Casey at the Bat: A Ninja Turtles Retrospective

I do a lot of talking about Marvel and DC, but given the hit new movie “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows” I thought I’d branch out and talk about a character that has ties to neither of the major comic book studios.

His voice from the 1987 cartoon is forever embedded in my brain, and that remains the quintessential version of the character, a version that none has been able to live up to…Casey Jones.

He was without a doubt growing up my favorite character.  I am a child of the 80’s and, like all kids, I loved the ninja turtles cartoon.  As I’ve stated before, I grew up in an area where I did not get a lot of comic books, so I had no idea who the lean mean green team were until they were brought to my television set.  So here I was enjoying the adventures of four mutant reptiles with ninja skills, but let’s face it, there’s only so far you can play as the ninja turtles until you run into an imagination wall…you will never actually get to be a ninja turtle.  Then came Casey Jones and he was awesome.  Not only was he human, like me and most of my classmates at the time, he was incredibly easy to play as.  You may or may not have been able to make shift ninja weapons as a kid, but almost everyone I knew had a baseball bat.  I managed to even get my hands on a hockey stick.  Long story.  So while everyone was Raphael or Michelangelo, there I was, sports equipment in hand, paper plate cut into a mask on my face, ready to lend aid to the team.  It was also great since he wasn’t always with the turtles, I could go off and have my own adventures.

So here we go, a brief retrospective of the character of Casey Jones.

Originating from the comics, he was portrayed as basically a lunatic who almost never took off his signature hockey mask, and this was directly translated into the cartoon.  He was more than a little militant about his vigilantism, especially in the cartoon, as he would come down hard on jay walkers and muggers alike, putting him not only a an ally but also at odds with the turtles who felt some restraint somewhere was a good thing.

 A man with exactly 0 chill and 0 eff's to give!

Coming to life on screen, he was voiced by Pat Fraley, a veteran voice actor who took a “Clint Eastwood” touch to his voice.  Like I said, this voice was embedded in my head as THE voice for the character.

When the turtles translated to the big screen in 1990, Casey Jones played by Elias Koteas came right along with him and, frankly he did a great job in the role.  I like that Elias could play literally anyone, he has that every-man look that would let him blend into the crowd.  This time the character had more of a “Taxi Driver” feel to him, and one of the best things about the character is that he had, like in the comics and cartoon, no real backstory to him. 

Albeit he looks bored half the time.

The comics portrayed him as a guy who became a vigilante because he watched too much tv.  That’s it.  All the film did was add that he at one point played professional hockey.  As we will see later…sometimes less is more.

The 1990 film did, however add one thing to the character as he soon became the love interest of April O’Neil.  This concept has been referred to by some as the “Forced Romantic Interest” or FRI.  Reasonably speaking, there’s no reason these characters should ever hook up, but because every action movie needed a love story  tacked on, these two characters were paired off.  Granted if April had hooked up with anyone else in the story it would have been weird and wrong…and disgusting.

But that set a new tone for the character and the romantic sub-plot carried over to the third live action film of the 1990’s franchise where Koteas once again took on the role in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Turtles in Time.”

Oh god, that movie was bad. 

Let’s move on.

The next time we see Casey in the franchise proper is in 2003 when the turtles get a “4Kids” makeover on Fox.  Their look and storylines were updated, with darker plot lines and more character development, and Casey was given a backstory.

Uhh...

His backstory is terribly generic in that he and his family had been wronged by a street gang called the Purple Dragons, led by a guy named Hun, and that tragedy led him to a life of vigilantism.  Once again he’s the FRI for April O’Neil.  As much as I like that they included him, and Marc Thompson did a great job of portraying him, I felt like he was just over used.  He was placed as a member of the main cast and almost muted down to make him more appealing to April (and thus young girls) and less awesome than the turtles.  I can understand why they did that, but I felt it short changed the character and restricted Thompson’s flexibility with the character.

Casey surfaces again in 2007 on the big screen in the animated adventure “TMNT”.  The movie was alright, but not great.  It was beautifully rendered, but the tone was a little harder to place.  Casey is practically neutered in this film with him being portrayed as the average boyfriend to April rather than a guy who could hold his own against ninja’s.  He gets a few action sequences here and there, but the character is played as kind of dull.  It didn’t help that for the feature they wanted to hire name-brand actors rather than voice over experts, so he’s played blandly by Chris Evans.

Chris is an amazing actor…on screen.  Voice over-not so much.

That leads us to the 2012 Nickelodeon TV series, portrayed by Josh Peck where his character is damaged almost beyond repair.  He’s now a teenager with aspirations of being a gimmick superhero.  Gone, just completely gone is the edge that made the character stand out in the early days.  He’s played as a self-important jerk who, through reasons that completely baffle me, still has a romantic relationship with April O’Neil.

I don’t like this character at all.

There was one glimmer of hope in all the scaling down of Jones.  That came on YouTube in 2011 when an independent movie was released detailing an origin story for Casey, one that better meshed the "tragic past" with the "kind of crazy" background of the character.  Here Hilarion Banks plays the titular character and the whole thing is amazingly done.  My one issue, my only issue, is that Hilarion is relatively small in build so he doesn't carry an imposing presence.  That can work to the characters advantage as those he comes across underestimate him.

He remembered that his mask is suppose to be ON his face!



But if you didn't like slender Hilarion Banks, web series Super Power Beat Down grants your wish by casting John Hennigan in the role as he battles street superhero Kick-Ass.  Being a professional wrestler, Hennigan had the moves to bring Jones to life, but don't expect to much from him by way of acting.

Crazy-Check, Sweaty-Check, alright...ACTION

 

So, that brings us back into the theatre where Casey Jones is now portrayed by Stephen Amell in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows”.  Again, he’s not edgy, he’s not damaged, he’s a corrections officer who lost prisoners during a break-out staged during prisoner transport.  He allies himself with April and the turtles to see justice done.  Stephen doesn’t do a bad job in the role, but he’s not playing Casey Jones to me.  He’s playing Steven Amell in a hockey mask.

You have failed this cit...wait, where am I again?

 

 

Honestly none of the actors have done a bad job, they’ve just been playing the characters they were given, and like so many franchises as it evolves and changes hands, so will the characters.  So many traits of the characters past have made it down through the years it’s a shame that Casey lost so much of what made him memorable in the first place.

Hopefully through it all, you found a Casey Jones that appeals to you.

Thanks for reading.

 

The Sword of Superman: A Retrospective from someone who was THERE!

Oh the Pre-Crisis era.  For those of you who don’t know, the Pre-Crisis era refers to any event that happened before “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, the first and arguably best revamping of the DC comic book universe.  It was an unprecedented event whose sole purpose was to cut the wheat from the chaff, as it were, and clean up the history of the shared universe that had characters doing all matter of crazy things, sometimes in two places at once.  Basically, continuity was Swiss cheese at the time and nearly impossible to follow.

During the pre-crisis era, Superman had a wealth of wonky powers, some of which made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  One element however sticks out in my mind from way back in the ancient days of 1984.

Growing up in Portland, Texas, a sleepy little town on the Gulf Coast, just north of Corpus Christi, comics were not in great supply.  I was five, and if I wanted comics, I had to hitch a ride with my parents whenever they happened to go to Feudos, a neat little market in one of the quiet shopping centers in town.  Feudos had them all…at least to a five year old’s perspective.  Spider-Man and Superman are the ones that stick out in my head.  One specific comic stands out in my memory of this time, and if you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad.  It became part of the chaff that was Crisis on Infinite Earths.  It is, of course, the Sword of Superman, ala “Superman Annual 10”.

Now during the pre-crisis era, you would get several explanations for one single event, and the most famously confused event ever was “Why the ‘S’ shield logo?”

Well NOW we all know that it was the family crest for the House of El on Krypton, but back then it apparently had a more significant meaning.

According to the issue, during the Big Bang some primordial matter and energy came together and formed itself into something like an English broadsword.  Because reasons. 

 

This sword, bearing the “S” shield just existed in history since the dawn of time and when Ma Kent was making Superboy’s first costume, the sword reached out to him telepathically to place the “S” emblem on his suit, apparently because the sword knew he would be important one day.

Later Superman would come into contact with the sword and it would turn him, basically into a god.  I mean more so than he already was.  He became an all knowing, all seeing protector of good, truth, and righteousness.  Think the Infinity Gauntlet, but for good guys.

But there was a price that came with all this power.  The populace he was sworn to protect feared him.  Granted he’s wielding a sword, something that’s generally identified with cutting and stabbing, not something you want to associate with the defender of life.  That’d be like giving Superman a gun…

Yep, that happened too, but that's for a different blog.

So Superman rejected the sword in a sequence of panels that was so weird it may have permanently scarred my young psyche.  Not enough to make me stop reading the comic. I read it till it fell apart, not unlike what happens to the sword!

                       

 

Spoiler alert, don’t let a pre-teen handle comics without educating him on how to properly care for them in the even they are worth money one day.

So Superman rejected the sword’s power, and it seemed pretty cool with it.  It wasn’t mad at all as it left back into the cosmos and, a year later, was seemingly wiped from history.

But why?  With all the stuff that has trickled through the veil of time over the years, why has Superman’s Sword remained off limits?  Well, at the time it was written out of existence we had Superman and Supergirl, and a slew of super-pets.  That limited who could wield the sword to exactly two people.  Its not like the Infinity Gauntlet or the Cosmic Cube, who could potentially be wielded by anyone.  Its tied directly to two characters and pretty much halts the story all together.  If writers thought it was hard to write around Superman’s powers before, giving him the potential to have infinite power makes it very difficult.

Then there was the growing cast of Team Superman, involving Steel, Superboy, Supergirl, the return of Krypto, and so forth.  Now you could bring in the Sword and let it have some options on which to present that power to, but then how do you get rid of it to let the characters have normal stories again?  It’s been around literally since the dawn of time.  It’s not getting destroyed.  You could put it in the Fortress under lock and key, but then, how can you have cataclysmic events when you could just pull out the sword and fix everything?  How do you justify the Death of Superman if the Sword could have taken care of Doomsday in short order?

I think, personally, from both a nostalgic point of view and from a story telling point of view, you could justify bringing the sword back into continuity.  Tweak it’s origin just a bit, where it became the symbol of Hope on Krypton and later was adopted as the crest for the House of El, and leave it “out there” waiting for Superman to prove himself again.

Just a thought.

Thanks for reading