Raphael, nicknamed Raph, is a superhero and one of the four main characters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics and all related media. In most iterations, he is depicted as the most aggressive of the turtle brothers, physically the strongest and often at odds with his brother, Leonardo.
He is typically styled wearing a red eye mask and is the only turtle to have kept this color since the characters' original version, as the others later adopted different ones. Raphael wields twin sai as his primary weapon. He is commonly portrayed in media as speaking with a Brooklyn accent. Raphael is known for his temperamental and cynical personality, being short-tempered, aggressive, rude, sullen, sarcastic and rebellious. The origin of Raphael's anger is not always fully explored, but in some incarnations appears to stem partly from the realization that they are the only creatures of their kind and ultimately alone, while also bothered by the injustice the helpless and innocent suffer. Despite his fiery personality, he has shown a soft side on many occasions, mainly to Michelangelo.
Raphael is an opinionated and independent character who chafes under authority. He serves as the team's enforcer. The combination of his personality and role contributes to his rivalry and frequent arguments with his brother and leader, Leonardo. When he feels as though Leonardo's decision is not in the best interest of the family, for whatever reason, he is sure to voice it. Raphael would often brandish his tough-guy attitude with aggressive lines like "Why sneak around when you can bash some heads instead?".
However, in a later iteration of the franchise, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, his role as protector takes precedence over his traditional characterization and his dynamics with his brothers. In this series, Raphael is the eldest brother and his dynamic with Leonardo is effectively swapped—with Raphael now admonishing Leonardo for his irresponsible attitude and disregard for his role as leader.
Like all of the brothers, he is named after a Renaissance artist; in this case, he is named after the 16th-century Italian painter Raphael.TMNT Origin Story , official site. Retrieved 2007-11-16. In 2011, Raphael placed 23rd on IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes, a list that did not feature any of his brothers. He is the only Teenage Turtle brother whose name does not end in the letter "O", even though the artist he got his name from is "Raffaello".
Comic books
Mirage Comics In the earliest black-and-white Mirage Comics, Raphael was the most violent turtle and had a tendency for going berserk either in battle or when his temper flared up. He has a somewhat cynical and sarcastic sense of humor. In later issues, it is shown that he is not particularly fond of the supernatural, stating so explicitly in Tales of Raphael: Bad Moon Rising.
Raphael mellowed somewhat as the series went on, possibly a key moment for his character development was when he allowed Leonardo to go in alone to defeat The Shredder after nearly being killed by the Foot Elite. Since then, he has become less inclined to question Leonardo's leadership and generally shows greater friendliness toward his family and allies.
Of his three brothers, Raphael is closest to Michelangelo, having stated this in the fourth issue of the Mirage TMNT comics. Raphael often shows a caring, more laid-back, side of himself when around Mikey, frequently indulging the young turtle emotionally when at home and ferociously protecting him from harm when in battle. Raphael openly admits that the mere thought of Mikey being grievously injured causes him to experience violent rage. In his self-titled one-shot miniseries, Raphael meets human vigilante Casey Jones, his foil, who is more violent and unstable than he was. Despite their brutal first meeting, the two have since formed a close bond.
In the Mirage comic book series' Volume 4, he is still the most violent turtle but is more sociable. After having been bitten by a vampire-like creature, he experienced a further mutation and became a large, dinosaur-like version of himself. He went into a state of berserk animal rage because of it, but with some guidance from an inner manifestation of Master Splinter, he regained his original mentality and later assisted Leonardo and Casey Jones in tracking down the vampires who attacked him. This is also somewhat similar to an earlier storyline during Volume 1, where Raphael was attacked by a leech-like creature who, when sucking his blood, also drained him of the mutagen in his body and reverted him to a small turtle. The leech itself mutated and vanished, prompting the remaining turtles to follow it. Finally, after tracking down the creature, Raphael manages to bite it and pierce its skin, thereby drinking its blood and mutating it back.
This incarnation of Raphael appeared in the crossover special Turtles Forever voiced by Sean Schemmel.
Image Comics In the Image series that treated the first two volumes of the Mirage Comics as canonical, Raphael was blasted in the face and disfigured. After that, he wore one of Casey Jones' hockey masks for much of the time, and eventually just an eye patch. Later, Raphael wore Shredder's armor in an attempt to psychologically dominate a number of the New York Mob, with whom the Foot Clan was engaged in a losing gang war. He donned a slightly variant version of the armor and pretended to be the Shredder to get the advantage on his pursuers. He succeeded in defeating them and was then accepted into, and given control of, the New York faction of the Foot Clan for a brief time. In the independent published series of Image Comics #24, Raphael had an eyepatch and red bandana for the whole issue and was even angrier than ever. He killed Cheng with whom he had been friends in issue #25, and as soon as Pimiko was killed by the gauntlet of Lady Shredder, Raph removed his bandana and eyepatch to reveal his left eye was no longer disfigured but was back to normal. He later said to Leonardo he had a thing for Pimiko, and like Donatello with Baxter Stockman's help in ridding him of cyborg parts, Raphael kept his crush on Pimiko a secret.
Archie Comics The Archie Comics series was titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures and began as a direct adaptation of the popular cartoon series in the late 1980s. After the second story arc, Raphael changed costumes and began wearing an all-dark ninja outfit which he won during an Alien Wrestling Match. He would be the first member of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to have a girlfriend, meeting Ninjara in issue #28 and breaking up near the end of the magazine's 75-issue run. In the future, Raphael would lose an eye during a conflict with the Shredder, Verminator X, and Armaggon (in most of the future timeline incarnations of Raphael, his left eye is missing). He would time travel after his brother Donatello invented the technology and eventually retire on the island Turtleco (which used to be Manhattan) and become a bar owner.
IDW Comics In the IDW Comics, Raphael, like his brothers, is one of the reincarnated sons of Hamato Yoshi, who was murdered by Oroku Saki in medieval Japan. He began his new life in the present as a young turtle in the laboratory of StockGen Research, Inc., Baxter Stockman's genetics laboratory, and served as a guinea pig for an experiment to be grown to be a naturally armored super soldier. Some ninjas tried to seize the Turtles and various other research results from the laboratory, including a mutagen. The intervention also led his reincarnated father, now a lab rat, and the Turtles to be doused with a chemical cocktail that triggered their mutation.
Shortly before his mutation, Raphael was separated from his family during an attack from a hungry street cat. He panicked as he mutated and was taken under the wing of a homeless man named Buck. However, Buck was murdered by street thugs, inspiring rage and grief in Raphael.
In the fifteen months after his mutation, he resided as a vagrant on the streets of New York City without a memory of his life before his transformation, or even of a name. During this time, his brothers regularly searched for him but did not find him. After befriending Casey Jones during a domestic dispute, Raphael was attacked by Old Hob, the street cat now mutated, but the other Turtles intervened and brought an uncertain but happy Raphael home to Splinter. He trained extensively with them for the next month, making incredible progress and being rewarded with a pair of sais.
His new family's status was soon put to the test when their home was attacked by M.O.U.S.E.R. robots and Splinter was abducted. Raphael fought alongside his brothers to get their father back but came to the attention of the Shredder and the Foot Clan in the process.
Despite joining his brothers in their training and patrols, Raphael maintained his friendship with Casey by sometimes going out and assaulting criminals. When Casey was badly beaten by his father, Raphael lost his temper and set out to murder the man, but was stopped by Splinter, who taught him that he fights with too much anger.
His anger was turned inward during the City Fall storyline, in which rescuing a stabbed Casey from Shredder led to Leonardo being captured by the Foot Clan and brainwashed by Kitsune, becoming loyal to the Foot and Shredder, becoming murderous and sinister. Devastated, Raphael blamed the entire event on himself, and savagely attacked Foot Clan from informants until Michelangelo and Donatello stopped him. When Splinter and the Turtles tried to extract the brainwashed Leonardo from Shredder's clutches, Raphael managed to penetrate some of the brainwashing and remind Leo of who they were.
At the O'Neil Farm in Northampton, Raphael clashed again with the emotionally disturbed Leonardo, until Leonardo physically attacked him. From then on, Raphael watched and guarded his brother from a distance; including keeping Alopex away from him but did not engage him. He became more friendly with the mutant fox Alopex, though any trust he had for her was still shaky and he incorrectly believed that she had betrayed them when the Foot attacked.
Due to Hob's early efforts to kill him, Raphael remained extremely wary of Old Hob and did not believe that their family should be working with him. Despite this wariness, he still went on errands to Hob on Splinter's behalf.
During the Turtles in Time event, Raphael was captured by Utroms in prehistoric times and adopted a small dinosaur he named Pepperoni. When Leonardo attempted to change the past by killing Oroku Saki in medieval Japan, it was Raphael who talked him out of it. He participated in the attack on the Technodrome with his brothers Leonardo and Michelangelo, where they fought Krang. However, he was devastated upon returning to New York, where a dying Donatello was barely saved by the Fugitoid by being transferred into the body of the robot Metalhead. Raphael remained convinced that Donatello was not really "alive" and that the Fugitoid would not be able to save his life. In particular, he blamed himself for leaving Donatello behind.
When Splinter entered his family into the Gauntlet, an ancient ritual that would end the bloody conflict between them and the Foot, Raphael was pitted against the powerful but dimwitted Rocksteady, who had nearly beaten Donatello to death. He and Michelangelo used their skill and agility to pit Bebop and Rocksteady against each other. He participated in the final fight against Shredder along with his brothers, with his father as the victor.
When his father became leader of the Foot Clan, Raphael reluctantly joined as well, though he remained somewhat distant from it compared to Leonardo. He also remained in contact with their newly estranged brother Michelangelo, assuring him that he knew how hard it was to be homeless, and that Michelangelo would always have a home with them.