Power Rangers/Ninja Turtles III #1 Review

Friends, it brings me the greatest of pleasures to welcome you back to the third installment of the Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles comic book crossover, the crossover all us 90’s kids had to wait almost thirty years for, especially if you’re like me and prefer to pretend that one episode of Power Rangers In Space never happened. For those of you just joining us, allow me to recap the events of the two previous crossovers.

The first meeting of the Turtles and the Rangers came about when Green Ranger Tommy Oliver took some time away from Ranger duty to infiltrate the evil Foot Clan in hopes of rescuing an old friend of his who had been indoctrinated into their ranks. Unfortunately, Shredder figured out who Tommy was, stole the Green Ranger Powers for himself and formed an alliance with Rita Repulsa in the hopes of wiping out both of their enemies. Fortunately, after an intense battle that saw the Turtles (and April) temporarily assume the Ranger Powers, Shredder and Rita were defeated and the villains retreated to Dimension X.

The second crossover, which I have covered in its entirety here on this blog, saw Rita return from Dimension X now aligned with Krang and leading a small army of villains from both sides of the crossover. In addition, Casey Jones had apparently turned on our heroes and had become an evil Ranger in Rita’s service, but was actually playing the long game in hopes of handing the villains a more permanent defeat. While the Rangers used the Mutagenic Ooze to transform into mutated versions of their Power Animals, The Turtles, alongside Shredder, who had temporarily joined forces with the turtles for reasons of “Nobody Conquers this Planet but Me” infiltrated Krang’s fortress and assumed the Powers of the Power Rangers of Dimension X. In the end, Krang and Rita were defeated and Shredder had taken control of Rita’s Moon Palace, our story ending with Shredder negotiating an alliance with Lord Zedd. As you can imagine, after that cliffhanger, I’m stoked to get into this bad boy, let’s waste no more time and get into Power Rangers/Ninja Turtles III #1.

Our comic opens with a flash forward to the future where Leo and Tommy are fleeing a massive army of Z-Putties and Foot Ninja in the Rad Bug, the flying car that Billy built in his garage, because Billy totally built a flying car in his garage, seriously this was a thing and it’s every bit as crazy as it sounds. Anywho, after some narration about the crippling effects of the loss of faith, Tommy and Leo crash the rad bug and bust out of the wreckage to make their stand against the coming swarm of bad guys. We’re not totally sure what’s going on here, but the dialogue seems to hint that it’s basically the end of the world and Tommy and Leo are somehow to blame, something about failing their friends and family. As our heroes fight off the foot soldiers and wallow in self pity, an enormous Shadow suddenly looms over them. We don’t see what it is, but it seems to terrify Tommy.

Cut to three weeks earlier in Paris where Raph, Donnie and Trini are fighting a ten foot tall muscle bound bunny rabbit with a war hammer, or, as our heroes call it, Wednesday. However, Roidsy the Rabbit here is clearly just a distraction as we see Karai disappear into the shadows.

Meanwhile, in North Dakota, Tommy, Leo, Mikey, Jason and Kim are on top of a moving train fighting Foot Ninja who have been souped up by Lord Zedd’s magic. What we glean from these two events are, one, since Shredder and Zedd joined forces, they’ve both been stronger than ever and our heroes are have had to work around the clock, and two, these attacks are not random. Shredder and Zedd are stealing components for something they’re building, but what, our heroes aren’t exactly sure.

At the command center, our heroes are disheartened that they keep letting the bad guys escape, but Zordon and Splinter remind them that they were successful in preventing civilian casualties, which, in and of itself, is still a victory. Raph and Tommy don’t exactly see it that way and are planning an incredibly risky reconnaissance mission to the Moon Palace so they can finally get a glimpse at what Shredder and Zedd are up to, and possibly even destroy whatever it is they’re building before they can use it.

Speaking of, we now join Shredder at the Moon Palace as he praises the Bunny Monster for being a great distraction and Karai for stealing the component without being noticed. As his henchmen kneel before the throne, Shredder gloats over how his ultimate victory is at hand. However, no sooner than you can say “Somebody’s Sitting in my Chair” does Lord Zedd arrive to remind Shredder that it’s only thanks to his magic that his collection of runaways and vagrants is now the fiercest army the planet has ever known. It’s very apparent here that our villains don’t exactly trust each other and each are fully expecting the other to double-cross them at a moment’s notice. That’s super villain team ups for you. They start out amicable, but it’s only a matter of time before egos get in the way and they stab each other in the back.

Anywho, Tommy and Raph have indeed teleported onto the Moon and finally get a good look at what our villains have been building. And it’s… Morphers. Well, there’s no way this can be good, and it’s about to get a whole hell of a lot worse as Shredder and Zedd arrive and sic Bebop & Rocksteady on the interlopers. Big deal right, Raph and his brothers beat up these morons six times a day, and that’s on a slow week. But this time there’s a twist as Bebop and Rocksteady pick up the Morphers and transform into Rangers, because literally everyone else in these crossovers has gotten to be a Ranger at this point, why the fuck not Bebop and Rocksteady. In any case, this is bad, really bad. Bebop and Rocksteady may have the collective intelligence of a fence post, but they are both still pretty damn strong. Add on the enhanced strength, stamina and agility of a Power Ranger and… yeah, our heroes get bodied almost instantly.

The evil Rangers are about finish off our heroes when Jason, Leo and Splinter teleport in (It was shown earlier that Splinter overheard Raph and Tommy’s conversation). With the cavalry here, our heroes gain the upper hand long enough to attempt a retreat, but Zedd has other plans. And so our comic draws to a close with Zedd unleashing a powerful blast from his staff and… incinerating Splinter…

Umm… JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

So… yeah… Splinter’s fucking dead. More on that in a minute. This was a pretty strong start for this third chapter. The new threat is firmly established early on, and later escalated with the new Morphers, our heroes work well together, fitting as they’ve been working together for some time at this point, and our heroes make a critical error in judgement that will end up costing them big, and will likely drive a wedge in the team. That’s a pretty strong hook for a first issue. And speaking of strong hooks, let’s talk about Splinter getting blown the fuck up! Look, I’m not naive. This is a non-canon crossover, so logic would dictate that Splinter’s death will somehow be undone by the end of this. But, here’s the thing. This is the third crossover between these two teams. If they’d killed off Splinter in part one or even in part two, I’d be rolling my eyes and waiting for it all to be undone somehow. However, things are different now. This shared universe between the Turtles and the Rangers has reached the point where it has its own continuity and status quo independent of the two franchises that spawned it. With that in mind, all bets are off and Splinter’s death could very well be permanent. It’s still possible he’ll be back by the time all is said and done, and I certainly don’t WANT Splinter to stay dead, but I do think that the story is potentially a lot more interesting if he does. I guess we’ll have to keep reading and find out, and keep reading I shall because this comic was excellent. Waiting with bated breath to see what comes next.