[DreamSword]

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Beyond the Grid

Marguerite Bennett, the mind behind Back to School, leads this arc.

Meanwhile the art is headed by Simone di Meo, with help from Valeria Favoccia, French Carlomagno, and Francesco Mortarino.

While the main story of the arc is covered in volumes 9 and 10 of MMPR, I prefer to read it in the combined "Deluxe Edition" book, which adds a before and after blurb to the story that helps flesh out the characters of Ari and Remi.

And you know, on reread, it's funny. Back when the arc first premiered, many complained that it was the worst arc in the comics by far, and also compared it rather unfavorably(and unfairly) to Shattered Grid before it. But me? Not only did I always like this arc, I like it even more on reread.

One thing I will note is that I do think the arc overall flows better when read in one sitting rather than waiting for it to update monthly. And ontop of that, it really benefits from the reader taking a second to appreciate everything that went into the artwork, as it does alot of heavily lifting in terms of world building and especially scale, given all of the multi-page spreads.

Because man, the aesthetics overall are great here. Featuring alot of wonderful designs from the Solar Ranger, to the Solar Zords, to the big bad himself, the Preator. It's so cool seeing a story take full advantage of its comic medium in order to have an adventure in an alien world that's both familiar and yet at the same time foreign to what's been established in the Power Rangers canon. There's so many neat ideas that went into this arc.

Really loved how the origin of the Zeo Crystals got explored, and I especially loved how we got a team of Rangers from across other teams in other eras. And while some of the character arcs and interactions could've been handled slightly better(Cam gets very little screen time compared to everyone else), alot of it is used very smartly, with the only thing I majorly disagree with being the shipping of Tanya and Mike. Other than that, the way everyone plays off eachother, especially Tanya being the heart of the team, really worked for me.

All of that in addition to a pretty solid grasp on the overall atmosphere of the story and, while I wouldn't say the story is perfect, I did rather enjoy it. Could it have used maybe one more issue to flesh a few more things out? Sure, but for what we got, I'm satisfied. The establishing of Heckyl as the Dark Ranger is great(though I could've went without Zenowing dying), the overall theme of trusting in the future is nice, and it gave us a non-Mighty Morphin' story that fans had been begging for for awhile at that point. If you weren't a fan of Beyond the Grid, I'd say give it another shot with a fresh perspective.

And with the end of this arc came the end of what I consider the "golden era" of the MMPR line of comics specifically. Meaning that next time, we reach the end of what I consider the golden era of Go Go...