Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers #2 Review

Welcome back to our continued look at this new modernized and more serious reimagining of the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers in comic book format. Our last outing ended with Scorpina, Rita Repulsa’s loyal henchwoman confronting Tommy at home. We’ll get to that in a minute, but this month’s issue opens with Billy and Trini studying the inner workings of the Dragonzord. The close friendship that the two shared in the original show is elaborated upon here as Billy laments the fact that despite being the brainiac of the team, he’s the physically weakest and least skilled fighter of the six power rangers. Trini reassures him that there’s much more to being a Ranger than being able to fight and that his technical genius is invaluable to the team.

Back at Tommy’s house, Scorpina is demanding the dragon coin, saying that he can either give it to her willingly and live or she’ll kill him and take the coin off his remains. Tommy refuses to budge, until his mother calls up to him from downstairs. Scorpina realizes that threatening Tommy’s mother may be a more persuasive course of action, and Tommy responds by slapping her in the face and teleporting them both to an isolated location. To make sure he can’t call for help, Scorpina damages Tommy’s communicator with her claws. Tommy morphs and attacks and the two are evenly matched until Scorpina calls forth a squad of putties to assist her. Fortunately, at the behest of Zordon, Jason, Kimberly and Zack arrive to make it a fair fight. Clearly sensing that the fight is not going in her favor, Scorpina retreats much to Tommy’s irritation. Like last issue, Rita once again communicates with Tommy telepathically and tries to tempt him to the dark side again, but Tommy has none of it. The other rangers try to see if Tommy’s ok, but he gets annoyed and defensive with them.

Back at the command center, the full team is debriefing with Zordon, but Tommy is barely able to focus with Rita’s voice in his head. Having an evil voice in your head is bad enough, but when that voice sounds like Vickie Guerrero after two hours of chain smoking, it must be especially grating. (For the record, that was not meant to be a swipe against Barbara Goodson, the voice actress for Rita. She is a lovely lady and a talented voice artist. It was just a comment on the fact that Rita’s voice was made to be annoying.) Eventually, it’s more than Tommy is able to take and our comic ends with him passing out.

What Works: I am blown away by how incredible this comic is after only two issues. They take concepts set forth in the show, like Billy and Trini’s friendship, and expand upon them in ways that the show was unable to. I especially appreciate the inclusion of Scorpina. See, back in the the hay day of Power Rangers there was a lot that they likely wanted to do, but were unable to because of the limitations of the sentai footage, their own budget and the less than impressive visual effects technology of the 90’s. Scorpina was one such limitation. See, from what I understand about Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, the Japanese show that Power Rangers was based on, Scorpina’s equivalent, Lamy, was one of the major villains. However, since her appearance was human as opposed to a rubber suit like most of her co-horts and they were limited by the stock footage she appeared in and were mostly unable to use her in American footage lest there be a lack of continuity. (Ironically, this did not stop them from casting a different actress when she appeared in a later season but I digress.) Mind you, they did the same thing for Rita, but since Rita never fougth the Rangers directly, it was no big deal. But Scorpina, due to the nature of the stock footage, was rarely seen, so it’s nice to see her utilized to her fullest potential in this comic. And, on that note, I also like the redesign of the Putties. They much more closely resemble the clay golems they were intended to be as opposed to just guys in grey spandex.

Speaking of things that were rarely if ever seen in the show, it’s nice to actually see one of the rangers actually interacting with their parents. To my knowledge, the parents of the individual rangers were only shown in one episode of the original series in which Rita kidnapped them all to blackmail the rangers into giving up their powers. But the thing is, since Rita knows exactly who the rangers are, there’s no realistic reason she wouldn’t try that more than once, especially considering that in the episode in question, the plan more or less worked and was only foiled through a gamble on the part of Zordon. My point is, it’s nice to see that the Rangers’ parents are not absent from their lives in this reality.

Finally, I continue to love Rita’s new, darker persona. It actually reminds me of Rita as depicted in the gritty Power Rangers reboot short film where she was much darker and more intimidating. Instead of the quick to anger comedy villain from the show, here we get a character who acts as the devil on Tommy’s shoulder or the Emperor seducing Anakin to the Dark Side. She’s confident, calculating and she knows how to get in your head. Easily the most improved character by a wide margin.

What Doesn’t:

The only thing I can complain about is, once again, the lack of a Ron Wasserman soundtrack, but I suppose there’s no reason you can’t just listen to your old Ron Wasserman albums while reading the comic.

Overall: 5/5

I am incredibly impressed by this comic. It is the Power Rangers reboot fans have been wanting for years. It updates itself for a more mature audience, specifically, the audience that grew up with the original show and have since become adults, but keeps the spirit of the original work intact.