[DreamSword]

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Volume 8

Shattered Grid is an event in Rangers history that I don't think will ever be topped.

It being a crossover of nearly every Power Rangers property alone sits it up on high the level similar to Forever Red, but it's so much more than that.

The lack of budget constraints due to being a comic event is utilized to its absolute fullest here, featuring a ton of crossover elements such as intersecting power sets and interactions between characters who've never met before.

Saba being reforged into a longsword with Ninja Steel, Zordon and Cruger teaming together as the head mentors, a Megazord made up of Zords from a handful of different seasons, Rangers piloting other season's' Zords, and of course, the expansion of the Rangers multiverse as a whole.

Drakkon gets a ton of character development here as well. He may have achieved godhood, but even despite that there's one vital thing he's missing in his life: Love. He'd never admit to it, but he's jealous of what the Tommys from other realities have in their friendships. Drakkon chose the path of fear and hatred, and the mark that leaves on people never truly goes away.

The tragedy of Drakkon is not that he's misunderstood or lonely, but that even despite being given multiple chances to turn things around, he clings to his self-serving pride and ego. He can never admit to making any wrong choices because he's clinging too tightly to the idea that everyone should love and worship him due to the power he wields. What he truly wants will forever be out of reach, because subconsciously, he pushes it away and will never bring himself to admit it.

The action scenes are no slouch either. A majority of what makes up the final issue of this volume is a special issue titled Shattered Grid #1, which details the Rangers siege on Lord Drakkon's' palace, and the all out war that results. It's an overall wonderful sequence that has it all: Great art, wonderful character banter, and of course, the explosive and yet quiet and somber finale. Even Rita Repulsa gets in on the action, in another move that you'd never see happen on the show itself, but is incredibly smart in its implementation.

Really, the only downside I see in all of this is that Cruger is written out of character in terms of the way he speaks. But outside of that, Shattered Grid is a great adventure from start to finish, and it's easy to see why it's considered the magnum opus of Kyle Higgins, and why he himself even said he felt he could never top it. So much so infact that it would be the last Power Rangers story he'd ever work on for BOOM Studios, before going off to make his own universe known as the Massive-Verse, starting with Radiant Black. I've talked about my feelings on that story elsewhere.

But hey, Higgins wasn't the only writer involved in this event. What of Ryan Parrott? He'd continue writing Go Go Power Rangers up until its end, and given that Shattered Grid ended with a universal reset, well, it seems only fitting to return to the roots of these Rangers with the next volume of Go Go. But before that, well, let's just say there's certain other project that Parrott was involved in that I wanna talk about. But that's for next time.