Publication date: June, 2005
Writing, lettering, toning: Peter Laird
Layouts, penciling, inking: Jim Lawson
Cover painting: Michael Dooney
Production assistance: Dan Berger
Summary:
Several weeks ago.
Renet takes April back in time to show her the truth about her origins.
Over 30 years ago.
April and Renet arrive in the apartment above the Second Time Around
shop, but in the bodies of cockroaches clinging to the ceiling. April sees her father and mother below,
arguing about adopting (apparently, the birth of Robyn three years earlier had
left Mrs. O’Neil unable to give birth).
In frustration, Mr. O’Neil walks down to the shop to sort through a lot
he’d purchased sight unseen. Within that
lot, he finds a pencil held in a strange casing. April immediately recognizes what’s inside
the casing: The crystal her tenant Kirby had used to bring drawings to life
(according to Donatello). Robyn then
comes downstairs to ask for a puppy and Mr. O’Neil takes her up to bed.
April and Renet then succumb to their cockroach instincts
so that they can survive in these new bodies while they observe the O’Neils. April eats carrion and has sex with other
cockroaches.
Some days later, Mr. O’Neil continues sketching,
something he’s very good at, when his pencil breaks. With no other instruments around, he uses the
crystal-pencil to continue sketching an apple.
When he finishes, a second apple appears. Surprised, he experiments by drawing a
yellow-jacket. It also comes to life and
buzzes toward him. He smashes it and it vanishes;
as does the apple.
Over the next few weeks, Mr. O’Neil experiments with the
crystal and lets his wife in on his secret.
They agree not to tell anyone of their discovery, but wonder what to do
with the thing since the creations only last a few moments. One day, Mr. O’Neil draws a puppy and rather
than vanish, it stays. He gives the
puppy to Robyn and all seems well, until a few weeks later when it, too,
vanishes. Robyn is heartbroken, but Mr.
O’Neil starts thinking.
Mr. O’Neil realizes that the length the creations stay is
directly related to how much emotional energy he invests in his drawings. He and Mrs. O’Neil agree to draw a baby for
themselves. After much studying and
practice sketching, Mr. O’Neil attaches the crystal and draws a perfect
baby. The infant lasts a week before
vanishing, leaving Mr. and Mrs. O’Neil bereaved.
They agree to try again and create a second baby, whom
they name April. She lasts a little over
a month before vanishing. This time,
they’re utterly devastated by the loss and Mrs. O’Neil refuses to
continue. April recalls the stories
Donatello told her about the other dimension the drawings went to when they
vanished. She wonders if her twins had
survived when they went there and if she has “sisters” in that universe.
In a drunken, desperate stupor, Mr. O’Neil takes the
crystal and attaches it to an inking pen.
He then draws April #3 directly in ink on the page and does so perfectly
and with all the energy he can muster.
The new April appears and this time, never vanishes. Renet shows April a summary of her life,
proving that this third baby was actually her.
With their cockroach bodies dying, April and Renet perform one final
task: They drag the crystal to a vent grate and push it down the duct, where it
is lost. Then they die.
The present. April
returns with Renet and spends time thinking over what she’d seen. She tells Casey that the reason she hid the
crystal from her father was so that, no matter his intentions, he could never
create another being like her again. She
explains to Casey that she isn’t a person, which is why she can’t have
kids. At best, she’s an approximation of
a human being, but not real. April
concludes that she’s “Nobody”.
Turtle Tips:
*Renet showed April her origin in TMNT (Vol. 4) #14.
*The crystal was last seen in Donatello (Microseries) #1.
*The events of "This Mortal Shell" take place between this and next issue.
*The events of "This Mortal Shell" take place between this and next issue.
Review:
So this is it: The issue that either makes or breaks TMNT
Volume 4 for a lot of people. From what
I’ve read, “breaks” tends to be the more common reaction, but this is the
internet, and the dissatisfied tend to be louder than the mollified. So maybe more people DID enjoy this story
than I’ve come to observe, they just choose to remain satisfied in silence.
I guess I’ll try to approach this story of April’s origin
from a more objective standpoint, but let me get the subjective reaction out of
the way first.
April being a magic doodle from another dimension is
dumb.
Now that that’s out of my system, we can talk about the
issue more in-depth. The overall “journal
entry” style Laird was going for with the presentation seems a deliberate
attempt to invoke TMNT (Vol. 1) #11.
That was the epilogue to the original New York era and the prologue to
the Northampton exile era, but was told through journal entries made by
April. The art in that issue went
unlettered while all the text was stacked vertically in the left and right
margins. Although this isn’t a “journal
entry” (the issue is framed as April telling Casey a story), the presentation
is nigh-identical to TMNT #11.
It was a neat bit of nostalgia, recalling what was
probably the last issue to see April treated as a truly relevant
character. There was a time when her
narrative mattered, but by the exile era that slowly ebbed away and she began
to drift into the background. By “City
at War”, her story was a metatextual one about how she didn’t matter
anymore. By Volume 2 and the start of
Volume 4, she was reduced to being a perpetual victim in constant need of being
rescued.
In the grand scheme of the Mirage series, April was only
truly relevant in those first few years when the Turtles were living with her
in the Second Time Around shop and acclimating to human society. She existed to try to teach them how to
interact with people or find silly ways to get around being caught, as well as
a home and moral support.
But they eventually outgrew her and when that happened,
there just wasn’t anything more for her to do.
She’d served her purpose in those first few years and all that was left
was a shell. It’s harsh, but hey. When April’s biggest storyline following the
exile involved her going to California and complaining about messy apartments
and then coming back to New York, it seems pretty clear her days of being
interesting were long behind her.
And that’s a problem just about every TMNT incarnation
has had with April. She’s fun for that
classic introduction storyline, but what the hell do you do with her after
that? The answer most offshoot TMNT
media have come up with is employing something to make her less “normal” so she
can compete with all the more exciting personalities. So she’s a news reporter, a treasure hunter,
a psychic, and (most commonly) a ninja-in-training. Whatever it takes to keep her from being “boring”. Because being “the normal one” is freakin’
boring.
Mirage, to their credit, stuck with April being “the
normal one” for 21 years. The idea was
that she provided a grounding; she kept one foot in reality for the sake of the
characters and the book. It helped
provide scale even at the expense of rendering her dull, forgettable, irrelevant
or just plain old wallpaper. But they
stuck to it for 21 years, turning their noses up at making April “more
interesting” while all the offshoot media was turning her into a ninja on par
with the Turtles or a news reporter with questionable fashion sense. I don’t know if I’d call that an act of “integrity”,
but it was one of the things that set Mirage’s April apart from her doppelgangers.
Then, after 21 years of sticking to his guns, Laird
finally relents and “upgrades” April with a weird crazy origin and now she’s a
magic doodle from another dimension.
Bravo.
No one can ever really complain about the cartoons or
movies or kid’s comics turning April into a ninja or a psychic or Indiana Jones
again. Because Mirage April, source
material April, is a fantastical drawing brought to life by an enchanted
pen.
And also she fucked a cockroach.
So yeah, make a note of that. If you ever want to write one of those vacuous
“Ten Things You Didn’t Know About the Ninja Turtles” articles for a list site,
you can now include “April fucked a cockroach” as one of the segments. You’re welcome.
Now, Devil’s Advocate, does being a magic doodle really
change anything fundamentally about April in the Mirage comics? It doesn’t change any of the things she did
in the past and, presumably, she’ll still go on to be a boring milquetoast
nine-to-fiver in the future. It’s just
that instead of coming from a womb, she came from a gem-powered fountain
pen. (I’m sorry, but there just isn’t
any way to write that without making it sound idiotic.)
Maybe that’s the lesson Laird was going for; that being a
magic drawing doesn’t make April any less April. And her arc after this would seem to support
that notion, as she goes on a journey to “find herself” (she does that a lot)
and will come to the conclusion that the circumstances of her birth don’t make
her any less of a person. As the
readers, I think we’re supposed to take away that being a magic drawing doesn’t
make her any less of a character.
But god, it’s just so stupid. I appreciate how it tied into the old
Donatello microseries, I guess, so the whole magic crystal thing doesn’t come
completely out of the blue (though we’re no closer to knowing its origin now
than we were 20 years beforehand), but “magic doodle baby” is so many degrees
dumber than “psychic teenager” or “jumpsuit-clad anchorwoman”.
The problem has NEVER been that fans can’t accept a more
interesting April. We’d been doing it
since 1987. The problem was “magic
doodle baby”.
I suppose another issue is that so little is done with
April after this shocking revelation.
She doesn’t continue to be the new Nobody; that was but a fleeting fancy she never
committed herself to. Instead, she goes on a journey of self-actualization
that keeps her out of the narrative of Volume 4 for about ten issues but
actually only spans the length and breadth of a single Tales of the TMNT
installment. Following that, Laird put
Volume 4 on hiatus and sold everything else to Viacom, so whatever real payoff
or aftermath we might have gotten from this narrative bombshell achieves nil.
The end result makes what’s supposed to be a big moment
feel frivolous. Fact of the matter is,
we’re actually only a few issues away from Volume 4’s first hiatus, the “conclusion”
for many people who failed to follow the new oddball release schedule (one issue every 5 or more years, announced over obscure blog posts, only sold on Facebook or the Mirage website, limited 1000 copies print runs). April’s origin was a bomb
dropped at a point where it had no impact.
Look, there are moments in this issue that are powerful
even when you get past the “magic doodle baby” scenario. The first and second April vanishing after a
few months and leaving April’s parents devastated was heartbreaking. You can imagine it absolutely destroying these people and the build up toward Mr. O’Neil drawing the final April was
suitably well done, even if it’s unclear whether the emotional energy is what
sustained April’s existence or the fact that her dad decided to use ink instead
of pencil which is more “permanent”.
But this is a story more suited to an arthouse film or
something. This isn’t “Benjamin Button”,
here. This is “Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles”. You have an established
character who served a vital (if dull) purpose for two decades and now she’s something
completely ridiculous.
There are other bits of subtext in here, such as the
whole cockroach thing intimating Kafka’s “Metamorphisis” and the concept of
existentialism, but it’s not so clever when the character flat out says, “Wow,
this is just like Kafka’s ‘Metamorphisis’!
Boy, what a clever narrative!”
And the whole thing with the real April being the third try perhaps
suggests discussions about miscarriages and abortion, prochoice vs. prolife,
but god I don’t want to open THAT can of worms in the comments section of my
site.
I think I’ve talked about this issue as much as I care
to. While I’ve no problem with April
being changed from the “den mother/scale for reality” figure for the purpose of
making her more interesting, it’s just a tad baffling that Laird would choose
21 years later to implement that change.
And when it comes so close to the point where Laird lost interest in
Volume 4, it doesn’t really stick or achieve any payoff. We’re basically at the 1 yard-line of the
Mirage TMNT universe here, which is a hell of a time to drop “magic doodle baby”
on us.
