Category: Power Rangers

The final issue of Hamilton Comics’ second miniseries ends on a bit of a whimper, with two underwhelming stories.

The first, “The Lost Ranger”, features Rocky getting amnesia and forgetting that he’s a Ranger… it’s the classic trope of someone forgetting who they are and relearning it before story’s end… but because the story is short, the way Rocky gets back his memory is underwhelmingly goofy; he trips. Oops. Lame.

The final story, “Footloose”, has the Rangers fighting off a bunch of sentient Putty boots… it is perhaps the single most stupidest thing I’ve read in this Hamilton run and it’s probably very fitting that they saved the dumbest idea for last. Not exactly an inspired end to this run.

Both stories are drawn by Gray Morrow, yet both have drastically different styles. The first being a more traditional comic book style that looks pretty good and the second boasts the semi-realistic, detailed look that feels off. Also of note, the Rangers lack the chest logos here, which is more in-line with the actual show, but that sort of design choice has been a thing for most of the stock illustrations.

And so ends Hamilton Comics’ contribution to Power Rangers… well, there’s still the MMPR Saga miniseries, but since that’s mostly a recap of the show, we won’t count that. For now, Hamilton was done concocting new adventures and that honor would go to Marvel.

And we’re back to the two story format for the last couple issues… oh well, it was fun while it lasted, I suppose. On the bright side, however, both stories are illustrated by Sparky Moore and it’s probably his best work in these books if I’ve been completely honest. If only he had been available for the final issue, but that’s another story.

Anyway, the first story is called “Bad Attitudes”, where Baboo concocts a ‘tude tick that bites all the teens and gives them bad attitudes, causing them to bully people, kick stuff, and not care about monster attacks… all while in their suits. We learn a few things in this story; apparently, the suits are machine washable and the citizens of Angel Grove apparently have really short-term memories to forget something as vital as the Rangers roaming around without their helmets and stuff, acting like total fucking delinquents. When you can set aside the glaring questions that this thing raises, it’s a silly little story that has a bit fun for a bit. I didn’t mind this one. This was fine.

The other end of this book gives us “Gray Skies.” An interesting concept that sees Lord Zedd unleashing a swarm of mini flying elephants to terrorize the city… and the Rangers counter by sending bats from a cave after them. I like this story because it’s thinking outside the box. Rather than fisticuffs leading to the eventual Zord fight, there’s an inventive and believable solution to this whole ordeal. Most of all, it’s something that probably wouldn’t have been possibly on TV without making it look really cheap, so kudos on producing a comic story that works best as a comic story.

Hey, if the run ended here, it’d be a hell of a way to end it on… alas, there is only one more issue left.

The second issue of this second miniseries from Hamilton Comics is the only issue in this run to feature one full-length story as opposed to being split into two stories. Unfortunately, even in this format, “The Yesterday Bomb” is a story that still feels rushed.

The plot of the book is fairly straightforward; Lord Zedd concocts a bomb that sends the Power Rangers and their Thunderzords back to the age of the dinosaurs and now they have to find a way to make it back and stop Zedd’s evil robot to wrecking havoc on the city. In theory, it’s not a particularly bad story and does have the makings of something that could’ve been spread out over a couple issues. In execution, the plot does come off as feeling a bit rushed and while I don’t care for the decompressed style of storytelling in comics that span several issues, there are times where I wished they had turned this into a two-part story.

Al Bigley returns for penciling duties while Sparky Moore handles the inking. I honestly wished that it were the other way around simply because Moore is the better of the two artists. A lot of the complaints that I’ve had with Bigley’s past work in these books are prevelant here; everything comes across as hastily drawn and a bit of a mess. Somehow, the art in this issue might actually be worse than Bigley’s previous outings, with one frame in particular depicting Billy as an older gentleman rather than a smart looking teen. I want to say that this book either predicted or inspired the means by which to write off David Yost from the series in the future, but that’d be giving this book too much credit. But, yeah, the art here is pretty bad; quite possibly the worst I’ve seen.

All in all, The Yesterday Bomb is a neat premise on paper, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

So not long after the conclusion of their first miniseries, Hamilton Comics begins their second miniseries of MMPR comic books – although this one lasts about four issues before being abruptly cancelled due to an expiring license, as Marvel would pick up the slack by the time the movie rolls around… for better or worse, but we’ll get to that.

Right off the bat, the miniseries does a far better job of matching the paradigm established in the middle portion of the second season. One of the issues with the first mini is that the stories were written with the first season in mind and newer elements like Lord Zedd and the new Rangers were swapped in with the old stuff without so much a change in their actual mannerisms. Here, Lord Zedd is very much his own character, the new Rangers are very much their own personas, and Tommy is established as the leader after not being much of one in the back end of the previous mini. Baby steps, kids.

As before, we have two stories in this issue. The first story, “While The Cat’s Away,” sees Lord Zedd heading off to some other galaxy to take care of business, leaving Squatt and Baboo to concoct their own plan to defeat the Rangers. Said plan involves a droopy monster that is eventually defeated by an oven that shoots awful food. Said oven cooks awful food because Bulk & Skull fixed it… or ruined it… or whatever you think. This is standard fare with a smart ending and I like the attempt at giving Squatt and Baboo more than the bumbling roles they usually adopt on TV.

Unstoppable Force is the second story, which involves inertia. A monster with stretch limbs is attacking, nigh invincible, and is eventually defeated when it falls off a cliff after the Megazord steps aside… it’s a unique ending to an otherwise average story.

Both stories feature are by returning artists; John Heenik for the first and Sparky Moore for the second. Both have stepped their game and continue to produce some of the best art in this Hamilton run.

The final issue of the first miniseries is another two-story issue.

The first story, “Attack Of The Gargantutron!”, poses an interesting premise; a monster is attacking and the teens are summoned to take it on, but they can’t answer because they’re in the middle of class! There’s a couple little bits that I liked here; Alpha recording a log entry (recording in MORPHIN MODE no less), the P.E. teacher calling for a new, unseen character called Kimberly Smith (either that or nobody knew who these characters’ full names were), and the Rocky dream (not THAT Rocky or THAT kind of dream, either). Story is nothing special; your usual Ranger fare. Al Bigley returns for art duties here and somehow the line art is just all over the place. The most you can say that characters look like what they’re supposed to, but they’re drawn in the most exaggerated manner possible that it comes across as goofy. I want to say that this gets better, but it really doesn’t.

Shop Till You Drop… Dead! is the second story in which Finster concocts a shopping mall as a trap for anyone involved, since all the shop merchants and staff are really monsters in disguised. Rocky and Kim eventually get caught, but then escape and help save the day. You know, maybe this should’ve been in the last issue and the “Grounded” story should’ve been placed here; then there’d be continuity. In any event, this is another story concept that would’ve benefitted from a full issue, but otherwise is fine. Gray Morrow returns to handle art duties for the first time since the very first issue and it’s pretty rough goings. The costumes are drawn more like  something out of a bootleg production, not proper MMPR. There is one particular frame that would probably appease some horny teens back in the day, but other than that, the art is pretty poor here.

So that’s the conclusion of the first miniseries. Next up, we’ve got the second Hamilton mini that comprises four issues. Will the writing be a little more consistent? Maybe…

From this point on in Hamilton’s run, each Power Rangers comic comes with TWO stories. And as such, we have two creative teams telling different stories. Both are returning artists and probably the two best artists on the book in my opinion, which is good because both stories have good art.

The first story is “Grounded”, which sees the Rangers facing off against a goofy three-handed cowboy looking fellow who can only be defeated with an arrow from the Pink Ranger’s Power Bow… because you know, cowboys and indians and all that jazz… Alas, Kimberly is grounded by her parents for overspending… which is something that I’m surprised hasn’t happened on the show because you’d think someone who likes to shop as much as she does would eventually get to that point. The story isn’t much and the smaller page count as a result of the new format doesn’t do it much favors, but again, this is a fairly basic idea that would have fit in nicely as a possible episode idea for the show. John Heebink’s art compliments the piece quite nicely.

On the other end of the proverbial Power Coin, we’ve got “Stranger In A Strange Land,” which depicts the teens practicing their skydiving moves for the upcoming movie (er, not really, but work with me here), only for Aisha to be whooshed off to what looks like Angel Grove, but somehow really isn’t. And when she encounters someone who looks like her, things get a bit weird. There’s actually an intriguing element behind this one, but the short page count hurts this one more than anything and the end result is something that is rushed through and not given enough time to breathe. As such, it’s just a thing that happened, complimented with Sparky Moore’s solid illustrations.

So here we are; the very first MMPR comic book I ever picked up and one of the few comics I still possess in my small-ish collection to this day. And coincidentally enough, it’s the first issue in the series to feature the White Ranger. We’re four issues in and we’ve only seen Tommy in two of these damn things, it’s really shocking.

Unfortunately, Tommy the White Ranger is written like Tommy the Green Ranger; someone who feels like a sixth wheel on this well-oiled five wheel machine. Even more unfortunate is that even though we have new Rangers, there’s no explanation as to how we’ve got this change in cast. Even worse, the new Rangers are written so that they act much like the old Rangers. So Aisha’s translating Billy’s technobabble and Rocky’s the defacto leader of the group. Amazingly, at no point during these early issues is Adam depicted as a master of hip hop kido; something that would’ve been a sight to behold.

Fortunately, the stories in this miniseries are so basic and barebones that it really doesn’t matter who’s filling what shoes. There’s a monster that’s turning all the parkland into poisonous swamps and the Rangers have to take care of him. Swamp Man sounds like a name of a rejected robot master pile from Mega Man (or at least, something out of the numerous fan games out there) and his design is just that of a simple mud man design, but the way he’s killed off is fairly ingenious and gives Tommy something to do in this comic book.

Sparky Moore provides the art for this issue and would be back for several issues. His art is simplistic and nowhere near as messy as the previous issues, though this means that the fight scenes are somewhat underwhelming. On the flip side, however, Moore has a tendency to get the faces right, almost to the point where some depictions almost capture the likeness of the actors as though they were tracings of still shots or promotional material. Moore would do more issues later on, including the next one.

A pretty standard, run of the mill issue. Next issue, we begin the two-story format and Tommy has more stuff to do here… so there we go.

The third issue of Hamilton Comics’ first Mighty Morphin comic miniseries sees regular series writer Donald Markstein take a brief break from carrying this run on his back and filling in is writer Jack C. Harris. The story for this one is somewhat silly; Kimberly is scolded by her mother for not cleaning her room – we’ve all been there.

However, when the Rangers need to deal with a monster, it turns out Kimberly lost her coin and that it’s buried in her room somewhere. Turns out her coin was used as a coaster for a pop drink. I was not aware you could do such a thing with a coin considering the massive size difference, but then again, power coins aren’t drawn with any real consistency in terms of dimensions throughout these early comics. Actually, consistency is hardly something that is a priority with these comics.

The story is kinda goofy even for Power Rangers and the art from issue artist Al Bigley is a bit messy; the only strong point being that everyone looks the part, but the line art is a bit chaotic. Almost as if this was drawn in a rush and handed in before having to take a dump. That said, it’s far from the worst art I’ve seen in this run and Bigley would be back for a couple more stories. All in all, not a strong issue, but not completely terrible.

Also worth noting; this is the first issue to feature Rocky, Aisha, and Adam as the new Power Rangers, effectively replacing the original half of the team after a big ol’ two issues. Much like Lord Zedd, the three Rangers are just shoehorned into the story and basically assume the roles of their predecessors. (Rocky assumes the leadership role Jason held, Aisha translate Billy-speak, Adam does… whatever Adam does.)

Tommy does not appear in this issue in any way, shape, or form; postponing the comics debut of the White Ranger by another issue.

If there is one aspect to Hamilton Comics’ Mighty Morphin Power Rangers run that is readily apparent as you dig into each issue, it’s the rotating artists. In our second issue, the art duties fall to John Heebink and Aaron McClellan. And I’d have to say that the artwork is a step up from the previous issue, settling for a clean-looking style typical of a comic book and yet managing to catch the likenesses of the various characters rather well. This would be the art crew that would eventually draw the later Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Saga mini-series that would serve as the swan song to Hamilton’s license.

As for the storyline, Ernie wants the Power Rangers’ autographs and decides to dress up as a Goat Man to get their attention. However, Zedd has Finster create a Goat Man of his own to fight the Rangers. It’s a fairly harmless story that’s a bit on the goofy side, but it’s actually the kind of story that would translate well to TV.

The only piece of significance in regards to the Hamilton run is that this issue marks the first and only appearance of the Green Ranger in these main books, only appearing the short-lived MMPR: Saga miniseries that ended the Hamilton run (more on that down the road). Tommy no shows the next issue and by the time he appears in issue 4, he’ll be the White Ranger AND we’ll have the big cast switchover, with no explanation for either in the comics.