Power Rangers: Aftershock Review

Oh my word. It took forever for me to finally get my hands on this thing. Though it’s not the way I was hoping to. I read a miniaturized version that came with the Blu-ray of the movie I bought. I ordered a copy from my comic book shop months ago and it still hasn’t arrived. I actually wasn’t even waiting on it in hopes of reviewing it. I just wanted to read so I didn’t step on any continuity for if/when I do my Post about my ideas for the sequel, but here we are so let’s take a look.

Juat like with the last comic book review, let’s start with the cover or covers.

The first one is okay but kinda boring with the five Rangers just standing there not doing anything. The second cover isn’t amazing but it at least has a dynamic look with an upward shot of the Rangers against a canyon like background and all of them except Jason doing poses.

So lets get to the story and I promise I’ll try to avoid spoilers as best as possible.

The story picks up about a week after the end of the movie and Angel Grove is recovering from Rita’s attack on the town. It turns out that beating her and destroying Goldar wasn’t the end. Somehow Rita’s magic and Goldars essence are still creating putties for them to deal with, as well as a couple other new threats which I won’t spoil. What’s interesting is that said new threat actually might be the starting point for correcting an issue fans had with the movie. That issue being the drastic change to the Goldar character. Something that happens in this makes me think that somewhere down the line, we will see a version of Goldar that’s at least a little closer to the original version.

There are a lot of good character moments in the comic, particularly for Jason. We get some further teasing about the romance between him and Kimberly, as well as him getting used to serving as the teams leader as well as working as a team in general for all of them. Though I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get any further development for Trini. Apart from, of course, participating in the fights, she doesn’t really do much apart from a couple moments toward the end. I was hoping to see more with what she talked about in the movie with her parents not being very open minded about certain things. I especially wanted to see more from her character because since seeing the movie, I can’t remember anything that really stood out about her in the original. She was just kinda there. Everyone else at least had some recognizable traits, but nothing stood out about Trini apart from this moment in an episode, can’t remember which, where she morphs and for like 20 seconds she just does a bunch of flips, poses and grunts and completely ignoring a monster nearby, even though said monster was the reason she morphed to begin with. I don’t know, maybe they just wanna save that stuff for the next movie or another graphic novel.

Speaking of which, there’s also some interesting setups for stuff that’s possibly to come, which I won’t spoil. But to the hardcore PR fans, does anyone else see what could possibly become another organization at some point? Who knows if/when we’ll get the sequel to the movie, but they could always continue the story until then through these graphic novels.

Lucas Wernecks artwork is good, but I would’ve liked a more realistic looking art style. Something like Nicola Scott’s artwork on the Current Wonder Woman book.

While by no means perfect or mind blowing, Power Rangers: Aftershock is an enjoyable and serviceable follow up to the movie and is definitely a Buy. Also, after rewatching the movie, the pacing in it did seem much better so I’m raising my score from a 3.75 to a 4. Maybe even 4.25.

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