Casey Jones

Arnold Bernid Casey Jones aka Casey Jones is a character from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Like the turtles, Casey Jones is a vigilante, and was created as a parody of vigilante characters that were in comics. Casey wears a hockey mask and cut-off biking gloves and carries his weapons in a golf bag over his shoulder. His weapons include baseball bats, golf clubs, cricket bats, and hockey sticks. In most installments, he appears as a love interest for April O'Neil.

Casey Jones grew up in Brooklyn, a neighborhood in New York City, which is not exactly known for its safe environment. When Jones was young, his father, Herb, owned an auto shop. A group of Purple Dragons members (lead by a young Hun) burned the shop down, killed him and took his wife and daughter hostage. The badly beaten Casey refuses to lie down and takes Hun’s blows. He attacks Hun with a knife, stabbing him in the neck. Enraged, Hun beats him to within an inch of his life. It seems that the beating he took from Hun as a teenager resulted in several mental and emotional disorders, explaining his often violent and erratic behavior. He had no friends and spent his spare time watching the programs on his three televisions, which he ran at the same time and eroded his rational thinking skills over time. Enticed by role models from diverse action television series', Casey decided to do away with the "scum and dirtballs" of the streets. After he had equipped himself with a hockey mask and various sports clubs, he began his vigilante campaign.

Casey Jones first appeared in the Raphael solo issue "Me, Myself and I". Raphael runs into Casey beating some muggers and proceeds to stop him before the crooks are murdered. Jones and Raphael fight several times before making peace with each other and helped each other to take down a group of muggers. Later, he comes to the aid of the Turtles, Splinter and April O'Neil when they are attacked by the resurrected Shredder at April's home. The seven escape, and retreat to a farmhouse in Northampton, Massachusetts that once belonged to Casey's grandmother. Casey "officially" becomes a part of the Turtles' family around this point, and the farmhouse acts as a second home to them all for some time. At first he and April are not really close, but over time they became closer.

In the Mirage series, Casey is extremely violent, even more so than Raphael, but mellows throughout the course of the series. In "Shades of Gray," he accidentally kills a teenager who tried to mug him. The incident sent him into a drunken spiral, damaging his relationship with April O'Neil, and he began to rethink his role as a vigilante. His initial homicidal tendencies are especially present in his first appearance, although he never actually murders anyone in that instance. It is later revealed in commentary on this miniseries by one of the initial creators (Kevin Eastman) that they had intended for Casey to have become a vigilante because he watched too many bad cop shows (like Peter Laird used to), as opposed to the more popular storyline of the hero doing the same thing after seeing their family killed in front of them. However, this is semi-retconned when writer Tristan Huw Jones imported his 2003 TV series backstory, in Tales issue #56.

During City at War, Casey leaves the farmhouse and begins to drive to Los Angeles, planning to find April, but instead meets a pregnant woman named Gabrielle, a waitress in a small diner in Colorado, with whom he falls in love and marries. Gabrielle dies during childbirth and Casey is left to take care of her daughter, whom he names Shadow. After spreading Gabrielle's ashes, Casey returns to New York City with Shadow to stay with his mother. In a chance encounter, Casey is reunited with April when she comes to buy the apartment building owned by Casey's mom. During this meeting it's revealed that Casey's real name is Arnold. Casey repairs his relationship with April and they begin dating.

By volume four, he and April are married. They raise Shadow as their daughter and try to have a child of their own. April eventually leaves Casey and Shadow when she learns that she is not human and is a product of the Kirby warp pen. As April comes to terms within herself in Alaska, Casey takes to the nightclubs to drown his sorrows. He meets up with The Foot Clan leader Karai at one of these clubs and, after a few drinks, awakens at Karai's retreat with no memory of the night before, although Karai knows something of what had happened. This plotline was left unresolved as the fourth volume came to an abrupt end. Often Casey has been known to shout the term, "Goongala," as a sort of battle cry.

Powers & Abilities
Casey Jones is a natural athlete who has honed his natural strength, agility and combative abilities to their absolute maximum.

Though he has no formal training in melee combat, his unorthodox (and seemingly irrational) fighting style combined with the frantic pace that he sets enables him to bulldoze through most opponents.

In the past, he has managed to literally club his way through small groups of ninja assassins and has even managed to stand toe to toe with the Shredder himself.

History
Casey Jones was living a listless, non-eventful life right up until the night he decided to don his old hockey mask and fight crime. He lived day by day and barely eked out a living as a general handyman in the small, rundown apartment building where he made his residence.

He filled his time between jobs working out and watching horrible cop dramas on the television.

One night, inspiration struck Casey after his favourite cop drama came to an end. The show (which was in the vein of and/or ) made Casey realize that there were too many criminals on the street for the cops to handle and that they needed help. His help.

With that, Casey threw on an old hockey mask, grabbed a golf bag full of sports equipment and charged out into the night looking for criminals to punish. In short order, he stumbled across an attempted mugging that had gone awry thanks to the intervention of (one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

While he was initially pleased to see Raphael manhandling the muggers, he grew confused when Raphael let them retreat without finishing the job. Unwilling to let that stand, Casey dropped down from his rooftop perch and immediately laid into the fleeing muggers.

To his shock, even as he was bashing heads and shattering femurs, he heard Raphael rushing towards him telling him to stop.

In a blink of an eye, Casey’s confusion turned to rage and he attacked Raphael with all of his considerable strength. The sheer fury and frenzied nature of his attacks actually allowed Casey to fight his highly trained opponent to a standstill for several minutes.

Their fight travelled from the back alleys of Brooklyn to a forested park, where Raphael eventually gained the upper-hand and managed to beat Casey into submission. As the two took a breather from the fight, they heard another mugging in progress.

Unable to let the crime take place, in that moment the two decided to work together and halt the mugging. In the process they came to an understanding and formed the initial bonds of friendship.

Shredder and the Foot
One night, while on patrol, Casey spotted a group of men dressed like ninjas. They were surrounding and breaking into an old brownstone that held an antique store on its main floor. His curiosity got the better of him and he entered as quietly as he could behind them.

To his pleasant surprise, when he got inside he found the large group of ninjas had surrounded Raphael and his family and were preparing to attack. Excitement rushed through Casey, and after making a dramatic entrance, he tore into the group of ninjas with a zeal and fury that few could match.

Casey’s intervention provided enough of a distraction (in addition to kayoing several of the ninjas) for the embattled ninjas to make their mistake. Casey along with the Turtles, and April O’Neil escaped the burning antique shop and disappeared into the night.

North Hampton
The next day, Casey and the others gathered what little they could into an old trailer that Casey had and fled Brooklyn for the quiet fields of North Hampton. Casey’s grandmother had owned a farm there, which had been abandoned since her death. Casey opened his old home to his new friends.

Over the next year, Casey shared a few adventures with them but mostly spent his time becoming closer to them (and April) and helping them recover from their horrible ordeal.

Description
Casey is a tall (but not overly so) athletically built Caucasian man with piercing eyes and dark hair. His hair has been cut into a mullet and hangs in spiky locks to his neck. He generally wears loose clothing which allows him the greatest freedom of movement in combat (normally a pair of dark jogging pants, a loose tank top and sneakers).

The one element of his “costume” is the garish hockey mask that he sports into combat. The mask seems to be an old style goalie mask and completely conceals his face.

Personality
Casey’s personality seems to have been completely shaped by 1980s cop dramas and movies in the vein of Dirty Harry, and Murphy’s Law. He is more than a little warped, and clearly has homicidal tendencies.

Fortunately for us, he focuses his violent urges on the criminal element. Unfortunately for individuals that he designates as criminals, he has no sense of scale. He will react to a purse snatcher or pickpocket in the exact same manner that he would react to a murderer. With unbridled rage and ultra-violence.

Casey’s time with the Turtles in North Hampton seemed to have mellowed him out somewhat and brought him some clarity of thought. Out of them all, he became closest to Raphael. The two shared many of the same interests: goofing off, lifting weights, and brawling.

Quotes
“The cops can’t handle it — they need help ! My help ! To defend the citizens of this fair city from the vile scum that sneaks about my city !”

“Taste hardwood, armpit !!”

“I’ll get you hairballs off the streets ! Feel the bat of doom, creeps !”

“Look out scum — ! CASEY’S COMIN’ ! “

“When Casey gets done with you your whole body’s gonna be busted !”

“Hey pal — I used to be a bouncer at Torchy’s ya know — I’ve thrown ten guys your size out, all at once ! Or should I say we… oh heck, I can’t take all the credit. I did have a little help.”” (pulls out a pair of bats) ““I’d like ya ta meet the boys… they’re dying to meet you !”

(While charging at a large group of Foot ninjas) “GOONGALA ! GOONGALA !”

“ZUNGA ZUNGA ! Take ’em down comrades !”

“HA, HA, HA… Casey RULES !”

Weapons
Casey often is wearing a hockey mask when he goes to fight crime and his constant weapons are a hockey stick, baseball bats, and golf club.

Trivia

 * Kevin Eastman said his personality was based off Kurt Russell's character Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. However, Casey Jones' first appearance actually predated Jack Burton's first appearance by a year.