Detective Jenny (comics) (Johnsonverse)

Detective Jenny is an American series of comic books created by Tammy Jo Johnson that has been published by Johnson Comics since March 1, 1992. The series follows the adventures of teenagers in the employ of the UN to uncover criminal activities and arrest and/or kill the people responsible for them, such as drug smugglers, arms traffickers, human slavers, and terrorists. 
The comic series was widely acclaimed, leading to a multimedia franchise that includes a television series that ran on WBC's Saturday Night block from June 4, 1994 to January 3, 2002 and again since June 10, 2017, as well as spin-off series set in the same universe, video games, merchandise, soundtracks, and theme park attractions. It has also received thirteen films beginning in 1997.
==Premise==
The series follows a group of teenagers, all with extremely troubled backgrounds and subjected to Project Hercules, working for a special task unit of the United Nations, known as Delta Squad (better known as Team Jenny); Jenny G. Denver (its namesake) and Makayla Gómez are the leaders. There are 26 "UN Detective" squads, each named after a letter in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet.
All Project Hercules subjects, while they can still be killed, are effectively immortal, in addition to being physically stronger and having faster reaction times than normal humans (this was done so the series could follow real-life events without having to age the cast, as well as satirize the concept of "comic book time"). Known as "Team Jenny," they are tasked with infiltrating, uncovering, and in many cases, destroying illegal operations. In later seasons, they became more akin to super-soldiers who are deployed to solve "practical problems" (usually by way of destroying the main threat with extreme prejudice).
The series has been described as "deceptive." On the outside, it seems like a generic girls' franchise, but the series is very dark and mature, deconstructing multiple conventions of cartoons and comics. The heroes often find themselves in dangerous situations and carry firearms that they do not hesitate to use to kill. They have no qualms about killing, and will not take chances with their enemies. Also, innocent civilians, even children, are often caught in the crossfire. They have also been left with mental and emotional scars as the series progressed (Project Hercules enables them to heal any non-fatal injury, though there have been a few cases where they shrugged off an otherwise-fatal injury). Since no therapist will see them, these scars have only worsened to the point that the heroes will brutally kill their enemies in ways that defy human imagination.
As its reputation grew, the series came to be known for mindless violence involving over-the-top kills and models being blown up every other second; despite this, the series is also chock-full of intelligent social commentary. The series also involves such themes as drugs, smuggling, slavery, human trafficking, and terrorism, among other vices. Villains are depicted as depraved individuals, or good people forced into a life of crime. It is for this reason that several one-off villains were redeemed but usually died in the process. The series also has a recurring antagonist in the form of a terrorist organization known as Black Scorpion. Led by a man known only as Onizuka (named for Ellison Onizuka, an astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster), they commit terrorist acts around the world, with the ultimate goal of Japan gaining independence from the United States. However, this goal later changed after the first film, to the more noble goal of a global utopia where war is an alien concept, while utilizing the same brutal tactics.
Other recurring antagonists include the Takanashi-gumi (a Yakuza gang from the Japanese isles), the Vincenetti Crime Family (an Italian-American mob family from Brooklyn), al-Salam (a radical Islamic terrorist organization from Iraq), the Celtic Liberation Front (a terrorist group seeking the independence of Scotland and Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom), the New Black Panthers (a revived version of the old Black Panthers), the Camino Cartel (a Mexican drug cartel that played a key role in Team Jenny's founding, as well as Jenny and Makayla's relationship), and Squad 27 (the first Project Hercules subjects who went rogue and have become a band of modern-day brigands and anarchists who revel in destruction and derive perverse pleasure from the suffering of others).
==Characters==
See List of Detective Jenny characters and factions (Johnsonverse).
==Development==
In August 1991, during production on the fourth season of Piper & Sparky, Tammy Jo Johnson wanted to come up with a second series. She read several issues of the manga Sailor Moon, and, noticing the rising popularity of the "magical girl" genre, decided to take a crack at a more "grounded" approach.
She designed five characters in the Paintbrush program on Windows 3.0, which served as the foundation on which the series would be built; artist Erin Shimizu drew polished versions of those designs, leading to her role as the series' lead character designer. Johnson named the five characters from people she had known in her life, naming the series Detective Jenny after its lead character. Three superiors were created to brief the team: Joe Quill, Dr. Michele Yamashita, and Dennis Leonard. The character of Leonard was directly modeled on actor Ben Stein, having a deadpan and humorless personality similar to many of his roles; Stein was later cast as Leonard in the series.
Detective Jenny was made as a response to the "magical girl" genre, and, ironically, created a new genre in itself: the "science girl" genre, in which the heroines are more grounded in reality rather than using magic attacks.
Category:Johnsonverse