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 issue #2 of 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 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, 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 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.
Comics Mirage Comics
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.Eastman, Kevin and Peter Laird. IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Color Classics #11. Jun 5, 2011, IDW. 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.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issue 20 (volume 4) Feb, 2005, Mirage. 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 Comics 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 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. Archie also published two sets of three-part April O'Neil mini-series (from January through June 1993).
Dreamwave Productions 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.
IDW 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.
Television Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 series)
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. She also fell out repeatedly with Vernon Fenwick, the director/camera operator whose enormous ego compelled him to scoop April on her stories whenever possible. April was friends with Irma Langinstein, the receptionist at Channel 6. She lived in an apartment in New York City, though during the course of the series she was forced to relocate several times due to a variety of Turtle-related mishaps.
April was reporting on a series of high-tech equipment thefts when she came under attack by a gang of street punks. Thinking quickly, she managed to squeeze into a storm drain and ran from the mob until she hit a dead end. The Turtles were nearby and defeated the punks. She was taken back to their sewer lair, where they explained their origins to her. At first, she believed them to be responsible for the equipment thefts, but they agreed to help find the true culprits if she kept quiet about the Turtles' existence. April quickly became their major link to the outside world since their unusual appearance effectively precluded them from functioning above ground without some sort of disguise. To communicate with the Turtles, she used a Turtlecom, a device that functioned as a two way audio-video communications system.
April's friendship with the Turtles resulted in the opportunity to record exclusive footage of their encounters with Shredder, but despite her intimate knowledge of the details of their lives, she tended to keep her professional news reports about them impersonal and mysterious. She was a vocal champion of their cause, despite Burne Thompson's opinion that the Turtles were a menace to the city, and most episodes generally showed her attempting to convince Burne and the New Yorkers that the Turtles were not criminals. By the episode "Doomquest", she finally succeeded in this by publicly exposing Lord Dregg's plans to take over the Earth via propaganda campaigns.
April was frequently kidnapped by Shredder and used as bait in order to lure the Turtles out of hiding and destroy them.
April revealed her age in the Season 3 episode "Leather Head - Terror of The Swamp". In Florida on vacation, she and the Turtles found a body of water contaminated with a mutagen that made mutants feel youthful, while physically de-aging humans into four-year-old versions of themselves. Donatello did not allow April to enter the water, to which she lamented, "Oh, great! I'm doomed to be a decrepit twenty-eight-year-old hag!" Her Aunt Agatha ("Aggie"), who appeared in the episodes "Case of the Hot Kimono" and "Sleuth on the Loose", was a detective.
April was normally portrayed as a capable and independent woman. Her most important contribution to the Turtles was her access to research via the Channel 6 computers; using this information she could alert the Turtles to trouble and possible case leads. Her blue news van had classic headlights and the Channel 6 News logo on each side. April could usually be found wearing a distinctive yellow jumpsuit — modeled on that of Fujiko Mine in Lupin III Part 2 — with white boots. By the ninth season, April worked freelance for reasons never specified, and exchanged her yellow jumpsuit for a brown leather jacket. She continued to help the Turtles even after the defeat of Shredder and his subsequent exile to Dimension X.
Portrayal April was voiced by Renae Jacobs. In the 25th Anniversary crossover TV special Turtles Forever, she was voiced by Rebecca Soler. Renae Jacobs auditioned for the role in Los Angeles in 1986. She developed her initial personification of O'Neil while preparing for the audition, having not read the comics. Her first day on set voice director Stu Rosen made it clear he did not approve of her for the role, and had waited to show her audition last, saying to her, "Every one I played, the producers said 'No, no, no, that's not April,' and finally I was out of people to show them, so I pulled your audition out and played it for them and they said 'That's April!'"
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 series)
In the 2003 cartoon series, April, voiced by Veronica Taylor in English, got a costume change and her hair color was altered to a dark magenta tone for the new incarnation of the animated series produced by 4Kids Entertainment. However, she was no longer cast as a news reporter like in the original animated series, with her role now being similar to that of the Mirage Studios character: again, she served as an assistant to Baxter Stockman until his Mouser experiments got out of control, and after the Turtles saved her she became a faithful friend, ally, and "big sister" to them. April made much more use of her scientific expertise and she often used her computer skills to aid the Turtles. She developed a closer brother/sister relationship with Donatello, who shared many of her interests. In Season 7 she sometimes helped Donatello to collect Splinter's data bits. April developed a modest knowledge of combat skills after training with Splinter. Her quick thinking was often instrumental to the Turtles' survival.
Casey Jones is romantically attracted to April, though their contrasting personalities often make them bicker. By the third season, the two seemed to have quite a serious romantic relationship. In the series finale, "Wedding Bells and Bytes", she and Casey finally got married.