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Some TMNT stuff really isn't for little kids. |
What If? is a backup strip published first in Jennika #3.
Appearing in What If?[]
Both scenarios[]
Real world scenario[]
Imaginary scenarios[]
- April O'Neil
- Casey Jones
- Hamato Yoshi
- Hamato daughter
- Hamato sons
- Metalhead
- M.O.U.S.E.R.s
- Shredder
- Slash
- Splinter
- Tang Shen
Synopsis[]
Jennika recounts Raphael telling her off and saying she's not a part of the family. While she does recognize that he said it in grief anger, she also begins to wonder how close they'd have been, how different her path would have taken if she were one of them from the beginning.
She imagines at first being a regular turtle mutated alongside Splinter and the other turtles, and getting her yellow bandana from Splinter himself when he was giving them to his sons, and training the yumi with him while her brothers roughhouse in the background.
She also wonders what it would have been like as a daughter to Hamato Yoshi and Tang Shen, being part of the love as well as the tragedy of two lifetimes.
She then begins to wonder what her role would have been as a turtle from the start. Would she have been the lost turtle instead of Raph, living alone for so long? Would she have made the same choices? Would she still have fallen in love with Casey?
Would she have been more technologically inclined, working with Donnie on his various inventions... and been there to witness his tragic near-death experience?
Would she have been another heart of the team like Mikey, befriending Slash as well as breaking down in mourning at his sacrifice?
Or as the oldest, would she take position as the leader and made their father proud... or broken his heart by joining the Shredder?
Jenny realizes that it wouldn't have been all "hugs and pizza", and that her path has ultimately been a different one from her new family, but that they are now family, and she will need to make up for lost time.
Mikey snaps her out of her daydream by telling her the video game tournament is starting, and loser does Raph's laundry. She then plays in earnest against Raph as their brothers watch.
Trivia[]
- This story confirms that, in measuring the sum of each of their experienced lifetimes, Jennika is "older" than Leonardo, which makes her the "oldest" of the five. But both biologically and chronologically it is a far more complicated matter.
- This is the first story whose page art shows Jennika topless as a mutant turtle, wearing the same classic "naked" ninja turtle gear that the four turtles used to wear before their new public lives in Mutant Town. In the past, Jenny as a mutant had only ever been illustrated topless in cover art, and even then her appearance on these covers did not match her corresponding clothed appearance in the story's pages. Jenny's non-imaginary in-story mutant form had never been shown wearing the old gear, and had always worn clothes that covered most of her plastron.
See also[]
- Comic gallery
- Comic transcript