When you’re a young kid watching the Mighty Morhpin’ Power Rangers, you don’t really tend to question much. There’s explosions, bright colors and enough to distract your young mind from asking questions like “Hey, they were enemies less than a minute ago and now they’re best friends?”
In BOOM! Studios Power Rangers #1, you get a little more of that. Instead of glossing over how the Rangers would actually feel and react to each other this issue spends most of its time concerned with this. As someone older who has a more critical eye than an eight year-old you’d definitely be wondering what was going on. While this isn’t as exciting as fighting monsters with the Megazord it’s equally as important in the short term and more important in the long term.
Also with the transition into the modern age there’s things like YouTube and the internet that not only help with recapping information in the past or past issues but open up an entirely new realm for the writers to play with. Just like with everything in our world, everything gets recorded by someone with a cell phone. People dissect it frame by frame and form their opinions based on what they see or what they want to see.
It honestly kind of gives me a little bit of a Watchmen vibe which is a good thing. I’m not going to say that this series will ever receive the critical acclaim that Watchmen did but touching on those elements can be a good thing. This is also a series that is directed towards a slightly younger demographic so they won’t be able to take too dark of a turn.
Although there is a bit of a dark aspect to things thus far as Rita Repulsa continues to either have left a fragment of herself in Tommy or he’s just going crazy. It’s usually only for a couple frames at a time but honestly it really intrigues me. Is it going to drive him crazy and turn him back evil again? Or maybe it’s his doubts about himself materialized by his subconscious?
One of my favorite things that was done by Hendry Prasetya was that he made the Puddys look vicious and dangerous. In the show they were always an afterthought and easily handled by normal kids. For crying out loud, you just had to punch the Z in the chest of one of the later versions. All the monsters have that little more dangerous look to them since Prasetya has a lot more freedom since there’s no one that has to create a costume out of the designs.
I won’t tell you that the Power Rangers are going to touch you on a deep spiritual level and change your life but if you remember the originals, you’re going to like this. It’s got everything that you liked about it as a kid but smartened up so the adult you won’t get bored with it. We don’t need the dark and gritty reboot trailer that’s floating around the internet. This is what we all want.