Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26516813-20190711012913/@comment-26984208-20190726190837

Okay so I read Kevin Eastman's recent interview about Jennika, and he revealed that having a female turtle in the comics has been an idea for three years. Why?

''“We love the idea of strong women. We love the idea of strong female characters in our series, as well as all the comic series and movies. So we introduce her as this character in issue 51. Every issue we brought her back and we loved her more and more. And then around issue, between 60, 65 we had this idea. Because we wanted a girl turtle. We go to comic conventions, you know fans, we have these lovely young ladies that come up and you know, we got Captain Marvel and you got these things where they go, ‘When is there gonna be a girl turtle?’ And Tom and I are like, ‘We've been planning it for three years now.’ And so, just as it worked out storyline-wise, issue 95 was the moment to bring that to be.”''

So, fans kept asking and then female centered things like Captain Marvel began popping up and so they were like 'okay, let's do it. Let's do it right'. Jennika was originally envisioned as the human she was and the turtle idea came later. She's also permanent, btw, no temporary mutation for her.

I honestly don't think she'll replace Venus and make people forget about her. For all we know Jennika can become so popular that more attention is shone onto Venus and who knows? Maybe the IDW writers will rescue her from the depths, although I think they don't actually own her. Here's what Kevin Eastman said when asked about Venus and if anything about her will cross over to Jennika:

"Well what's interesting is the difference--like Venus is now 20. That context is 20-something years old. It was 1997 when that came out. But now it's a new spin. It was an interesting time because we were still in control but we were sharing the control with Haim Saban, and [he had] success with the Power Rangers. I'll say a term as endearing as I can, the campiness of the Power Rangers is what made those [shows] so popular. So he wanted Turtles to take the turn more like a live-action cartoon as opposed to trying to find a balance. I think the resistance there came from the hardcore fans because that was the first version after the original animated series.

''The fans were not happy. They didn't like Venus as a character. It was sort of put in their face and the show was way too campy. I loved the series, I worked very hard on it. But it just didn't resonate with the fans."''

So there you go. Also my personal opinion; Jennika is a great character and I would love to see more and what they do with her, but I think she's IDW exclusive. Unless she gets really, really popular and there's demand to see her in Rise or a mention of her in a movie I don't think she'll appear outside the media she is in. And that's okay.