Venus Returning in IDW #127

[hypered1]

Full article here:

https://gizmodo.com/teenage-mutant-n...idw-1848590161

[Chris]

"Venus will make her first official debut in next month’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #127, by Campbell, Tunica, Pattison, and Lee. As part of the ongoing arc that has seen the Turtle brothers struggle to keep the peace in Mutant Town—a quarantined section of Manhattan’s East Side populated by the mutated human victims of a mutagenic bomb explosion—the team has been investigating a mysterious surgeon named Dr. Jasper Barlow, a mutant doctor who has been operating a cosmetic surgery lab offering to graft human skin grafts onto willing mutant residents of Mutant Town."

"Although the current storyline will wrap up in TMNT #130, Venus’ story will continue in the form of IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Free Comic Book Day issue, due out May 7 as part of the annual comics celebration, which itself will set the stage for a major event in the ongoing series, the aforementioned Armageddon Game, set to begin later this year."

Full article from io9 here:

https://gizmodo.com/teenage-mutant-n...idw-1848590161

[Andrew NDB]

I admit, I'm curious as to what the story will be here on her.

Is she really going to be Mei Pieh Chi? Will she truly be a non-sister sister separated from them when they were normal turtles? Will she actually be called Venus De Milo? Alternately, is she supposed to be the actual Venus, like from the NT:TNM universe? Probably not, right? Did her version of Chung I do the Frankenstein stuff to her?

[CyberCubed]

She's basically Frakenturtle? Admittedly this news would be somewhat more interesting if we didn't have two other female Turtles in the series already, so this will make number 3.

[Allio]

Not surprised. The whole Dragon thing always felt like we would be getting a “Next Mutation” arc, doesn’t help that Dr. Barlow gives off a Dr. Queese vibe.

I imagine the vibe is that This Venus is rebuilt with the missing Punk Frog as her base.

[neatoman]

OK, for anyone who is confused about this:

No. She is not going to have the same or even a similar backstory to what she had in the Next Mutation. It's been all but officially confirmed that this new version of Venus isn't even really a mutant turtle, she is a mutant frog who has been surgically altered to resemble a turtle.

I'm guessing this change was made because:

1. Jennika is probably too similar in concept to the original version of Venus in the first place, as might be Lita as well.
2. Nobody likes Venus, she's quite possibly the most hated character in the franchise, both for the concept and the execution. Thus, nobody cares about any changes made to her.

[neatoman]

Hey, so since she's basically just stitched together from different body parts, what are the odds of her story ending with her just falling apart?

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by neatoman

OK, for anyone who is confused about this:

No. She is not going to have the same or even a similar backstory to what she had in the Next Mutation. It's been all but officially confirmed that this new version of Venus isn't even really a mutant turtle, she is a mutant frog who has been surgically altered to resemble a turtle.

But... where is the head/brain coming from?

I'm guessing this change was made because:
1. Jennika is probably too similar in concept to the original version of Venus in the first place, as might be Lita as well.

I don't know who Lita is and I haven't really read any Jennika comics but... Jennika and Jennika's origins don't sound anything like Venus'. Does Jennika know magic shinobi powers? Does she constantly mess up American English sayings and such? Was she separated from them pre-mutation as a normal turtle? If the answer is "no" to those then I don't think the comparison is valid.

2.Nobody likes Venus, she's quite possibly the most hated character in the franchise, both for the concept and the execution. Thus, nobody cares about any changes made to her.

I wonder if the answer is really...

3. They legally can't use Venus De Milo because of some weird Saban rights thing... unless they change her up so drastically that it can't be considered the same character.

We know Campbell did try to use Venus earlier and was told "no," presumably because of rights issues. Maybe this is a way around it.

[TigerClaw]

Originally Posted by hypered1

Full article here:

https://gizmodo.com/teenage-mutant-n...idw-1848590161

Here's what she looks like.

[Allio]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

3. They legally can't use Venus De Milo because of some weird Saban rights thing... unless they change her up so drastically that it can't be considered the same turtle

I doubt it, only because the TMNT franchise has been pretty open about what characters/stories can or cannot be reused (EX. The River) so I feel like if there were any legal issues about Venus we would have heard about them. We simply ever heard that she is the black sheep.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Allio

I doubt it, only because the TMNT franchise has been pretty open about what characters/stories can or cannot be reused (EX. The River)

Well, that's kind of my point. They wanted Bloodsucker but they couldn't so they kind of concocted Wyrm together, no? Could be sort of the same idea going on with Venus/Not-Venus here.

so I feel like if there were any legal issues about Venus we would have heard about them. We simply ever heard that she is the black sheep.

I'm not so sure. So far in IDW, have there been any other NT:TNM elements that've shown up fairly intact?

[oldmanwinters]

She’s an android.. or something… so tells me my gut.

[Kyo Hisagi]

So I dunno if that's controversial or anything but. Yeah.

I have nothing against Venus but one of the very few things I didn't like about IDW comics even back then is that it had TOO MANY characters thrown into mix. You can't just put one hundred different characters into a comic book about four turtles and expect that all of them will have something to do.

It's basically X-Men situation all over again- when there were only 6 or 8 of them, that's cool. I can follow that. When there are 30, you need different teams. Then you introduce "new generation" of kids, and they need their own book too. When they are 200 of them... in ONE story... uh-oh.

When IDW's TMNT just started back in 2011, we had characters being introduced pretty slowly, one by one. It felt very well thought out. I didn't feel too overwhelmed, yet I knew I can expect my favourite characters to appear sometime later. People lost it when Bebop and Rocksteady finally appeared, it was so cool. Mutanimals didn't appear until much later, and it was a great decision.

Now? With all these new characters introduced in MutantTown already? It's just feels like "who else was there in previous TMNT books/movies/comics? Yeah let's put them here too!"
Some of the characters I really was interested in were killed off (Hun, Slash) with some others being completely brushed off (Casey and April) and some overstayed its welcome (Hob). Again- I am not against the idea of adding characters from different stories, I think it's actually pretty cool... if done right. But when you have that many to choose from, a lot of them will end up underused (like Null, ahem). So the question is- what exactly is the point here?... maybe we need time exploring all of these characters before we get even more?...

Would be cool to have "what-if" mini-series for this kind of stuff. Just something that happened to parallel universe' turtles. Or at least some sort of second series, like TMNT Universe. But I am pretty sure we're not getting that.

[Sumac]

IDW stepped on the same mainline, that FW did - too many goddamn mutants.

[Ninjinister]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

3. They legally can't use Venus De Milo because of some weird Saban rights thing... unless they change her up so drastically that it can't be considered the same character.

We know Campbell did try to use Venus earlier and was told "no," presumably because of rights issues. Maybe this is a way around it.

I do remember either Bobby or Tom saying that they could use Venus, but chose not to, or didn't have a plan for her. I don't think it's a legal thing.

[Bahamut810]

I am grooving on her character design.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

But... where is the head/brain coming from?

I don't know what you mean by this.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I don't know who Lita is and I haven't really read any Jennika comics but... Jennika and Jennika's origins don't sound anything like Venus'. Does Jennika know magic shinobi powers? Does she constantly mess up American English sayings and such? Was she separated from them pre-mutation as a normal turtle? If the answer is "no" to those then I don't think the comparison is valid.

The concept of a fifth turtle in general, not so much the details. And if we're being honest, nobody really cares what Venus was like in the show and I honestly keep forgetting she has magic powers. The problem with her, Jennika, Lita and that Kirby character from the scrapped TMNT 4 is that the idea of a fifth turtle is an idea that is very misguided and feels like something out of a bad fan fic. All four of these characters could have been anything other than mutant turtles and they would still have served the same purpose. The only reason to make them mutant turtles is because someone erroneously thinks it makes them more memorable, which if it does, is only in the worst way possible.

Regardless, if this new Venus wasn't a surgically altered frog and still a turtle, then within the context of this series she would have been a human being turned into a turtle and thrust into mutant town. Which would have made her superficially similar to Jennika and Lita regardless of what they did to her otherwise.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I wonder if the answer is really...

3. They legally can't use Venus De Milo because of some weird Saban rights thing... unless they change her up so drastically that it can't be considered the same character.

We know Campbell did try to use Venus earlier and was told "no," presumably because of rights issues. Maybe this is a way around it.

I don't know... Maybe Saban/Hasbro/Disney (whoever the hell owns TNM right now, it's one of them) has the exclusive rights to Venus. But then again, Viacom hasn't had a problem using Fred Wolf or 4Kids characters, so I don't see why TNM characters should be a problem.

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by Kyo Hisagi

So I dunno if that's controversial or anything but. Yeah.

I have nothing against Venus but one of the very few things I didn't like about IDW comics even back then is that it had TOO MANY characters thrown into mix. You can't just put one hundred different characters into a comic book about four turtles and expect that all of them will have something to do.

It's basically X-Men situation all over again- when there were only 6 or 8 of them, that's cool. I can follow that. When there are 30, you need different teams. Then you introduce "new generation" of kids, and they need their own book too. When they are 200 of them... in ONE story... uh-oh.

When IDW's TMNT just started back in 2011, we had characters being introduced pretty slowly, one by one. It felt very well thought out. I didn't feel too overwhelmed, yet I knew I can expect my favourite characters to appear sometime later. People lost it when Bebop and Rocksteady finally appeared, it was so cool. Mutanimals didn't appear until much later, and it was a great decision.

Now? With all these new characters introduced in MutantTown already? It's just feels like "who else was there in previous TMNT books/movies/comics? Yeah let's put them here too!"
Some of the characters I really was interested in were killed off (Hun, Slash) with some others being completely brushed off (Casey and April) and some overstayed its welcome (Hob). Again- I am not against the idea of adding characters from different stories, I think it's actually pretty cool... if done right. But when you have that many to choose from, a lot of them will end up underused (like Null, ahem). So the question is- what exactly is the point here?... maybe we need time exploring all of these characters before we get even more?...

Would be cool to have "what-if" mini-series for this kind of stuff. Just something that happened to parallel universe' turtles. Or at least some sort of second series, like TMNT Universe. But I am pretty sure we're not getting that.

Hun and Slash being killed off is fine, their characters were getting stale and completed their character arcs. Honestly I would have killed off a few more of the villains, or had some stay dead like Shredder/Krang.

[King Kahn]

I love it! They have a great track record of updating crazy concepts.

[TigerClaw]

Apparently according to Sophie Campbell, Venus isn't quite a turtle, That's after I replied to her about the images she posted of Venus.