Bakari is a mutated human who was formerly the assistant of Ptah. His mutation unraveled his body into mummy-like wrappings that he can manipulate, controlled by a central nexus.
History[]
In the times of ancient Egypt, Bakari was the assistant to a scientist and engineer named Ptah. Ptah, unfortunately, had not been very successful and had no significant discoveries or inventions. Then one night, Ptah and Bakari were out exploring for a discovery, when suddenly a rift in the space-time continuum opened, directly to an instance in which the Turtles were fighting Shredder over a canister of mutagen. Shredder dropped the canister and it fell through the rift, shattering and dousing the two men. Bakari began turning into a mummy-like form, while Ptah, spurned by the crocodile skin he wore, mutated into a massive crocodilian with an exposed brain under glass.
Ptah's intelligence was greatly enhanced, but also grew mad. He created a number of inventions in a bid to dominate the world, including a wand that could give him limited control over non-living matter, and a prison box. Bakari, realizing the danger Ptah posed, turned against him and trapped him in the box. However, because Ptah anticipated the possibility that he could be trapped in his own prison, he added a failsafe that allowed him to escape. Bakari dismantled it, though, and Ptah remained entrapped for thousands of years, with an inert Bakari guarding it.
Eventually, the tomb where Bakari and Ptah were interred was discovered, and Bakari and the device were donated to the New York Museum of Science and History. The museum staff pieced the device back together, but Bakari dismantled it at night before the mechanism's timer could go off and free Ptah. This went on several days and nights in a row, with the museum staff befuddled.
After the head of Egyptology of the museum, Aida Hosny, gave an interview to April regarding the device, Hosny's old student Mona Lisa approached her and after learning that the museum's budget cuts had left their security lax, she offered to stake out the Egyptian wing to see what was happening. She called Raphael to help.
Bakari awakened to dismantle the device again, but was confronted by Mona and Raph. He tried to convince them to let him pass so he could accomplish his task, but they insisted on stopping him. He bound them up with his wraps and strung them up and explained to them what was going on, giving them his back story. Unfortunately, this took too long, and the timer was set off and Ptah was freed. The Box of Ptah
Ptah instantly set about in continuing his world domination plans, using his wand to bring a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton and then all of the prehistoric mammal statues and a stegosaurus skeleton as well. Raph, Mona, and Bakari tried to fight him off and the museum wall was destroyed just in time for the other Turtles to arrive in the Turtle Glider. They momentarily attacked Bakari, thinking him to be the villain, before Raph corrected them. The six of them tried to fend off Ptah and his inanimate soldiers.
Mona suddenly got the idea to lure Ptah to Central Park, where his wand's potency would be nerfed. Raph played a distraction so that Mona could snatch the wand and toss it to him, which he used to bind Ptah temporarily before he breaks free, immediately afterward, though, Bakari knocks him out with a hammer-shaped wrap construct.
Ptah is arrested and now that he is out of the box, Bakari was free to outright destroy it. To replace the destroyed artifact, Bakari offered to work at the museum to entertain and educate patrons with tales of his life in Egypt. That's a Wrap for Ptah
Notes and trivia[]
- Likely to mask Ptah as the actual threat, Bakari is depicted on the covers of issues 17 and 18 as menacing the protagonists.
- When Raph calls him Imhotep, Bakari says that Imhotep was his cousin's roommate. This could be a joke, given Bakari's jovial nature, but that is not concrete.