WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Jennika II #2 by Brahm Revel, on sale now.
New York City has been the home to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since their introduction almost four decades ago, and they've been its stalwart protectors through the best and worst time that the Big Apple has seen. Recently, the city has been torn apart, leaving those affected by Old Hob's mutagen bomb trapped in the walled-off and devastated part of the city now known as Mutant Town.
As detailed in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Jennika has been struggling to keep Mutant Town's inhabitants safe from themselves, along with the outside world, but the isolation she and everyone else inside the walls are going through is more than a little reminiscent of one of Batman's most memorable epics, "No Man's Land."
Still dealing with the citizens who seem to have gone through monstrous new transformations, Jennika is begrudgingly working alongside Ivan to corral the aggressive and oversized mutants. Jenn believes they'll be able to lure the beasts with food, but supplies inside Mutant Town have been dwindling fast, and she wonders if this is what was driving the monsters to the walls in the first place. The battling mutants do incredible damage during their fight, starting fires and nearly toppling buildings, but Ivan is ultimately able to draw them away from bystanders and into the shipping container where he's been hoarding meats to sell to the highest bidder. The giant monster situation might be taken care of, but this turn of events only highlights the greater issues affecting Mutant Town.
Jennika is quick to point out that there are people starving in Mutant Town, but Ivan dismisses her concerns, preferring to keep his profits high than worry about the needs of those around him. Food shortages aren't the only problem they've been facing. During the fight between the transformed mutants, Jennika had to draw one of them into opening a hydrant to put out the fire they had started. What would normally have been a dangerous nuisance instead was an immediate concern on par with the 20 foot praying mantis, seeing as Mutant Town's fire departments have all been defunded by the government until an aid package can be negotiated. The citizens of Mutant Town truly are all on their own, with no hope of help from the outside world anywhere on the horizon.
It's a frighteningly similar situation to the one that Gotham City found itself in during the course of 1999's "No Man's Land." Running for almost the entire year and spanning 80 issues of monthly Batman titles at the time, "No Man's Land" was the epic follow-up to the "Cataclysm" storyline wherein Gotham City suffers an earthquake of incredible magnitude. In the wake of the citywide destruction that the natural disaster has wrought, the United States government declares Gotham City a "no man's land" and destroys any bridges that lead to the island. In the chaos, heroes and villains all vie for territory, leading to all-out war. Though Gotham was able to survive thanks to the collected efforts of most of its inhabitants, and some outside assistance, "No Man's Land" came to be a defining moment in the Batman mythos that has been retold over and over again.
For the moment, Jennika and the Ninja Turtles aren't up against anything quite as bad as all of that, but the situation in Mutant Town is deteriorating quickly. With the outside world just waiting for an excuse to bring Mutant Town to its knees rather than let it flourish, she could be in a worse spot now than the Dark Knight was in "No Man's Land." With no clear signs that anything is going to work out for the better, the weight of the city truly does rest solely on the Ninja Turtles's shells.