[DreamSword]

Mighty Morphin' Volume 1

Marco Renna is our new artist for this one, and he does some good stuff.

While I could see certain aspects of how his style in relation to these comics could be considered "safe" I personally don't think that's a bad thing.

It does great for the character design department, especially in terms of the Stone Canyon Trio, and I actually really like the way that he draws and portrays energy effects. It's nice to look at.

That all aside, we've now reached the point in the comics wherein I have very little context for future content as well as the point in which, atleast when it comes to the circles I'm in, more and more readers began to drop off from the Power Rangers comics. The Mighty Morphin'/Power Rangers split.

And yeah, I can definitely see why people got fed up, because BOOM decided to do the split in a very annoying way: To get the full story, you need to flip-flop back and forth between both runs of the comic, and that's quite the order of busywork to demand of your readership. Especially people like me who prefer to wait for Volume releases.

In regards to the narrative itself though, this is very much building up to be the Power Rangers version of Marvel's' infamous Civil War event, and boy, Ryan Parrott sure went all in on copying that idea, because it even features things like making characters act not like themselves in order to either further conflict or make others look bad. And in this case, it's making Zordon go out of character in order to give Grace more good, well, graces. Joy.

One thing that Is nice though is that Lord Zedd is a threat again, and his scheme this time results in a very cool all out brawl between the seven Rangers and a legion of supercharged Putties. The entire thing takes much advantage of how this is a comic and no live action, and the entire ordeal is really cool to see play out. My favorite bit being when a swarm of Putties begin to climb and lay siege to the Zords, with the Rangers desperately trying to fight them off while doing repairs. The Giant Chaos Putty being made up of multiple smaller Putties is a really neat idea too.

Lastly, there's a subplot about Bulk, Skull, and Skull's' girlfriend who turns out to an alien. To be honest, I found these bits way more interesting than the stuff going on with our heroes, as it made for very good interpersonal drama that didn't rely on anything being forced. Bulk and Skull remain in character, and despite their small divide over Candice, Bulk does still care greatly for his best friend. It's some touching stuff.

Oh, and in case you didn't believe me about this arc being heavily inspired by Civil War, the unmasking of Green Ranger V2 here is a direct reference to the unmasking of Spider-Man from said storyline. We're in for a bumpy ride.