Power Rangers Universe #1: The Morphinaut

I’ve been making my way through the original seasons of Power Rangers, particularly the Zordon era which I was so fond of as a child. While I’m only on the Zeo season currently, I’ve seen up to Power Rangers In Space as a kid. But for the life of me, I cannot remember the Phantom Ranger. But I am aware of the popularity of this character, so I wasn’t too surprised when I saw Power Rangers Universe announced as a way to finally address the Phantom Ranger’s identity.

However, this introductory issue barely acknowledges the Phantom Ranger, and instead we are introduced to several new characters. Normally I love to see different variations of Power Ranger teams, but we are thrown so abruptly into this story with characters I’ve never seen or heard of before that it’s quite jarring. World building has been a strength of the BOOM! Studios comics so far, but I’m not completely confident that six issues is enough to tell this story.

There are hints of Dark Specter throughout the comic. I’ve always been fascinated by this character as he’s essentially the supreme evil of the universe, with iconic villains like Rita Repulsa, Lord Zedd, King Mondo and Divatox all serving under him. The TV series never really did anything that great with Dark Specter, and he was always sort of goofy-looking as they just recycled Divatox’s husband’s costume from the Turbo film (rewatched that recently – it is NOT good). But he’s pretty mysterious and supposedly very powerful, so I’m interested to see where this story takes him.

The art is very stylized and doesn’t pop to me the way the main Mighty Morphin and Power Rangers titles do, but I liked it. I especially love the way Simone Ragazzoni manages to give each character a distinct (and diverse) look. I may not remember any of the character’s names, but a few of their designs definitely stick out for me.

While talking about the art, I have to say how impressed I am with these variant covers. BOOM! keeps killing each and every variant cover, and this series is no different. I’m particularly fond of the Psycho Red cover by Miguel Mercado, and I’m praying to the Morphin Masters that we’ll get a Psycho Ranger variant for each color.