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.
dtm666 