[DreamSword]

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Volume 13

This was the arc where I officially stopped following the comics regularly.

Not to say I dropped them entirely. I'd still read the odd issue here and there, but this was the arc wherein I gave up on them ever being as good as they used to be.

First and foremost, Moises Hidalgo takes over as the artist, and his art is very stylized. And in some cases, it really works, like with a panel wherein he references Vegeta getting his arm broken in Dragon Ball Z.

But in others, like in the panel above, things just more so come across as off model and it makes things really awkward to look at at times. I can give him this though: Atleast his character designs for the Stone Canyon Trio are better than their previous ones, even if only by a little bit.

This also marks the point in the comics where, with control now being fully under Hasbro instead of Saban, alot of things that Ryan Parrott writes for the story comes across as rather mean spirited. Almost like he's bemoaning that IP that he's attached to and trying his best to say how much cooler his original stuff is, rather than embracing what really makes the franchise work like Go Go did.

It also made me wonder: Does Parrott just not like the Power Rangers villains in general? He already went to great lengths to disrespect Lord Zedd in Necessary Evil, and now here, he disrespects Rita Repulsa by having her replaced by a Putty copy who's stated to be just as strong as she was. Which is not only out and out impossible, but comes across as saying that Rita herself was weak and unimpressive. Majorly disrespectful to the first big bad of the franchise.

But the big highlight for alot of fans was the newly reimagined Dark Rangers AKA the Zedd Rangers. And let me just say, I did not like how they turned out. First off, the way Zedd repowers the Green Chaos Crystal is way too convenient. If it were that easy, Billy wouldn't have struggled with it for so long. Second, nothing about them is at all Power Ranger-like. I mean sure, you could maybe argue that that's the point, but these are meant to be Rangers first and foremost. I'd like to actually witness something I could see appearing in the show itself.

Meanwhile on the Omega Ranger side of things, despite Jason initially being written a bit out of character, it's mainly all just setup for their own storyline that'll be running alongside the Mighty Morphin' stuff. It's nothing horrible, but it's all very much just setup. I will say though that Hidalgo's' artstyle really lends itself alot better here with the very alien environments and designs, rather than the Earth side of the story wherein things just look weird half the time. Wasn't much a fan of Trini's' new hairdo though. Her hair length really has been all over the place in these comics, now that I think about it.

Anyway, the biggest annoyance for me in this entire thing was everything that had to do with Ryan Parrott's' waifu, Grace Sterling. Everything surrounding her in this arc makes no sense. How she's able to bypass Zordon's' defenses make no sense, and her ability to easy get at Drakkon emotionally comes across as character shilling. Ontop of that, Billy humoring her at all throughout this whole thing is extremely out of character ontop of being nonsensical. Billy was the one who initially distrusted Promethea in the first place, and him humoring her argument for making Drakkon the new Green Ranger, ontop of him allowing her to keep the Dragon Coin is just annoying to read.

And yes, I already know who Green Ranger V2 ends up being, but even so, the arc itself is just frustrating to get through. Here was where the past me had concluded that the comics glory days were over, and that my spare time was better spent elsewhere. And unfortunately, there were no immediate signs of improvement as things went on. Now, granted, as we're now entering brand new territory, perhaps things will get better, but I don't have high hopes.

God, Drakkon's' new hairdo is so dumb.