Once you find out who's under the helmet, it will likely impact how interested you are in the comic.
Writer | Juni Ba |
Illustrator | Fero Pe |
Colorist | Luis Antonio Delgado |
Content Rating | Teen |
Publisher | IDW | 08.21.24 |
Spoilers Ahead
I wasn't all that impressed with the TMNT Free Comic Book Day offering this past May, largely due to certain aspects of the writing. With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Nightwatcher #1, we've been given a continuation of that special in the form of a new ongoing series by that same team. The central mystery of this first issue revolved around who the eponymous Nightwatcher is. By the time the reveal is made... it will likely dictate how invested you become in tuning in for the next issue, so I feel inclined to talk about it. It says "spoilers ahead" up top, but just in case you glossed over that, since I'm going to spoil this, be warned: you'll know who the Nightwatcher is before this review is done.
The issue opens with some crook driving like a maniac through Mutant Town, the former quarantine zone and now borough in New York City. If you're unfamiliar with what Mutant Town is, it's a neighborhood in New York where a mutagen bomb went off and covered countless residents in the transformative goo, turning a bunch of people into mutants. It served as the base of operations for the Ninja Turtles for a spell and was a big part of the reason why writer Sophie Campbell's run on the main series ran out of steam. Too much time spent in Mutant Town with what felt like glorified furry fan fiction.
As the criminal careens recklessly through the streets, we can see the locals gasping in shock, when suddenly the Nightwatcher appears atop the car. We get some witty banter as Nightwatcher starts to attack the bad guy, but then the action quickly pivots to a "man on the street" type of interview with a lady in a grocery store as she talks about life in Mutant Town. This is where I started to get disappointed in the story. The overriding theme of her and every other human resident's interview is that they're all simplistic bigots who hate mutants because, gee, they're bigots.
As is typically the case in American mainstream comics, the idea of nuance is something that escapes contemporary writers completely, including, apparently, writer Juni Ba. Would it be reasonable to have reservations about a small chunk of your city being awash in a mystery chemical that turns your neighbors into large animals and various creatures? Sometimes replete with special abilities that could really hurt people if in the wrong hands? Why yes, yes I believe that is reasonable. However, in the hands of Ba, these residents are shown as generic simpletons and the only takeaway you're supposed to get from their objections is that these people are hateful and bad.
The sticking point for me is that the narrative tries to play off mutants as being the same thing as minorities. It's an insulting simplification of people's opinions regarding topics like immigration, or race, presenting both as though they're interchangeable with the fictional dilemma the people of Mutant Town have with man-alligators running around the city, or human-sized flies buzzing overhead. It is consistent with Ba's TMNT FCBD issue in that there was a clear activist streak underpinning the writing there, and it's something that is being carried over here—unsuccessfully. I can appreciate wanting to the highlight the struggles that minorities and immigrants have, that can certainly be a worthwhile endeavor, but this isn't how to do it.
The problem is that the discourse displayed here is boilerplate TikTok-level activist talking points that lack any depth and, thus, simplify things to the point of being cartoonish. Sadly, many of the residents feel like something straight out of a Cartoon Central show. In contrast, Ba's depiction of a young mutant girl being interview felt more authentic. Why? Because the the young lady's opinions are understandable from her viewpoint and make her feel relatable, and aren't portrayed with a sneer like the other interviewees statements are. If the same courtesy could be extended to the human residents of Mutant Town, Nightwatcher #1 would have a much more interesting conversation going on; instead, we're left with a one-sided sermon where the bad people have as much depth as the paper the comic is printed on.
At least the art helps to pick up the slack for the writing. Illustrator Fero Pe and colorist Luis Antonio Delgado deliver some lovely art in this issue. An opening shot of the Nightwatcher thrusting their hand through a windshield is very well composed and boasts some truly dynamic foreshortening. The look and feel of the art and colors is reminiscent of Freddie Williams II. Although not quite as detailed and impressive as Williams, the exaggerated style here is wonderful. Delgado's color work is soft and almost painterly, evoking a quality reminiscent of ink awash in some panels (although that might come more from Pe, I'm not too sure). If this is the art team moving forward, Nightwatcher is in good hands.
Returning to the action portion of the comic, the Nightwatcher is played as a highly intimidating figure, including some cool, mysterious armor and a foreboding black-and-red word bubble motif. The Nightwatcher is shown as having some rage issues, to the point that they beat the criminal they're fighting to a pulp, almost beyond the point of surviving. The book leans heavily into the assumption that the Nightwatcher is Raphael—in no small part because that's who the Nightwatcher is in the 2007 animated film TMNT. It's pretty basic red herring stuff, but ultimately we come to find that this iteration of the character is none other than... Jennika. Hey, they had to put her in a comic book somewhere, right?
When I finished this issue, I got the sense that IDW is trying to pull a From the Ashes and mimic how the X-Men books are handling the fallout of Krakoa. In this case, there are enough people online who would be quite upset if Mutant Town didn't get the proper level of reverence in the wake of the relaunch, so in order to circumvent that, IDW is offering three flavors of TMNT book: the OG four in the main series, Jennika-centric Mutant Town stuff in Nightwatcher, and Casey Jones and side-character/side-story stuff in Mutant Nation (which launches next month).
It's not a bad way to deal with things, but I fear that it means Nightwatcher is going to have the deck stacked against it from the outing, as it's rooted in all of the characters, themes, and setting fans were already burned out on. I will say that as someone who wasn't a fan of Campbell's run, this is a fair way for IDW to call on those who claim to be fans of it to back their social media posts with their wallets. If this is what you enjoyed in Campbell's TMNT run, congrats: you're going to get a slightly tweaked version of it in Nightwatcher every month. So, if you want to show the world that Jennika and Mutant Town are worthwhile, you'll be at your LCS every month reading along.
Now, if you're more of an old school TMNT fan like me, you might need more convincing to hop aboard this series. Once the Jennika reveal was made, I immediately got the feeling that the book is going to be focusing a lot on what this persona is doing to her psychologically. Again, she was so filled with fury fighting the thug that she almost killed him. How far she might go is something that I assume Ba will be playing a lot with, and there's plenty of potential drama to mine out of a character struggling with their own emotions. The story wants readers to understand that Mutant Town is being subjected to a level of ridicule and external attack so extreme that Jennika is forced to react with extreme violence, to the point she has to take on a secret identity and play vigilante. While I don't have much interest or love of Jennika, Mutant Town, and its residents, I'm open to having my mind changed. This could do it, but it's off to a shaky start.
Where this book will fall short is if Ba continues to lean into shallow, simplistic takes on the real-world societal issues that he's trying to tap into. Portraying mutants and immigrants/minorities as an apples-to-apples comparison is bewildering to me. While I can see where Ba is coming from, it's not handled well. Besides the issues unique to mutants that everyday humans don't have, it's also disheartening to see the characters Ba wants you to disagree with portrayed so two-dimensionally. The result is this debut reads a lot like an afternoon special and lacks the gravitas it needs to invest readers in Mutant Town and its denizens. If I could speak directly to Ba, I would say: challenge yourself as a writer to look at topics you're heavily invested in with more nuance, and you'll get much, much more interesting ideas to put on the page. Have uncomfortable conversations and grapple with the outcome of them through the characters on the page. That's the Nightwatcher I hope to read and if you can deliver it, I think a lot of other people will, too.
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