Creation Story
April O’Neil is the first human the Turtles let into their world, and she has been a fixture of every version since. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created her for the second issue of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and named her after April Fisher, Eastman’s first wife.
The April of the original Mirage comics is not quite the character most people picture. She is not a television reporter, the role the 1987 cartoon gave her and that stuck across most adaptations. In the comics she is a computer programmer, working as an assistant to the scientist Baxter Stockman, and that job is what pulls her into the Turtles’ lives.
First Appearance: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2
April first appears in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2 (October 1984), one issue after the Turtles’ own debut. She helps Stockman program his Mousers, small robots built to chew through anything, and when she realizes he is using them to burrow into bank vaults she runs. The machines chase her into the sewers, where the Turtles find her and step in. By the end of the issue she is the team’s first human ally, and she stays the franchise’s longest-running supporting character.
As a first appearance, TMNT #2 is a secondary Mirage key, valued as the first April O’Neil and as the issue right behind the keystone debut. The story of that first issue and the rest of the Mirage keys is on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles team page.
