The Legend of Jenny Everywhere (comic story)
The Legend of Jenny Everywhere, whose title was rendered on the title pages of its three parts as The Legend of Jenny Everywhere, a.k.a. the Shifter, was a three-part Jenny Everywhere comic story created by Jack Harvey, the first of his multiple Jenny Everywhere work. The story introduced an incarnation of Jenny who recurred in many of these further works.
Contents
Plot
Part 1: Disorder In The House
At a coffee shop in Dimension 331's New York, Jenny Everywhere meets up with another dimensional traveller. As they catch up, she explains that she asked to meet him because her other selves have given her information suggesting that agents of Chaos are on the move in this dimension. They agree to meet up later at a nearby church and look into the matter together. As they part ways, the man also asks Jenny if she's seen Red Max — a “government-sanctioned anarchist” native to this dimension — lately.
Finding that she hasn't, Jenny pays him a visit at his apartment, and they share some banter as she tries to find out what if anything Max is up to, with little success. Despite the casual tones both keep up, however, Max, fully outfitted with his explosives kit, is later seen lurking around the church where the unnamed man agreed to meet with Jenny. The man attends the service and then walks out only to be accosted by a mysterious bald man with a distinctive symbol tattooed on his forehead, wielding a samurai sword, who immediately attempts to kill him. However, he is taken aback when the Man's dimensionally-anomalous shotgun is able to block his supposedly unblockable sword, and the Man ends up killing him. Jenny finally arrives, and, examining the body, tells him that she does not believe the man was an agent of Chaos at all, but something else entirely, better-coordinated and more sinister.
Part 2: Yours Is No Disgrace
In a flashback to an office meeting in Dimension 331's London, six months earlier, it is revealed that it was Red Max's overseers at the Department of Anarchy who put him on the path to befriend Jenny Everywhere in the first place, in the hope that technological secrets could be acquired from her, willingly or otherwise. In another flashback, to events which occurred five months earlier in another dimension's Brighton, a glimpse is given of Jenny's relationship with the Man With No Name as he sympathises with her when she complains of parallel bleed syndrome.
Back in the present, the trio of Jenny, Max and the Man With No Name have followed the dimensional trail of the mysterious assassin to Chernobyl in Dimension 672's Ukraine. As they follow the end of the trail, the Man With No Name complains about Jenny's insistence on having brought Max. Max's biting answer shows to the Man that Max is aware of who and what he is, to his surprise. The trio then reach a locked metal door. Before Max can use his explosives to get through, Jenny shifts to another universe where the building was an ice-cream-cone factory and the door was therefore unlocked and unguarded, walks through, shifts back to Dimension 672, and opens it from the inside to the two men's confusion — even offering them complimentary ice cream cones.
As they find some computer terminals, Jenny instructs Max to “do his fine stuff”. Max indeed finds data on the villains' plans, which mention New York, an island, and “a lure”. Looking out the window into the courtyard to find five warriors with the same tattoos as the New York assassin standing in front of them, they belatedly realise they walked into a trap. A battle breaks out, but the Man and Max's efforts soon prove of little importance when Jenny enters the field and, one by one, shifts the attackers away with a single touch, sending them off to a WWI battlefield.
The Man retrieves the D-Jump device used by the assassins, which is still keyed to their home base, and makes his way there through the portal the device creates. He is mildly put out when he finds Jenny and Max already waiting for him, having simply shifted there. The location, at any rate, turns out to be an island in the South Pacific. Before they can make any further observations, they realise they are surrounded yet more people with tattoos on their foreheads.
Part 3: Shine On You Crazy Diamond
The three prisoners having taken inside the island fortress of the villains, and Jenny tied up to a pillar in the middle of their courtyard, from which uncomfortable vantage point she listens as the mastermind, Grandmaster Awndisk, reveals his plan to her. He is the Grandmaster of the cultish Brotherhood of Universal Oneness, who intend to fold all parallel universes into one, merging with all their parallel selves. To do this, they intend to abuse Jenny's own shifting powers.
Awndisk, however, underestimated the crazy-preparedness of Red Max, who has a C4 detonator concealed under one of his fingernails and a tranquiliser dart in his shirt collar, among other things. With Awndisk having stated that he needed Jenny conscious and rational for his plan to unfold, the Man retrieves the tranquiliser dart and manages to shoot it at Jenny, knocking her out, while Max activates the explosives on the beach thanks to his detonator, creating a distraction.
Jenny's consciousness finds herself in a “place between one world and the next where she is greeted by her long-dead Grandfather in full Native regalia, who gives her words of wisdom on her significance in the balance of reality, claiming that she was “chosen” by the Great Spirit to preserve the balance of existence. She returns to the real world supernaturally empowered with a bow made of energy, with which she shoots all the members of the Brotherhood one by one with the effect of making them “one with the Multiverse”. After she's done, the extra powers fade, and she decides to go for a beer with the Man and Max.
They do so at a pub in Edinburgh, relaxing and trading stories. Max is the first to leave, intent on giving over some of the Brotherhood's tech to his superiors in substitute to Jenny's secrets. After a little more banter, it's Jenny and the Man who part ways, promising they'll meet again one day. As he leaves, the Man walks down a rainy alleyway, humming a song about Jenny to himself.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- The story stars a version of Jenny who wears a black tank top, a long flaxen-yellow overcoat, blue jeans, a light yellow scarf, an unobtrusive gunmetal-grey goggles. She has red hair in pixie cut and a Caucasian-passing skin tone, but she is of Native American descent. She seems to be used to actively communicating with her other selves, trading information with them, rather than merely tapping into their memories. She states that she “once kissed a girl” but doesn't identify as a lesbian.
- Jenny Everywhere's grandfather tells her that the Great Spirit “chose” her to maintain “the balance of existence”.
- Brief flashbacks of the Jenny of COMIC: Soulless Mate and the Jenny of COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Vs Hell are seen.
- The Department of Anarchy also have a picture of a very different-looking Jenny who is dressed in a punk style, with parts of her hair dyed red, smoking a cigarette.
Jenny Nowhere
- Grandmaster Awndisk is aware of Jenny's fights with Nowhere which are evidence of her having “borne true duality”. This is illustrated with an image of the incarnation of Jenny Nowhere introduced in COMIC: Damn Fine Hostile Takeover. She is coloured with black hair.
Universes
- The story opens in “New York Dimension 331”, where much of the story unfolds.
- The Department of Anarchy's files about Jenny Everywhere include a mention of a “Dimension 172”.
- The second flashback of Part 2 sees Jenny and the Man With No Name having drinks at the Pier's End Bar in Brighton, England in Dimension 577.
- The Brotherhood of Universal Oneness are based in Dimension 172.
- To break into a secure facility in Chernobyl, Jenny shifts to another universe where the building was an ice-cream-cone factory and the door was therefore unlocked and unguarded, walks through, shifts back to Dimension 172, and opens it from the inside .
- Jenny disposes of the group of Brotherhood attackers by shifting the attackers away with a single touch, sending them off, one by one, to another universe in the middle of what appears to be a WWI battlefield.
Other
- Jenny speaks about having had a dream about a murder in San Francisco, with the body found under the Golden Gate Bridge, and another where she was watching “a Doctor Who story with the Slitheen in it”.
- Jenny orders toast at the restaurant.
- Posters for Citizen Kane and Casablanca can be seen on the wall of the Pier's End Bar.
- The Man With No Name claims to have learnt fencing from “the great D'Artagnan”.
Continuity
- Red Max is aware that a version of Jenny once blew up the Statue of Liberty. This occurred in COMIC: New York Chaos.
- Jenny is used to fighting agents of Chaos, although, despite the true villains attempting to make her believe otherwise, none appear in this story. Chaos and his agents were a plot point returned to with frequency in the works of Benj Christensen, seen most prominently in COMIC: The Jenny Everywhere Chronicles.
- Grandmaster Awndisk and the Brotherhood of Universal Oneness are aware that in other incarnations, Jenny has “attained godhood” (as seen in COMIC: Soulless Mate), “battled the Fallen” (as seen in COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Vs Hell) and “borne true duality” (as seen in COMIC: Damn Fine Hostile Takeover). In each case visuals from the three stories are recreated, although in the third of the three, the artwork gives the “original” Jenny Nowhere dark hair instead of the fair hair seen in the original Nelson Evergreen rendition.
Behind the scenes
Background
When initially posting the story, Jack Harvey gave the following intro:
| Jenny's been previously mentioned here before, but if you want a quick catch up you can always visit here First original Comic, by me, posted here, Which will do for now until a proper website comes around. |
| —Jack Harvey |
In 2022, he added a note apologising for some stereotypical elements in the story, notably of Jenny's Native American grandfather.
| Note from Future Jack (2022): These comics are some of the first I ever put out, and as such, are pretty dated when it comes to politics and representation. I didn't hold myself to the same standards then as I do now, and as such some of the writing can come across as misrepresentative, stereotypical, and mean spirited. |
| —Jack Harvey |
Read online
The story's three parts are available on the author's blog. They are additionally mirrored here with the permission of Jack Harvey.
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