at the expense of everhthing else, including preexising fans.

All this to say that Jennika as a character has always been a terrible characer, and one that no one, not even Waltz, knew what to do with, who has been pushed to the forefront by Campbell abusing author powers to make her important whether we like it or not, and regardless of whether it makes sense in this universe. Jennika is a sort of nexus point, condensing many of the issues that this comic has had inbetween #100 and the Armageddon Game into a single, terrible character who embodies them.

[Mutant Ninja Anole]

I’m not as enthused about the comic post 100, but Jennika isn’t the problem. I enjoyed her two mini series and thought they actually came close to exploring some of the themes around Mutant Town that I hoped for while also giving more info on Jennika’s backstory. I liked all that.

The main series has just been difficult for me, partly relating to dialogue, wishing certain stories were followed up on, nipicking the strange politics of Mutant Town, etc, though I can’t deny I might have just hit a wall after the big plot pile up at issue 100. In general I’m finding it hard to disconnect the way the story has gone from how I imagine it going in my mind, which I freely admit is unfair.

I do understand Alopex fans feeling she’s been pushed aside a bit though. Which is too bad.

[Allio]

The character really just needs good writing. Sadly the era which we had just wasn’t up to par with winning people over (this wasn’t just a character issue but the whole story arc) honestly I do think her minis were fine (as far as solo focus are) and when the series was a team focused I do think she was treated as equal.

[Joey Kamikaze]

Eh. She wasn't particularly interesting before she was mutated and since she was, I suppose she's just... kind of there? We've had a lot of stories centered around her since then but I still don't care about her much as a character. She's not *bad,* she just isn't really a draw like the other turtles either.

[Sumac]

I guess, her writers succeed making her Venus 2.0 after all - plain character in a bad story, huh?

[Zog The Magnificent]

I am truly surprised at how even this poll is turning out. It's a rare sight.

[Zage]

*shrugs?* I like her, so far. No qualms at all.