April O'Neil

April O'Neil is a fictional character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics.

She is the first human ally of the Ninja Turtles.

April made her first appearance in the Mirage comic series in 1984 as a computer programmer.

She was later portrayed as a strong-willed news reporter in the Turtles' first animated series, as a warrior in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comic produced by Archie Comics, and various other personas in different TMNT media.

While depicted as a red-haired adult white woman in the comic series and the 1987 and 2003 animated series, she is depicted as being a teenager in the 2012 and 2018 animated series, and also black in the latter series, its 2022 film, and the 2023 film Mutant Mayhem.

Her love interests have varied, though she is typically paired with the vigilante Casey Jones.

April was voiced by Renae Jacobs in the 1987 animated series, Veronica Taylor in the 2003 animated series, Sarah Michelle Gellar in the 2007 film TMNT, Mae Whitman in the 2012 animated series, Kat Graham in the 2018 animated series and its 2022 film, and Ayo Edebiri in the 2023 film Mutant Mayhem.

In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures series produced by Archie Comics, April began as a carbon copy of her animated counterpart from the 1987 TV series, but the writers developed her into a competent warrior after training with Splinter.

Because of her frequent adventures with the Turtles, she lost her job at Channel 6 and became a freelance reporter.

In the 1987 cartoon series, April Harriet O'Neil was altered from her Mirage Studios character and instead was introduced as a television reporter for Channel 6 News.

She had a strong nature and passion for her work, frequently expressing disagreement with her employer Burne Thompson's assignments.

In film, she has been portrayed by Judith Hoag (1990), Paige Turco (1991 and 1993), Megan Fox (2014 and 2016), and by Malina Weissman as the younger version of the character in the 2014 film.

In the original Mirage Comics storyline for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, April O'Neil was a skilled computer programmer and assistant to a famous yet nefarious scientist, Baxter Stockman.

She helped program his MOUSER robots but, after discovering Baxter was using them to burrow into bank vaults, she fled his workshop.

Robots chased her into the sewer where she was promptly saved by three of the Turtles.

The Turtles later successfully fended off a MOUSER invasion.

After leaving her job with Baxter, April decided to open an antique shop.

The shop was subsequently destroyed in a battle between the Turtles and Shredder and the Foot Clan.

April and the Turtles retreated to a farm house in Northampton, Massachusetts, to recover and during this time she suffered recurrent nightmares about the Foot Clan's attack.

During the mid-1990s, April became romantically involved with the violent vigilante Casey Jones, and the two of them eventually raised Shadow, the child of Casey's late wife Gabrielle, as their own.

In Volume 2 of the TMNT comics, April was attacked by a huge robot controlled by the brain of her former boss, Baxter Stockman, and injected with nanobots.

With the help of the Utroms, the Turtles injected April with turtle versions of nanobots to stop Baxter's plan.

The intervention saved April before Baxter's nanobots could reach her brain stem and kill her.

The attack rendered April sterile.

To deal with the emotional strain she became a female version of "Nobody", a vigilante crime fighter, until her identity was discovered by Casey Jones.

With the help of Renet, a time-traveler who took April back through time, it was revealed that April was really a living drawing brought to life with the help of a magic crystal.

She was drawn by her father before his own biological daughter Robyn O'Neil was born.

Although anything that the crystal's prior owner, Kirby, drew with pencil would vanish after some time, April's father used a pen, which might explain why April lived past thirty without vanishing.

Questions of realness and morality were too much for April; she bid farewell to Shadow and Casey and travelled to Alaska to be alone with her thoughts.

Although the trip helped April cope with her demons and led to her eventual return to New York, her family history remained unexplored.

Archie also published two sets of three-part April O'Neil mini-series (from January through June 1993).

In the winter 1994 Archie Special, April was mutated into a turtle herself.

This made her the first official female turtle introduced to the series, three years before Venus de Milo's debut.

The second issue of the Dreamwave Productions series (based on the 2003 animated series) focused entirely on O'Neil, consisting of a dream sequence showing how she had been pressured into a scientific career by her family despite having an interest in journalism.

In the continuity of the IDW comics, April is a very bright science student who interns at Baxter Stockman's genetic laboratory Stock Gen, where her father used to work before a stroke rendered him paralyzed.

It is there that she first meets the Turtles and Splinter (at that time ordinary lab animals subjected to an intelligence-enhancing serum) and gives the Turtles their names.

April later nearly becomes a murder victim during a nocturnal break-in by a group of ninjas (the Foot Clan), who steal the Turtles along with several samples of Stockman's secret mutagenetic projects; the attempt at her life shakes her so much that she decides to take self-defense lessons from her fellow student Casey Jones, who later introduces her to the now-mutated Turtles and Splinter.

April subsequently accompanies or assists the Turtles in their adventures and battles against their enemies, in the course of which she investigates Stockman's clandestine operations and makes an important contact in the Pantheon by incurring the sympathies of one of their members, Aka.

While she and Casey begin a romantic relationship, Casey's self-doubts about his ability to protect his loved ones eventually cause them to drift apart.

After the establishment of Mutant Town, following a falling out with Baxter Stockman, April decided to move to Mutant Town, and is currently working as a reporter (in a reference to her career in various TMNT Media adaptions) to help show the outside world the true face of Mutant Town.