Tag Forever Red

Power Rangers Dino Fury, “Waking Nightmares” Review

Rob Siebert 1 Comment

SERIES: Power Rangers Dino Fury
TITLE: S28:E20 – “Waking Nightmares”
STARRING: Russell Curry, Hunter Deno, Kai Moya, Tessa Rao, Chance Perez, Jordan Fite
WRITERS: Becca Barnes, Alwyn Dale, Guy Langford
DIRECTOR: Michael Hurst
ORIGINAL U.S. AIR DATE: October 15, 2021 (Netflix)
SYNOPSIS: Zayto and Aiyon must face their nightmares to retrieve new zords.

New around here? Check out the Power Rangers review archive.

By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

We open on Aiyon having a nightmare about the final battle thousands of years ago. We then see him take a brief walk through Dinohenge, where he runs into Zayto.

Random: Does Dinohenge have a kitchen? How about a laundry room? It Zayto and Aiyon obviously live there, so it must. Is it weird that I want to see them?

That same night, Mucus has a dream where Area 62 becomes a disco dance club. Pure, unfiltered Power Rangers silliness. Or perhaps, in more adult terms, a Power Rangers themed acid trip.

Aiyon says that combining their two new Dino Keys can form the Cosmic Dino Key and open “portals to anywhere in the universe.” I was going to file that little factoid away for future reference. After all, you can’t just say something like that and not travel through the universe. But it turns out, I didn’t have to wait long at all…

Power Rangers Dino Fury, Waking Nightmares, Zayto, Aiyon, Amelia

The Rangers discover that the zords linked with their new keys are located on the planet Nibyro. Using the Cosmic Dino Key, they open a portal to take them there. Zayto is quick to rush through said portal, saying they need those zords. On any other show, that would make him an idiot. After all, he doesn’t know anything about the planet’s atmosphere, gravity, etc. But this is Power Rangers, where every planet in the universe is just like Earth. Heck, way back in Forever Red they walked around on the moon like it was nothing. So I guess Zayto gets a pass.

In his attempt to use the Morphin Grid to power his machine, Void Knight uses Reaghoul, the monster who brought Lord Zedd back to life, to resurrect Boomtower. Our returning general seems to remember everything from before the Rangers destroyed him. So that begs the question: What does Zedd remember? Perhaps it all depends on what period of your life Reaghoul opts to reincarnate you from.

Incidentally, Rheagoul (whose name I originally spelled “Regal”) is low key scary. Dude’s got skeletons hanging off his body. Just sayin’.

I really wish the two raptor zords seemed more distinct. But all these zords are just…oatmeal. They all blend together.

Email Rob at primaryignition@yahoo.com, or check us out on Twitter.

Power Rangers Spotlight: Jordan Gibson

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By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

I’m a huge fan of all the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers variant covers you’re going to see here. That’s why it’s somewhat embarrassing to say I just recently discovered they’re all by the same guy: Jordan Gibson.

Issue #28: Jason remembers. This is the first Gibson cover I can remember seeing. It’s downright touching, actually. A Zeo era Jason gazing fondly at his old Red Ranger costume in the Power Chamber. It’s very easy to read a nostalgic fondness on his face. Ironically, the same feeling those old MMPR episodes evoke from so many of us. For some reason, the placement of his hand on the glass goes a long way in that regard as well. It’s funny how much a simple hand placement can do.

Issue #31: “Forever Red.” I’m convinced this is a nod to another famous comic book cover. I just can’t figure out which one. At the very least, it captures that epic vibe that a lot of covers go for. Certainly as fitting a tribute to “Forever Red” as there’s ever been. My only complaint? I would have put the Red Wild Force Ranger in the center, as opposed to Red Turbo. It was a Wild Force episode, after all.

Issue #33: Dr. Tommy Oliver. Conspicuous by his absence in this year’s big Shattered Grid event comic was the Tommy we saw in Power Rangers Dino Thunder. The Tommy that acted as a mentor to his own team of Rangers. As the villain, Lord Drakkon, was an evil alt-universe version of Tommy, it would have made sense to see those two meet. The closest we got was this variant cover from Gibson. To his credit, this thing is friggin’ awesome. It catches Tommy in the final miliseconds of his morphing sequence. The orange background is really what makes it, capturing the same color scheme they used for most of the morphs that season.

Issue #34: “Once a Ranger.”

“Once a Ranger” doesn’t necessarily get a lot of love from longtime fans. I can see why. Operation Overdrive wasn’t exactly a critical success. But the two-parter still had its merits. At the very least, it was fun to see all the former Rangers back. Gibson tips his hat to said alumni with this variant cover to issue #34.

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MMPR: Shattered Grid: 25 Morphinominal Moments, Part Five

Rob Siebert 1 Comment

By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

As it turns out, these last five moments from Shattered Grid all happened in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #30. So a major tip of the hat to author Kyle Higgins, penciller Daniele Di Nicuolo, inker Simona Di Gianfelice, colorist Walter Baiamonte, and letterer Ed Dukeshire.

Furthermore, we need to send a major thank you to Ryan Parrott, Dan Mora, and everybody at Go Go Power Rangers. That series is great in its own right. But it’s provided some really nice supplemental material for our main story.

And thanks to everybody at BOOM! Studios for giving us better Power Rangers comics than we ever could have hoped for!

With that, it’s back to action!

(Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four.)

26. Zordon and Rita

We’re starting on a subtle note here. Zordon and Kruger come to ask for Rita’s help in stopping Lord Drakkon. Rita responds as you might expect. But in trying to convince her, Zordon says something I didn’t expect…

“We have known each other for millennia, Rita. I would not be here now if I believed there was another way.”

What gets me about those lines is the sentence about them having known each other for so long. I doubt Kyle Higgins meant for it to stand out. But hearing Zordon appeal to his long-standing familiarity with Rita was interesting. Remember, these are two enemies. He’s the one who trapped him in a time warp, and he’s partly responsible for her being locked away in a dumpster for 10,000 years. And yet, in this hour of dire need, Zordon essentially uses their rivalry to appeal to her better judgment. It almost makes you look at the franchise’s original mentor and villain in a new light…

27. Rallying the Troops

Before the climactic battle begins, Jason gives a big rah-rah speech to all the Rangers who’ve come to help. Admittedly, it didn’t do much for me. What did, however, was this shot of all the Rangers and Megazords. There’s a lot of history in this panel…

28. Kimberly and Tommy
While Tommy obviously has a crucial role in Shattered Grid, let’s not forget that the Tommy Oliver of the BOOMverse, the Tommy our heroes knew and fought alongside, was killed. Plus, Kimberly held him as he died. Pretty heavy stuff. So when Jason hands her the Draggon Dagger, and puts her in charge of the Dragonzord, it’s a nice moment. But this has appeal in a larger scope as well.

From a character standpoint, there’s an argument to be made that Tommy should have given his powers to Kimberly at the end of “The Green Candle.” Obviously, the show was limited by the Japanese footage it had to work with. So it ultimately had to be Jason that got them. But it would have made a lot of sense for Kimberly, Tommy’s love interest, to be the one he passed his powers on to. All these years later, this is a nice tribute to a character fans still love and remember.

29. Enter Serpentera
Serpentera was essentially the Death Star of the Power Rangers universe. It was Lord Zedd’s personal zord, and had enough power to annihilate a planet. And it was huge. One of the biggest zords in the show’s history. As you can see at left, it could literally hold a Megazord in its massive jaws.

As any PR nut knows, Serpentera went out like a chump in “Forever Red.” But it gets a nice chance to shine during the big battle in Shattered Grid. We don’t see much of the actual zord, but that’s half the beauty of it. It’s so big, it can’t even fit within the confines of the comic book!

30. Siphoning the Power
We end on yet another reminder of just how much history we’re mining for Shattered Grid.

Lord Drakkon’s big plan is to steal morphers from each Ranger team, and get inside the Morphin Grid itself. In the above panel, we can see he’s assembled some kind of power siphoning device and plugged it in to the various morphers he’s collected. Represented are in Space, Lost Galaxy, Dino Thunder, Megaforce, Dino Charge, among others. I absolutely adore the attention to detail. This is as much an indicator as any of what a labor of love Shattered Grid is.

So once again, thank you to everyone involved. I can’t wait to see how it ends!

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A Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #20 Review – Summer of ’69

Rob Siebert 1 Comment

TITLE: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #20
AUTHORS: Kyle Higgins, Ryan Ferrier
PENCILLERS: Daniele Di Nicuolo, Bachan. Cover by Jamal Campbell.
PUBLISHER: BOOM! Studios
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASED: October 25, 2017

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

One thing you can’t take away from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #20? It knows how the moon works.

Throughout the show’s history, Power Rangers has had a really weird take on the moon. The most notable example is probably the iconic “Forever Red” episode, where we see 10 years worth of Red Rangers fighting unmorphed on the lunar surface. They can breathe freely, and the gravity is the same as on Earth. The entire sequence looks suspiciously like it takes place in California somewhere…

That’s not the moon we get here. This is the genuine article. How do we know? Because the issue opens with the moon landing in 1969. In true Power Rangers fashion, our astronauts accidentally unleash an alien threat. And so, decades before Jason and the others take up arms against Rita Repulsa, Zordon must choose a team of heroes to protect the Earth. They are Earth’s first Power Rangers, and their story isn’t quite as happy as that of their successors.

I initially frowned upon the idea of Jason’s team not having the distinction of being the “original” Rangers of Earth. But transplanting the Power Rangers concept into the ’60s is too good an idea to pass up. It’s just a shame we don’t have time to flesh it out. Everything gets crammed into this one issue, and certain elements suffer as a result.

Our leader and Red Ranger is Grace Sterling, whose older self we’ve met in previous issues. She’s a secretary at the PR equivalent of NASA, with dreams of going into space. At her side are a British rock musician, a Russian communist, a Vietnam War veteran, and an idealistic youngster. Obviously these characters are written to clash. The problem is making it believable and organic in such a short time. For instance, there’s an exchange between the Pink and Yellow Rangers about whether the war is right or wrong. But they’re on the moon! Plus, because we know so little about these people, and the conflict only lasts about two panels, it’s almost not even worth it. In a perfect world, giving this story three or four issues would have granted it much-needed breathing room.

As this MMPR series has progressed, we’ve seen Kyle Higgins cherry pick elements and ideas from around the Power Rangers timeline. He does that here with the use of Psycho Green, a villain spinning out of the evil Psycho Ranger team from Power Rangers in Space.  I’ve gotten on Higgins’ back for muddying the pre-established continuity, but this is harmless enough. It’s a nice little tribute to PRiS. Interestingly enough, Psycho Green is apparently the right hand to another PRiS villain, Dark Specter.

MMPR: Pink artist Daniele Di Nicuolo is back for this issue, and is also solicited for issue #21. Di Nicuolo does well in the Power Rangers universe. But I was a little caught off guard by how jacked the male Rangers looked in morphed form. It’s fairly consistent with what he gave us in Pink. Maybe the alternate costumes distracted from it?

Either way, Di Nicuolo draws an awesome Psycho Green. The gender swap element in this book is also interesting to look at. Our Red and Black rangers are women, while our Yellow and Pink Rangers are men. That’s a nice little twist on things.

The scene with our five new Rangers in the Command Center is an issue highlight for me. Zordon has been absent for much of this series (the amazing issue #15 notwithstanding), so it’s great to spend a little time with him. It’s also the only time we get to see our unmorphed heroes interact with one another. Di Nicuolo gets to play with facial expressions, body language, etc.

“The Ongoing Misadventures of Squatt and Baboo” continue as well. For whatever reason, I’ve found these a little more palatable than the Bulk and Skull stories we got in earlier issues. Squatt and Baboo fight the Megazord this issue, which goes about as well as you’d imagine.

Considering how much hype MMPR #20 was given, not spending more time with this 1969 team seems like a wasted opportunity. Obviously what we saw here will factor into the coming issues, as Grace continues to interact with the Rangers. So in all fairness, we don’t have the whole story yet. But my immediate reaction is that they could have done so much more with this idea. But I’ll credit the BOOM! Studios crew for at least making it a reality. It’s a nice bit of world-building, in a series that’s already given so much to the Power Rangers mythos.

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