Wednesday, January 13, 2021

COMIC REVIEW - Power Rangers: Aftershock (2017)

Written by Ryan Parrott
Art by Lucas Weaneck, Robert Carey, and Joana Lafuente

Aftershock is a weird little thing. It was basically Boom Studios' attempt at tying into the recently released Power Rangers reboot movie, but rather than go for a movie adaptation that would've expanded on some ideas or presented some new ones, they opted for a pseudo-sequel thing that served as a follow-up to the film... and it's not very good.

Here's the deal. You have a movie tied to a license you have, you want to make a tie-in book, but you can't do anything that introduces new lore because that's what sequels are for and anything you add to the lore will more than likely be jettisoned because anything on screen takes precedence over the written word that only some hobbyists will bother to read. In fairness to Ryan Parrott - a guy who has since become the defacto Power Rangers comic book writer - he tried to put out the most compelling story he could for this one shot and perhaps plant the seeds for further adventures that could be explored in comic book form.

The problem is that the story is largely uninteresting. Reanimated putties, convicts merging with Goldar dust, and "what's the deal with that lady" aren't exactly compelling plot points. The Rangers dealing with some of their personal stuff might seem like basic character development, but it feels like spinning the wheels in place; doing just enough to give the impression of growth, but not enough that it feels like proper growth.

At the very least, the art is pretty solid; some muted colors aside, the characters do resemble their movie counterparts just fine (right down to the same clothes, coincidentally enough) and the overall tone of the world is fairly recreated. It's just too bad that the glue that keeps Aftershock from falling apart - the plot - is fairly weak; so much so that the included sampler of the first issue of Boom's MMPR comic comes across as a stronger story by comparison.

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