Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Casey Jones #4 is written by Alex Paknadel and published by IDW Publishing. Artwork is by Amancay Nahuelpan, colours by Luis Antonio Delgado and letters by Darran Robinson. Main cover art (left) is by Amancay Nahuelpan.
TMNT: Casey Jones #4 is available from today, in comic book stores and on digital platforms where all good comic books are sold. Grab your physical copy from Forbidden Planet or digitally from Amazon Comixology UK.
Synopsis
All Ludovic has ever wanted is to be a real human…instead he is cursed to a life of having what little humanity Nostrum has granted him constantly torn away. Meanwhile, Casey Jones doesn’t appreciate his humanity and spends the majority of his time around mutants when he could easily live happily among humans. Casey effortlessly has everything Ludovic wants, and he hates him for it. Not only will Ludovic not let Casey get in the way of the Lodge’s plans, but his disdain will fuel a brutal fight that even Casey Jones might not be able to walk away from…
Review
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Casey Jones #4 by Alex Paknadel and Amancay Nahuelpan, continues to pose big philosophical questions about what it means to be human, via the characters of Casey Jones and Ludovic.
Jones is a human who rejects the opportunity of living a ‘normal’ life, instead he walks amongst mutants as a vigilante. A friend of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he feels he has more in common with our heroes in a half shell, than he does his own species and peers. Jones continually takes his privilege as a human for granted and shows signs of potentially losing his humanity, acting in a way that presents as animalistic or primitive. After ingesting the Nostrum Liquid, Jones has had an easier time, physically keeping up with his mutant friends but appears ignorant of the other ways in which it is potentially effecting him. Meanwhile, we open this issue with the mutant snow leopard Ludvoic, who wasn’t raised by a family, but in a lab in isolation.
In the opening panels of the comic, we see Ludvoic as a young cub, in a cold and clinical looking cell, he calls Marlin ’Daddy’ but is corrected, for seemingly not the first time, by his captor. Marlin reads a passage from The Adventures of Pinocchio to Ludovic, the selection of book is heavily symbolic, both Pinocchio and Ludovic long to be “real boys” but consistently experience othering/de-humanisation and/or cruelty/exploitation at the hands of humans.
In a pertinent moment in #4, Ludovic begs to be treated humanely as armed guards point weapons at him, Ludovic’s request is denied and he is electrocuted by the guards, which inadvertently leads to him protracting his claws and killing one of the armed guards – this results in Ludovic being locked up and restrained by chains, perpetuating the image of him as a monster and less than human.
The subtext in this comic book is strong, pertinent and potentially some may say on the nose – however I feel it walks the line purposefully as the protagonist and antagonist metaphorically dance in and out of one another, weaving a compelling and nuanced story full of pathos and ethical/moral/philosophical conundrums.
The most inhumane actions of the book are carried out by human beings, which feels like a very purposeful comment in itself. I thought it was very clever to have us believe that the armed robbery taking place was being done by mutants, only to reveal in the next panel that it was in fact humans in masks…
There’s a notable moment during this robbery, where Raphael stops Jones from causing gratuitous harm to one of the criminals they have apprehended, again, the non-human character being the one to take stance on what is and isn’t humane feels very poignant and purposeful.
Jones and Ludovic are ying and yang, equals and opposites, each hold elements of a life the other wants, two sides in competition and in balance- making them really compelling nemesis’ and vehicles for big ethical, philosophical and ideological questions, wrapped in a fantastic story in the world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is very much my kind of TMNT story, in both look and content- I can’t wait to see how writer and artist explore the potential in this story in #5 and beyond!
Verdict
I’m really enjoying this run, it’s strongly character driven, with just as much focus on the micro of the intense personal emotional drama as there is the macro story with Nostrum, etc- and both feed into the other in a really artful way. Nahuelpan’s urban realism gives the perfect brooding and grounded street vigilante feel to the artwork in this book, capturing both gritty action scenes and poignant moments with precision.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
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