I remember being ten years old in 1993, sitting down on the floor in front of the tv, and just randomly catching the very first broadcast of the very first episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. And even after all of the hours I’d already spent watching live-action superheroes, I’d never seen anything quite like Power Rangers. It was silly, but nothing like Adam West’s Batman, and it took itself seriously, but not like Christopher Reeve’s Superman. Instead of one main hero, there were five, and instead of having a teen sidekick, they were all teenagers…the concept of a teenager being the main hero instead of the sidekick was revolutionary when Spider-Man was created in 1962, but Power Rangers was my introduction to the idea. And, like most kids, I got hooked fast…I couldn’t get enough of these brightly-colored, highly merchandisable superheroes battling strange monsters and piloting their transforming giant robot Zords, available at a toy store near you. This was also my first time seeing giant robots fighting giant monsters in live action, towering above the city skyline…I didn’t even know you could do that outside of a cartoon. Power Rangers captured my imagination very quickly by showing me all these things that I’d never seen before, and I stuck with the Mighty Morphin era until the end. After that, I kept track of Power Rangers, but never connected with it the same way, which makes sense. After all, it remained a show for kids, and I kept getting older.
Then, in 2016, Boom Studios acquired the license for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and started publishing what would quickly become a very long and in-depth line of critically acclaimed comics. But as good as it all sounded, I was in no hurry to read them, because it had been decades since Power Rangers was a part of my life, and most of the comics I’ve read that tie into or adapt a tv show or movie have been pretty bad. But as the years went on, the books kept coming, and everyone still seemed to love it, so I finally decided to try it out. All I really expected was to read a few issues and have a fairly enjoyable, nostalgic experience, before leaving the franchise behind all over again. Instead, I read nineteen trade paperbacks in about a week.
I can’t remember the last time I was this pleasantly surprised by a comic. This isn’t just a good adaptation of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, this might actually be the best version of the series. Because of the switch to a different entertainment medium, all of the restrictions and limitations that go along with being a live-action children’s television show no longer apply, and all of the characters and concepts that made us fans of Power Rangers in the first place can now be explored to a degree that was impossible before.
Characters I’ve known my entire life are suddenly three dimensional in a way that I’ve never seen them. It used to be that each character was given one or two basic traits that were supposed to imply a personality without devoting the time to developing one. Like the Blue Ranger, for example…Billy was the nerd, he wore glasses and overalls, he liked science, he used big words even when it wasn’t necessary, and you just sort of filled in the rest because your brain understands that archetype. But this comic uses all of that as just the starting point, positioning Billy as a timid bookworm who’s found himself drafted into a superhuman war against magic monsters from space, and he is understandably terrified, to the point that he’ll often just stay in his powered up state all the time, keeping the costume hidden under his cloths, because what if something happens and he can’t activate his powers in time? Billy hears the way people talk about the Power Rangers, wondering who they could be under those helmets, always assuming that only someone brave and confidant could be a Ranger, and it makes him feel like an imposter, like he doesn’t belong…especially when Tommy, the Green Ranger, joins the team. Tommy is one of their best fighters, and has every quality that Billy believes he lacks, which he thinks are the qualities most important for being a Ranger. And it takes a while, but eventually Billy comes to realize that he doesn’t need to be like Tommy, he can help the team by balancing Tommy out, by being good at the things Tommy is bad at. Because through it all, Billy is shown to have a brilliant mind that’s capable of solving problems that the rest of his team can barely even comprehend. He’s not weak, he’s just strong in a different way, and the team is better for it. And realizing that actually helps to grow his relationships with his teammates, especially Tommy, who starts helping Billy train and make small improvements physically.
Tommy is one of the biggest examples of how these books improve on their source material. He was the new kid in town, who immediately got abducted and brainwashed by the series main villain Rita Repulsa, turned into the Green Ranger and sent to destroy the Power Rangers. Eventually he breaks the spell, becomes his normal self again, and joins the rest of the Rangers in the fight against Rita…and as far as the tv show is concerned, that’s all there is to it. But the comic takes the concept of the Green Ranger switching sides and mines it for some really good, character-driven stories, based around how difficult it would actually be to make that change. The team’s introduction to Tommy was him spending several weeks trying to kill them, and now they’re expected to just accept him as one of their group, like nothing ever happened…and some of them can, like Jason, who believes strongly in everyone deserving a second chance, especially considering the fact that Tommy was under a spell at the time. But then you’ve got Zack, who’s afraid that the only reason Rita chose Tommy in the first place is because there’s something inherently bad about him, deep down, which comes from fears Zack has about his own place within the group, since Rita once offered him the Green Ranger powers, something he’s never told the others out of a fear that this means there’s something inherently wrong with him, and he’d be rejected if they knew the truth.
These characters benefit so much from being free of the constraints of television, it’s unreal, and you can see it with the villains just as much as with the heroes. Even as a kid, I never really took Rita Repulsa and her monsters seriously as a threat, because the format of the show dictated that she had to send out a new monster every single episode that the Rangers would always blow up before the end credits. This happened over and over again for years, and it painted the villains as incompetent failures. But now, storylines can persist for as many issues as they need, and Rita now has the time to be conniving and manipulative, only striking when it would do the most damage. Even when the Rangers win, the effects of what Rita’s done are still devastating, and their impact will still be felt going forward since this isn’t a tv show where the status quo is reset for every new episode.
A lot of what I’ve been talking about so far can be seen in the plot line given to Finster, the henchman who’s in charge of creating the monsters that Rita sends to attack the Earth. On the show, he was always presented as this fairly docile and non-threatening grandpa who’s just kind of mediocre at sculpting. Yes, he’s a space monster who works for an evil moon witch, but Finster only ever felt like a villain by association, since he worked for Rita. But the comic does something really interesting…one day, Rita tells Finster to go take some time for himself, work on his craft, and just live his best life for a little while. So he finds a secluded area on Earth, kidnapps some Humans, does experiments on them to understand how a Human body works, and eventually learns how to alter his monsters so that they can pass for Human. They can’t hold their Human form forever, and when they revert to their true forms, it’s an eruption of violence and fire that signals the start of a destructive rampage that threatens everyone in their path. Finster’s been making these monsters for months, and every time one is completed, he opens the front door and tells them to go wherever they like, to see the world before it’s time to burn it all down. Over a dozen deadly creatures, passing perfectly as Human, walking the streets of cities and towns, in countries all over the world…any one of them could turn at any moment, and there’s no telling how many more there are. Once the attacks start happening, both the Power Rangers and the citizens they protect are met with the harsh truth that there’s no way to predict or defend against these attacks, all they can do is wait for the monsters to strike and then try to mitigate the damage. And the best part about this plot line, the detail that makes it all work so perfectly, is that Finster himself has no way of tracking any of his monsters. He has absolutely no idea where they are or when they’ll change, and he doesn’t need or want to know, because the entire point of this is to sew fear and chaos among not only the people of Earth, but the Power Rangers themselves. Even if they successfully stop every single one of his monsters masquerading as Humans, the fear will always be there, the fear that more could be out there somewhere, that anyone you pass on the street could be a monster in disguise waiting to strike. No matter what happens, Finster wins. And all of that came from him just taking a little time off to work on his craft. And just like that, the most timid and non-threatening of Rita’s lackeys became terrifying.
All of these smaller, long-form character-driven storylines eventually lead to an event titled Shattered Grid, where an alternate version of Tommy who never turned good waged literal war on the entire Power Rangers franchise. He stole as much power as he could, raised an army, and marched across time and space stamping out every incarnation of the Power Rangers he could find, leaving the Mighty Morphin team to round up all the survivors to form a ragtag resistance poised to mount a counterattack on a key enemy stronghold, with all of reality at stake. Most people know about these comics because of Shattered Grid, and it’s for good reason. If this was DC Comics, it would be a Crisis-level event, with every Ranger from every timeline coming together to stop a common foe before he can build enough power to remake the multiverse in his own image. And while the Mighty Morphin team still plays a central role, the cast expands to give significant spotlight to Rangers from Time Force, Super Samurai, Lost Galaxy, Power Rangers in Space, and so many, many more. Shattered Grid brought together characters from every single season and incarnation of the show, and took the opportunity to give a handful of them the same kind of character development that’s been enjoyed by the Mighty Morphin team up to this point. Relationships are formed between characters who would otherwise never have met. Families are reunited across time, renewing their hope in the face of cosmic annihilation. The event functioned as a celebration of the entire Power Rangers franchise, concluding character arcs that’d been ongoing for years, and setting the stage for the future…because Shattered Grid was far from the end of this version of the Power Rangers universe.
About half way through the second season of the tv show, Jason, Trini, and Zack (the original Red, Yellow, and Black Rangers) suddenly decided to leave the team and attend some sort of world peace conference for teenagers that was being held in Switzerland. It was really strange and abrupt, their goodbye episode used a ton of stock footage and body doubles to cover for the actors not actually being there, and they were replaced by new cast members instantly. The story I’ve always herd is that the actors wanted better pay, since they were the stars of the biggest tv show in the world at the time, but the powers that be wouldn’t budge, and just replaced them. It honestly never occurred to me that this troublesome casting situation would be addressed in the comics. I took for granted the idea that this version of the Mighty Morphin era would be extended, and all the classic characters would always be around. So when Shattered Grid ended, and the book jumped ahead in time to Tommy already being the White Ranger, and Rocky, Adam, and Aisha already in place as the new Red, Black, and Yellow Rangers, I was honestly pretty shocked. But that was nothing compared to the reveal that while everyone thinks Jason, Trini, and Zack are in Switzerland for a peace conference, they’re actually on a secret mission out in space. Without getting too deep into it, their job is basically to go around the universe and deal with the fallout of Shattered Grid, and because that event involved so much time travel, they have to be careful about what they say and who they say it to, so as to avoid paradoxes, thus all the secrecy. They also have a set of fancy new powers, and are now known as the Omega Rangers.
I find it incredibly satisfying that this series is able to make a small number of specific choices, and then mine them for years of really good characterization and compelling storylines. The secrecy of the Omega Rangers’ mission forces them to lie to everyone they care about, and the longer those secrets are kept the worse it’ll be when the truth finally comes out. The strongest bonds in this series are tested, strained, and in some cases broken. And while that’s going on, the three newer Rangers are struggling to find their place in a team that was built on years of close-knit friendships that they were never a part of. They’re constantly comparing themselves to their predecessors, and never feel like they meet the standards of the remaining original members. This is not the happy-go-lucky camp that I’ve come to associate with Power Rangers…there most certainly is joy in their lives, but they have to work for it, and sometimes getting there is hard.
Amidst all of this, the series also takes the time to explore the sorts of fun ideas that I imagine fans must think about all the time, like building a long-term team of Rangers out of members from all over the history of the franchise, and then creating an entire new Ranger team with the introduction of the Solar Rangers, the first of which is a Purple Ranger, which was a big deal to me since I’d never herd of there being a purple Power Ranger before, though apparently there’ve been a lot of them already, which just goes to show how much of this franchise I’ve missed. But despite the holes in my Ranger knowledge, I never felt like I was missing anything, because every reference to the past was done in a way that created something new. I’m sure these comics would probably hit harder if I was more familiar with the various seasons and incarnations of the tv show, but honestly, these books stand alone incredibly well as their own superhero universe.
What they’ve achieved here is a nearly perfect blend of nostalgia and originality, and there’s just so much to like about it. I didn’t even get to mention the secret team of Rangers formed in 1969, or the way the long-term narrative has been slowly building up the grand, cosmic mythology of where the Rangers’ power comes from. Or how these books somehow turned one of Rita’s minions, named Scoprina, into one of my favorite characters. I am endlessly amazed and grateful that, in a world full of dark and gritty reboots, they’ve found the perfect way to approach reimagining Mighty Morphin Power Rangers…and it’s made me proud to say that, after all these years, I’m a fan again.
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