[DreamSword]

Mighty Morphin' Volume 3

I really don't like Rogue Sun.

It's just a nasty story full of backstabbing and unlikable characters that are constantly at eachother's' throats for little to no reason, amongst other reasons.

I bring this up because Rogue Sun is the original story headlined by Ryan Parrott for the Massive-Verse, and you can really see the seeds for that story beginning to plant here in this arc.

For example, not only is everyone constantly bickering, but Rogue Sun's' tendency to gaslight the reader starts off here too, with Matt saying things about Grace that, frankly, aren't at all true, and anyone who's actually read the comics up to this point would know that.

I won't go into super detail, since I've complained about Grace plenty all throughout these reviews, but it just amazes me how, under Kyle Higgins, it was made clear that Grace was only ever out for petty self-satisfaction disguised as a moral high ground, and I guess Ryan Parrott either never bothered to check or just decided to ignore that for the sake of making Grace out to be "good."

That all aside, we also get alot of backstory on Lord Zedd here, with all of the flashbacks of previous issues being the story he tells to Candice. And it's a neat idea and all, but it also completely retcons and flies in the face of everything we know about Zedd from the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers TV show proper. Zedd can't be Eltaran, because he's revealed to be human during the finale of Power Rangers in Space. How Parrott knew that about Rita but not Zedd baffles me.

Well, I guess it doesn't confuse me too much because again, these comics are now supervised under Hasbro and not Saban, and Hasbro made it clear many times over that they didn't know the Power Rangers franchise like, at all. Like, the writers of the Massive-Verse have talked about the various notes they've gotten under Saban before, and sure, some of them have been ridiculous, and I even get wanting as much creative freedom as possible when you're a writer, but here's the thing: Power Rangers is a pre-existing IP.

Saban actually cared about the brand and its image, as well as did their best to keep things consistent. There needs to be such a thing as quality control in writing. A writer is only as good as their editor is, and in my eyes, Saban's' editing resulted in much better stories than Hasbro's' ever will. Case in point:

Under Saban, I can guarantee that this moment never would've flown, because they would've known that it completely flies in the face of Power Rangers in Space and what's established about Zordon there. But Hasbro? They didn't know and/or did not care, and as such we have a moment that totally spits in the face of what was one of the most powerful moments in Power Rangers history.

I really don't like this arc.