Casey Jones
Real Name: Arnold Casey Jones
A.K.A.: Casey, CJ
Occupation: Vigilante/Neighborhood Watchman/Apartment Superintendant
Date of Birth: c.1965
Height: 6’2″
Weight: 215 lbs.
Eye Color: Blue
Hair: Black
Chosen Representative Colors: Usually a custom made white hockey mask
Personal Weapons: baseball bats, hockey sticks, tennis rackets, golf clubs, and anything else sports related
Personal Skills: Casey has the power to overcome any adversary due solely to his physical strength.
Personal Talents: Casey knows his way around the garage, and can fix almost anything that needs to be fixed around the house. Being a human, he also has the advantage of walking around the streets of New York, mainly for the purpose of reconnaisance work for the turtles.
Character Profile: Arnold Casey Jones began life as a typical street punk living in the slums of New York. As Casey’s mother had the good fortune to purchase the apartment building they lived in, Casey began the usual task of fixing it up. After high school graduation, CJ was accepted at NYU, and played for the college hockey team. He was later drafted for a professional team, but after only one year of playing, he was badly injured. Unable to vent his frustrations on the ice, he decided (after watching a couple of news reports) to do something about the neighborhood crime. He grabbed a golf bag and his favorite sports equipment, and headed for the streets.
After meeting the turtles, Casey has had many adventures. It wasn’t until after a horrible accident involving a teenager’s death that Casey settled down quite a bit. He moved away from the farm house, hoping for the best on the west coast. He never made it. He was mugged and car-jacked by hoodlums at a small desert town diner. With the kindness of Gabrielle the diner’s waitress, Casey was soon on his feet. They fell in love.
He stayed at her trailor home and found a job as a grocery sacker (which didn’t last too long). Also, Gabrielle was pregnant. The child wasn’t Casey’s, but he planned to provide for it. During delivery, Gabe hemorraged and died. Casey was left with the little girl he named Shadow. He moved back to New York soon after, and continued helping his mother maintain her apartment building. Unwittingly, she sold the building to April, and the two fell in love all over again.
Technical Information: The Turtles right-hand man. Introduced very early in the series, he’s a misguided do-gooder, who thinks that the best way for a criminal to learn is by beating the goodness into him. He is the turtles’ and April’s confidant for life, and surrogate father to Shadow his late-girlfriend’s daughter. This is from the City at War story arc.
Casey Jones is considered a major character in the Mirage and Image series. He has also made appearances in the TMNT movies and cartoon. However, at no time did Casey Jones appear in the TMNT Archie Adventure Series.
Note: The views and opinions expressed here are all mine, and should not be taken as actual fact. These statistics are based largely on the TMNT Archie Adventure Series. I do consider all TMNT publications to be equally factual. This includes the Archie, Mirage, Image, Wolf Productions, and even the Pizza Hut sponsored singing Ninja Turtles.
Mirage Comics:
1987 Cartoon: Dirty Harry all over again… right down to the accent. Casey’s appearance in the cartoon was rare, and when we did see him, he was almost identical to the action figure mass produced in the 80s. There was little to no character development, except one time that the Turtles figured it would be easier to get a hockey mask-wearing, MALE psychopath to go undercover as a corporate businessman than their relatively sane, educated FEMALE friend. Well, there is the fact that she was a famous face around New York. But when someone shows up to work wearing a hockey mask, it’s kind of difficult to tell what they look like anyway.
Archie Comics: The one low point in the series is that they omitted CJ from the character line-up… The closest we got was maybe Kid Terra and/or Trap from the Stump Intergalactic Wrestling Federation.
The Movie: A beautiful portrayal of the Mirage universe Casey by Elias Koteas. Casey Jones is an angry young man who needs to teach purse-snatching punks a lesson. But after hot-head Raphael gets pissed for losing a sai and heads out on the town, the pair get into a scuffle. Scenes straight from the original Raphael one-shot. But, neither one really learns his lesson at that point. Which may be a good thing considering CJ comes back for another round with Raphael and finds April’s apartment being invaded by Foot Ninja.