BOOM! Studios’ Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series has long since established itself as one of the best licensed comics on the stands. The series has spent years building on the foundation of the beloved TV series and establishing new Power Rangers characters like Lord Drakkon and the Ranger Slayer. But that all finally came to an end this summer with the release of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Darkest Hour #1. An eight-year saga has come to a close.
The good news is that BOOM! isn’t finished with the franchise by any means. That said, they aren’t simply relaunching the series with a new #1 issue and a new status quo. The publisher has something more ambitious in mind. Cue Power Rangers Prime, a completely fresh start for the franchise that shares more than a little in common with Marvel’s Ultimate Universe. The new series is written by current MMPR writer Melissa Flores and illustrated by Iron Fist’s Michael Yg.
To learn what exactly Power Rangers Prime is and how it reinvents a familiar story, IGN spoke with Flores and editor Allyson Gronowitz. Check out an exclusive preview of the new series in the slideshow gallery below, and then read on for much more:
The End of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
It’s a big deal that BOOM! is ending the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series after eight years and well over 100 issues. Particularly with the long-running TV series also having recently concluded, this is very much the end of an era for the franchise. Flores reflects on the appeal of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic, noting that its real success can be encapsulated in previous writer Kyle Higgins’ approach to the book.
“Kyle Higgins, who started our amazing run, said very distinctly that he wasn't telling Power Rangers the way it was, which was aimed at younger kids, a little campy, a little over the top. He was telling Power Rangers the way he remembered it making him feel,” Flores tells IGN. “And that always really stuck with me, I always thought that was really incredible. These books really took the characters that you fell in love with and treated them with so much respect in terms of really digging into their character arcs and establishing who they were as people and what the power meant for them. We were able to do so many amazing things, and these incredible writers came up with these amazing new characters that only existed in this comic book world. And the fans, in general, just fell in love.”
Prior to spearheading Power Rangers Prime, Flores was tasked with bringing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to an end in the sprawling “Darkest Hour” storyline, which has seen Rita Repulsa gain new levels of power and transform into a villain called Mistress Vile. In “Darkest Hour” Mistress Vile pulls a powerful being called Dark Specter into our reality, ripping a hole in the Morphin Grid in the process. Our heroes have fought a long, uphill battle in trying to save the Morphin Grid from destruction and ensure the world will still have its heroes.
“We had over a hundred issues of incredible Power Rangers arcs, and ‘Darkest Hour’ was the culmination of those stories,” Flores says. “So it was essentially meant to be our finale, and I was brought on board to write it. What I really wanted to do was take every single arc and honor it in some way and create a coherent story that really talks about the resilience of Power Rangers. The idea, especially coming out of COVID and everything, is that the world may never be the same, but it doesn't mean Power Rangers will change. They're always going to be who they are. They're always going to fight, they're always going to fight as a team, and they're always going to protect the world even if the stakes seem super dire.”
How Power Rangers Prime Reshapes the Franchise
With a conflict that massive in scope, the question inevitably becomes - what next? How do you follow a story as big and destructive as “Darkest Hour”? Simultaneously, how do you appeal to new readers who haven’t been following the Power Rangers comics over the past eight years? Gronowitz says that the goal was always to follow “Darkest Hour” by wiping the slate clean.
“We were always gearing towards this grand finale for the eight years of Power Rangers comics, and we were looking for an opportunity to relaunch in a fresh way, to pull in lifelong Power Rangers fans, but also new fans and people who might look at the large scope of Power Rangers TV shows and comics and be a little intimidated by feeling like, ‘Oh, there's so much I have to catch up on before I can dive into a story about the Power Rangers.’ Gronowitz says. “So we wanted to take the opportunity to really set the table, start fresh, and kind of build something from the ground up. And I know, it's been exciting for me and Melissa to get to do that because we both came on to the comics over the past two years to basically shepherd this grand finale in. And now it's really cool to give Melissa kind of a blank slate and give her the opportunity to stretch her muscles and do a lot more ground-up creation for the Power Rangers.”
This isn’t the first time BOOM! Has relaunched the Power Rangers comic, but there’s a key difference this time. Essentially, Power Rangers Prime reboots the franchise’s continuity using “Darkest Hour” as a catalyst. The new series is a completely fresh start in a world full of characters both familiar and new. It’s as clean a jumping-on point as fans are ever going to get.
Flores reveals that she actually had some trouble fully embracing the potential of that clean slate at first, as it was difficult to leave the confines of the classic Mighty Morphin Power Rangers universe behind.
“It was one of those things where they kept pushing me being like, ‘Think bigger, think a little more out of the box.’ I kept thinking, ‘No, it has to stay in this world,’” Flores says. “But the beautiful thing about Power Rangers Prime is that, no, you don't. We don't. We get to do something brand new. We're not limited to those eight years of story arcs, and essentially the entire canon of Power Rangers. It was something that was very special about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. It was that they lived alongside canon, and we could work within those constraints, but they were constraints.”
Flores continues, “The beautiful thing about Prime is that we can take familiar elements that we love about Power Rangers, we can add new elements, we can really turn this into a true comic experience in that we don't have to worry about what the other media is doing, we can just focus on what we love about Power Rangers in this comic book series.”
This reboot seems reminiscent of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe or DC’s upcoming Absolute Universe. Like with the Ultimate line, Power Rangers Prime is about streamlining a long-running property and making it fresh and accessible for a contemporary audience. But Flores notes that while she’s a big fan of the Ultimate Universe, she isn’t necessarily setting out to follow that playbook. And the biggest difference here is that Power Rangers Prime isn’t coexisting alongside the classic Power Rangers timeline. This is all there is now.
“It's one of those things where I love the Marvel Ultimate Universe, but I definitely don't want to do exactly what they did,” Flores says. “I mean, it might end up being that way just because they do it so beautifully. It might be unintentional, but I admire what they do so much when it comes to the alternate universe.”
Gronowitz adds, “I think that idea has been kind of a touch point for us in development talks. But as Melissa said, we're taking a good idea and making it our own, in a sense. But I think that's a really good touchpoint in terms of just broader comic stories and the way that we can use familiar ideas, tropes, and characters, and inject new life into them in a way that is fresh and original but also digs deep into the heart of the story we want to tell. It's like this gives us an opportunity to distill the core of what is special about Power Rangers and to explore that in a very focused way.”
Blending Power Rangers Eras
It remains to be seen exactly which Rangers will be the main focus of Power Rangers Prime, but one thing is clear - this won’t simply be another book featuring the classic Mighty Morphin crew. The new series will immediately focus on a character from a different Power Rangers show, Lauren Shiba from Power Rangers Super Samurai.
“When we see Lauren, she's on the run from an Eltarian police force who are hunting her down because she's a Power Ranger,” Flores teases. “And she's come to Angel Grove for a very specific reason and run into trouble. As we follow her, we start to meet a whole band of other characters who either help her or hurt her, depending on how they feel about Power Rangers. And we also see what this new Angel Grove looks like and how it came to be. So it's not the Angel Grove we remember, and there is no Zordon. So they kind of have to figure it out on their own, and the audience gets to do that with them.”
This should appeal to fans who were expecting and hoping for BOOM! Studios to move ahead in the Power Rangers timeline and transition from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to Power Rangers Zeo. This new series might not be what they were expecting, but there is room now for characters from all the various Power Rangers shows to appear.
“The beautiful thing about Power Rangers Prime is that, literally, the entire zeitgeist of Power Rangers is open to us,” Flores says. “I can't explain why that is, not yet, but we get to play with some really fun characters. We look at every single character of Power Rangers, not just in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, but all over the place. Like I said, we have Lauren and Samurai, there is a Megaforce character in there. We've already talked about Jungle Fury characters. They will show up in different ways, not the ways maybe you expect them to show up. And that's what I love about it. It's very much an ultimate world, where circumstance and consequence have created an entirely different world that we are getting to know.”
Flores adds, “One of my favorite books was the original Spider-Gwen run, because we got to see all these characters that we knew, but just manifesting in different ways. And it's not directly an inspiration for this, but I do think that in terms of how we look at familiar characters and how they are seen in our series, you might see a little bit of that. I wouldn't be surprised to see a character that maybe you know, that maybe is not who you expected them to be.”
The Art of Power Rangers Prime
If there’s been one constant in BOOM’s Power Rangers line amid the story shake-ups, relaunches and creative team changes of the past eight years, it’s artist Dan Mora. Mora has remained involved with the series in different ways, designing characters, drawing covers, and even handling the interior art on Go Go Power Rangers. Mora, despite his commitments to DC books like Absolute Power and the upcoming Justice League Unlimited, is serving as character designer and cover artist for Power Rangers Prime.
“He's always my dream,” Flores says. “The minute they tell me that Dan is doing the designs or Dan's doing covers, I have a little bit of happy palpitations in my heart because he loves Power Rangers more than anybody I know. And the fact that he makes time for this series makes me feel so humbled and happy because, truly, for the longest time, and still, he is my barometer for the quality of Rangers and what Rangers should be. And I'm always so thankful and grateful every time he comes back. And the designs that he has created are just absolutely beautiful, and fit the narrative and the story so very well. It's so cool.”
As for the interior art, the new series is being drawn by Michael Yg, who recently handled Marvel’s Iron Fist series. According to Gronowitz, Yg’s ability to blend elements of Western comics and Japanese manga is exactly what makes him such a perfect fit for the Power Rangers universe.
“I think Michael is very unique, his art style, very much marries Western and Eastern styles,” Gronowitz says. “He has a very dynamic, slightly exaggerated manga style, but then the way he's able to kind of stylize it in a big comics, more American market way. He's not consciously trying to match audiences, but the way that he pulls from so many different influences definitely creates this just perfect marriage of the perfect comic.”
Gronowitz continues, “And he's been having a blast. I think he's been such a great collaborator that we had to do the same thing that we did with Melissa, with Michael, where we were like, ‘You can have fun with this. You can design things, throw things in the background.’ I won't spoil what it was, but he put an Easter egg for a different Boom comic in the background, as a billboard on one of the buildings. And that gave us the idea, we're like, ‘Wait, we can actually turn this into something like in Universe,’ so things like that. But he just has completely knocked it out of the park with the world-building.”
Flores adds, “We had amazing artists on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, but because Prime is brand new and different, it felt so right when I saw the art, it felt so different. And the energy in those pages, I don't want to say grit, but there's a heaviness in them and an energy that just blows me away. I was just so excited when the art was coming in. And then the colors, it feels so wholly unique and different, and still Power Rangers, which is beautiful, but we're definitely taking our time with the story and setting up the world. And so it's been a beautiful partnership, and I'm so thankful and grateful that he's on board.”
Power Ranger Prime #1 will be released on November 13, 2024.
In other comic book news, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - The Dead Shall Rise just got an official trailer, and we explore why Steve Ditko might not have wanted to be crowned a Disney Legend.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
