TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #114: Persistence of Time

Here we are with another great installment of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

We have got the tremendously talented team of Sophie Campbell on words and art, Ronda Pattison on colors, and Shawn Lee on letters. If Voltron were a creative team it would be these 3. From Pattison’s super-human ability to pick the right colors and capture character emotion to Lee stylistically complementing the artwork and navigating the story, to Sophie’s extraordinary plot work, issue after issue they continue to produce a solid book that will stand the test of time and no doubt implant themselves into the discussion of the best creative team to work on TMNT.

We to unpack the story of Lita who traveled from the future to save the current timeline of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their lives. As Lita explains the story in greater detail the turtles band together and set out on their journey. The only issue is Jennika. I don’t mean issue as Jenny is holding back the team’s efforts by issue, I mean that her journey to find herself and her place in this new world continues. Not only does she still struggle with her new way of life that was forced upon her, but now with Lita’s news, this is sure to add to Jenny’s mental traffic.

We get to dive into Jenny’s psyche a bit here with some panels that really cement the question: Is Jennika 100% ready to be a member of the TMNT? The interactions she has with Donny and Raph differ greatly and this could be due to the different timings of the interactions, but I feel along with her coming to terms with future Lita’s message this may be the straw that breaks her back. Jennika has always had a rough life, and it hasn’t gotten any easier post mutation.

Jennika’s journey serves as a tome for how life sometimes can throw a curveball at you. On one hand, she has feelings of delivering fatal revenge to Karai, on the other she is eager to sign a new lease on life and settle in with her surroundings. Everyone can find some point in their life when they wrestled with life’s demons and came up with multiple solutions. Some good and some not, and this is what we are seeing with Jenny. Jenny’s situation is both beautiful and devastating all at the same time. Sophie Campbell continues to inject real life emotions into beloved characters. The panels dealing with Jenny, Karai, Donny, and Raph for some could be the comfort that the reader needs to help get through tough times. This is what makes Campbell so good at her craft. Her passion, love, and soul come through on the pages she writes and to her long-time fans, this is nothing new. Not every issue of TMNT has a huge reveal or breakthrough, however, what it does have is a sincerity that speaks to the reader, and sometimes that is all that is needed.