The Secret Origin of Jenny Everywhere (comic story)
The Secret Origin of Jenny Everywhere was a comic story written by Peter J. Mellini and drawn by Kat Miller.
It was released on Issuu by Mellini's comic publishing company Nostalgic Books and Comics for Jenny Everywhere Day in 2015, and featured an appearance by the company's mascot, Retro (in what was actually his first appearance in a narrative work[1]). The story posited a potential overall origin story for Jenny Everywhere, albeit presented as inaccurate to an unknown extent in-universe.
Contents
Plot
Long ago, on the "oldest and most advanced parallel Earth", which exists at the Edge of the Multiverse, a scientist addresses the three rulers of the planet through video screens. He warns them that he believes an intelligent force of destruction which originated in another universe is in the process of consuming theirs, based on research he has been conducting for months. However, the rulers dismiss his warnings as "monster stories". After they cut off the call, the Professor's wife walks into the room and asks her husband how the conference went. He tells her that "they wouldn't listen". The two set about finding a way to save their young daughter, Jenny.
Some time later, lightning crackles through the skies of the advanced Earth as it is finally attacked by the Living Black Hole. Running through the storm, the man and woman place Jenny, wrapped up in her mother's red scarf, inside the Pod the Professor has constructed. Noting that "it's going to get a little bright", the Professor gives his goggles to the baby girl. The two then seal and launch the Pod just as the terrifying, grinning face of the Black Hole looks down upon the turret where they had been doing so. The child is indeed saved from the destruction of her universe, but as an unforeseen side-effect, the machine splinters her, scattering duplicates of her (all one being despite different physical appearances) in every known reality in the Multiverse. Thus, the Shifter is born.
It is revealed that this has all been the contents of an in-universe comic book being read by Retro. Amazed at what he has just read, Retro asks the real Jenny Everywhere, who is reading comics in an armchair next to his, if the story really happened. Evasive, Jenny answers "Eh… kinda".
Worldbuilding
Jenny
- This story puts forward a potential origin for Jenny. It depicts the "original" Jenny as having red hair, green eyes and pale skin.
- It features cameos by several other unidentified incarnations of Jenny in a splash panel introducing the idea of Jenny looking different across universes, but only one confirmed "real" Jenny. She also has green eyes and red hair, cropped short, as well as pale skin. She is thin, wears dark red trousers and shoes, a gray tank top, dark brown goggles, and a blue scarf which she wears high up enough to cover the lower half of her face.
Universes
- According to Jenny Everywhere: Secret Origins, Jenny's original home universe was located on the Edge of the Multiverse and was home to "the oldest and most advanced parallel Earth". It was destroyed by a Living Black Hole.
- In the only confirmed real universe featured, Jenny is reading comic books in a large living room alongside Retro.
Other
- According to Jenny Everywhere: Secret Origins, Jenny Everywhere's mother apparently had a high rank in the military.
Continuity
- In Jenny Everywhere: Secret Origins, Jenny Everywhere is shown to have gotten her scarf and goggles from her parents prior to being put in the Pod, leading to them being splintered across the Multiverse along with Jenny herself. This more or less tallies with Jenny's statement in COMIC: The Late Shift that her scarf and goggles, across all of her incarnations, are heirlooms from her mother.
- The notion that Jenny's childhood homeworld was destroyed contradicts PROSE: Memories of Nowhere, where an adult Jenny was able to visit her childhood home in a bout of nostalgia.
- In PROSE: Morning After, when she suffered from shifter hangover, another version of Jenny got glimpses of events matching this origin story. This briefly confused her due to their similarity to Superman's origin.
Behind the scenes
Context
This story was released as a Jenny Everywhere Day freebie by the comics publisher Nostalgic Books and Comics, which primarily focused on reprinting vintage superhero comics fallen out of copyright. As such, it featured the character of “Retro, the Nostalgic Man”, the publisher's mascot, who had been introduced in 2014. Retro appeared in several illustrations by Kat Miller, but is not known to have appeared in any other narrative media as of 2014.
The backstory for Jenny Everywhere presented in Jenny Everywhere: Secret Origins bears intentional, overt similarities to the classic backstory of Superman. This is part of what marks it out as potentially unreliable.
Read online
The story is still available for free where it was originally released in 2015 after it had been promoted on the Jenny Everywhere Day website: on Issuu.
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Copyright/credits page.
