Category: Comic Musings

So Boom Studios recently announced another Power Rangers comic book and wouldn’t you know it; it’s yet another Tommy-centric comic book written by Kyle Higgins. Oh boy, because clearly we haven’t had enough of the Tommy Wankfest from Mr. Higgins, what with the alt-universe “Evil Tommy” bad guy that reeks of unoriginal fanficcy tripe (we’ve all done that bit, even me).

I was fine with the focus when the book started because the transitional period of the Green Ranger and the addition of a new member of the team was something that was never really touched on. And then you toss in an alternate universe ruled by an evil Ranger that everyone knew was an evil Tommy because of course it was. And then we had to find a way to keep that worthless character around and make him the central villain of a major comic event.

Look, I’m going to reserve judgment on the whole Shattered Grid thing until it reaches its eventual conclusion and I’d imagine I’m probably going back to the beginning of the series and giving some quick thoughts on each chapter. And this older Tommy comic might give me a couple chuckles here or there (though to be honest; I’ve been that road as well, so that’s not quite original territory, either.)

But I’m warning you folks; if the end of Shattered Grid isn’t Kyle Higgins inserting himself into the story and giving Jason Frank a blowjob, then all the hype would’ve have been for nothing.

Don’t expect it to stick… despite claims to the contrary.

Comic books never do anything permanent; it’s just something they do to try and shock people.

The problem is that the only thing this would shock is people who don’t normally read comics.

For the rest of us, we’re just waiting on the return that’ll happen in a few months.

So this is a pretty lame grid thus far.

The above image sums up my thoughts on this whole thing in a nutshell.

Look, for longtime fans, seeing other Ranger teams in comic book form should be a ball… but wouldn’t it be better if they had their OWN comic books to partake in rather than having to share space with the Mighty Morphin reboot series that seems to have such a massive hard-on for the Tommy Oliver character that their big idea for a new evil Ranger was the same old tired “Evil Tommy” trope that has permeated many lazy fanfics written over the years.

I know. I’ve been there… but at least, in my defense, I used his clone, made him immortal, and ended up turning him into a bit of a puppet master before eventually killing him off in brutal fashion.

I want to get excited for this big event. The new Boom! Studios comic is actually pretty good when it isn’t doing the Tommy Wankfest thing and is giving the property the right kind of maturity. But when all there is to look forward is “Evil Tommy” being the big bad for a major event when you have many more enticing options, it’s hard to give this thing anything less than the above image.

So I promised a write-up on the comic some time ago… and well, this isn’t it… but for those curious (for whatever reason) about my thoughts on Boom Studios’ current Mighty Morphin comic book, I’ll just say what I said on the DTM-Cast last month and expand on it a bit here.

For the most part, I think it’s well written fanfiction, with a couple ideas I’ve seen done better, but honestly, the current Green Ranger wankfest that this comic is on is boring the shit out of me. So you start with a new heavy that last eight issues and then all of a sudden, two Rangers are trapped in another dimension where they get to conveniently meet faces from futures seasons of the show and… you know, the funny thing is that the ideas that they had going on here were ideas that a couple buddies and I were toying around with when we were thinking of new fanfic ideas to put together back when we were brainstorming fanfics years ago and… well, fucking hell, man.

See, it started off well and with some potential, but it just fell off the rails. And when they introduced that new hybrid Ranger a couple issues prior – first thought that comes to mind is “that’s probably evil Tommy” and it never occurred to me that it might be anyone else because the writers have such huge fucking boners for the character that they had to go with the cliche “What if Tommy stayed evil?” Something that has been before in numerous fanfics good and bad.

This isn’t anything new. I like the idea of the two coins combined to make one Ranger; I thought that was kinda cool, but… I don’t know, man. I’m just holding out for something better to come along.