Since 2016, the Power Rangers have been living well over in the world of comics. A variety of creative teams managed to tell some fun stories over the past eight years, but with the original saga now effectively over, that means the entire slate’s being wiped clean across the board. And what better way to fill in the gap than with a new comic and some new blood?
Ahead of the weekend, IGN helped Boom pull back the curtain on Power Rangers Prime, a brand new comic by Mighty Morphin writer Melissa Flores and Iron Fist artist Michael Yg that aims to provide a “completely new start” to enter Rangers enterprise. The book will focus on Lauren Shiba (the secondary Red Ranger from Power Rangers Samurai) as she’s being hunted by a squad of Eltarians. While her exploits eventually lead her to Angel Grove, Flores said the city is “not [the way] we remember,” further punctuated by a lack of Zordon. As for other Rangers, she was tight-lipped, though she did reveal characters from Power Rangers Megaforce and Power Rangers Jungle Fury would make appearances.
“They will show up in different ways, not the ways maybe you expect them,” said Flores. Prime gives her and Yg “the entire zeitgeist of Power Rangers,” and she fully intends to take advantage of it. “We look at every single character of Power Rangers, not just in Mighty Morphin, but all over the place.” How Lauren interacts with those characters depends on their feelings on the Rangers in general, and the general vibe is that Power Rangers Prime gives the series “an ultimate world, where circumstance and consequence have created an entirely different [one] we’re getting to know.”
Unlike Boom’s previous Power Rangers comics, Power Rangers Prime will get to fully be its own thing, rather than serving as an extension of the show. Editor Alyssa Gronowitz said a “ground-up creation” was always in the cards after the “Darkest Hour” arc, both to provide a new jumping on point for readers and Rangers fans, and also to make something completely theirs. “We’re taking a good idea and making it our own, in a sense,” she explained. “[Prime] gives us an opportunity to distill the core of what is special about Power Rangers and to explore that in a very focused way.”
“We can take familiar elements that we love about Power Rangers,” added Flores. “We can add new elements, and really turn this into a true comic experience in that we don’t have to worry about what the other media is doing. We can just focus on what we love about Power Rangers in this comic book series.”
Power Rangers Prime will kick off on November 13, while IGN’s full talk with Flores and Gronowitz can be read here.
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