Welcome to the 879th installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. This time, learn how Fred Van Lente's Ninjettes series was originally an idea for a Vertigo reboot of a classic DC comic book series.

When Alan Moore took over writing duties on Saga of the Swamp Thing in late 1983, he famously dramatically revamped the lead character, changing the whole setup for the character from what it once had been. Moore took the book in a whole new direction that was so successful that the 1980s began to fill with new and innovative writers in the same mold as Alan Moore taking unused DC characters and doing revamps of them, from Grant Morrison's Animal Man to Neil Gaiman's Black Orchid. Eventually, DC decided to form a specific line of comics for these "Mature Readers" books called Vertigo, and once again, a common theme for Vertigo was taking old DC properties and revamping them, like Kid Eternity or Shade the Changing Man (technically launched before Vertigo, but like Swamp Thing, moved to Vertigo when the line launched). That same basic idea led to the "Secret Origin" of Fred Van Lente's Ninjettes!

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WHO ARE THE NINJETTES?

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Recently, as part of celebrating Fred Van Lente Day, I sat down with the current Jennifer Blood writer (as well as the writer of the current Ninjettes miniseries), Fred Van Lente, to discuss 2011's Jennifer Blood #4 (by Garth Ennis, Marcos Marz, Kewber Baal, Romulu Fajardo Jr. and Rob Steen). I posted our conversation earlier.

In any event, the issue introduced the Ninjettes, who were a trio of college assassins who were hired to kill Jennifer Blood, who was busy taking down her crimelord uncles as revenge for them murdering her father years earlier (before Jennifer faked her own death and tried to retire to a "normal" suburban life with a husband and two kids, before being dragged back into her old violent world for vengeance). However, after Jennifer quickly killed two of them, she held the final Ninjette at swordpoint while she asked her how they got hired as assassins while clearly being incompetent, and it turns out that the girls had just had sex with some mercenaries and used them to fake their way into the world of assassination. Jennifer Blood mocked their weapon of choice, suggesting that katanas would require more strength than the girls had to actually be an effective weapon. She then said the surviving Ninjette could go home, but as she turned around, Jennifer Blood then decapitated her with the katana (surprising herself that it actually worked).

So...that was the Ninjettes. Al Ewing later did a Ninjettes miniseries showing their lives BEFORE they were all murdered, and also ending with the reveal that their very public deaths have caused a new Ninjettes organization to form, using the theory that the "real" Ninjettes never would have been killed this easily, so the "real" Ninjettes must still be out there.

Van Lente is currently writing a Ninjettes miniseries with artists Joseph Cooper and Dearbhla Kelly and letterer Jeff Eckleberry, and his series is a total reboot, with the concept being a group of teenage girls who are deemed as being sociopaths about to go on killing sprees are taken from their homes and placed in a secluded location and given a week to pare their numbers down to just three of them, who will then become the Ninjettes...

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I just wrote about how much I dig the series here. In any event, during our conversation, Fred blew my mind a bit by revealing the SECRET ORIGIN of the Ninjettes, as the concept for the series began with a Vertigo pitch for a...Boy Commandos comic book?!!?

WHO ARE THE BOY COMMANDOS?

Just a quick bit to explain who the Boy Commandos are. In 1941, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon left Timely Comics for National Comics following Timely's publisher, Martin Goodman, reneging on royalties that he promised to Kirby and Simon on the pair's hit series, Captain America Comics, at the end of the year. As I noted a while back, Kirby and Simon were influenced by the very popular acting group known as the Dead End Kids, who had starred in a number of movies throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s.

In early 1941, Simon and Kirby launched a new feature for National in Detective Comics #64 called The Boy Commandos...

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(You know it is a big deal when you get such prominent cover space on a BATMAN comic book)

The series was about a young group of boy, well, you know, commandos. It was an international team consisting of Andre Chavard (from France), Alfie Twidgett (from England), Jan Haasan (from the Netherlands) and Brooklyn (from America), with Captain Rip Carter as their adult leader. Batman and Robin even gave them a cover promotion on Detective Comics #65!

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This group was so popular that it soon gained its own comic book series, selling a million copies a month, forming a sort of "trinity" at National with its other two biggest sellers, Superman and Batman...

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So it was a big deal during World War II, but it petered out after the war ended, and was canceled before the decade was finished (Kirby and Simon not returning to the book didn't help).

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HOW DID VERTIGO AND THE BOY COMMANDOS TIE INTO THE NINJETTES?

In any event, during our discussion, Fred revealed to me, "I actually dusted off an old Vertigo pitch I did--about when Jennifer Blood #4 came out, come to think of it--that was the same premise as my NINJETTES series, with it being this Battle Royale with kids who were suspected of becoming school shooters--except it was a reboot of the venerable Simon/Kirby BOY COMMANDOS.Then Vertigo told me, well, we don't want to reboots of old DC titles anymore. So I put it in a drawer and forgot about it until I started thinking about what to do for NINJETTES. I had written the entire #1 script so I just took it out, dusted it off, changed the genders of all the characters, and boom, new series!"

Fred continued, "I am very pleased that script saw the light of day, I always liked it and there's very little difference between BOY COMMANDOS v2 #1 and NINJETTES v2 #1. But then from #2 it's all brand-new Ninjettes-ness."

Fascinating stuff, Fred, thanks for sharing!

COMIC LEGEND:

Fred Van Lente's Ninjettes series was originally designed as a pitch for a Vertigo reboot of the Boy Commandos.

STATUS:

True

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