Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26 Review

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26 Review

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26 Review

“Shattered Grid” kicked off with the biggest surprise in Power Rangers history as Lord Drakkon killed Tommy Oliver. The death of Tommy came quick and unexpected. Now with the most iconic Power Ranger dead there really is no one safe from the wrath of Lord Drakkon. On top of Tommy’s death Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #25 also featured the death of the majority of the Time Force Rangers. The only one left was the Pink Time Force Ranger, Jen Scott, who appeared to help drive Lord Drakkon off with Kimberly. With everything now up in the air with who is safe and who may be the next to die “Shattered Grid” is already shapping up to be epic. Let’s see if Kyle Higgins keeps up the momentum from the first chapter of “Shattered Grid” with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26.

Writer: Kyle Higgins (“Shattered Grid” Main Story); Ryan Ferrier (“The New Adventures of Blue Senturian & Ninjor” Back-Up)

Artist: Daniele Di Nicuolo (“Shattered Grid” Main Story); Bachan  (“The New Adventures of Blue Senturian & Ninjor” Back-Up)

Colorist: Walter Baiamonte (“Shattered Grid” Main Story); Jeremy Lawson ( (“The New Adventures of Blue Senturian & Ninjor” Back-Up)

Story Rating: 9 Night Girls out of 10

Art Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10

Overall Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10

Synopsis: In the Coinless future timeline, Lord Drakkon is greeted by his Red and Yellow Sentry Rangers at his castle. The Sentry Rangers inform him that the generals have rebuilt their forces. Drakkon says he will speak with the generals shortly but first goes to privately meet Finster-5.

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Drakkon and Finster-5 hug, with the latter relieved to see his master alive. After a short catching up, Drakkon tells Finster-5 that it is time to start their great campaign. He then shows Finster-5 that he has captured Ninjor in a container.

In the present timeline, while speaking at Tommy Oliver’s funeral Billy Cranston is barely able to make it through talking about how Tommy always looked out for his friends.

Jason flashes back to a few days ago when Alpha was trying to use the power of the Morphin Grid to revive Tommy while the other Rangers could do nothing but stand in shock. Jason tries to console Kimberly but she breaks down because she could not save Tommy.

A little later Zordon gathers the Rangers and reveals that Tommy is dead. Everyone asks Jason what they should do since they can’t just hide Tommy’s death from his mom. Jason tells the Rangers that they will grieve.

Over the next few days the police tell Tommy’s mom they found Tommy dead in an alley with the other Rangers there to console her. While everyone at school grieves it is seen that Zordon passes the Green Ranger shield down to Jason.

Back in the present Zack finds Jason crying alone and gives him a hug. Alpha contacts them to inform the Rangers that Jen Scott is awake.

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Jen introduces herself as part of the Time Force Rangers from the future. She goes on to talk about how her team noticed a fracture spreading across dimensions and her partner, Wes, gave her time to trace and travel to the furthest point of the fracture.  

Billy wonders what Jen means by the dimensions breaking. Jen reveals that in the future there will be more Power Rangers teams that are all inspired by the work of the Mighty Morphin squad. She then shows that the timelines of the future Power Rangers has been splintered into their own dimensions because of the fracture, leading to instability to all of time and space.

To that point Jen followed the energy signature of the one who killed Tommy to the present. Zack mentions that the energy signature comes from Drakkon. Kimberly says they should use Jen’s tech to go back in the past to stop Drakkon from killing Tommy. Jen says they can’t do that as Tommy’s death is now a fixed event in time and they now have to focus on defeating Drakkon.

At the Power Rangers Samurai timeline the Red Ranger (Lauren Shiba) are practicing her Symbol Power attacks. Suddenly Drakkon and an army of Ranger Sentries appears at the Shiba house. All of the Samurai Rangers assemble and get ready to fight.

Drakkon tells his Ranger Sentries to fire the Dragon Tanks which sets the Shiba house on fire. The Samurai Rangers recover from the initial attack and start fighting the Ranger Sentries. While the Samurai Rangers are able to initially fight back they are eventually overwhelmed by the Ranger Sentries powerful weapons.

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The Red Samurai Ranger confronts Drakkon and asks why he is attacking them. Drakkon says he doesn’t need an explanation. Right as the Ranger Sentries fire at the Red Samurai Ranger she is shielded by the Blue Samurai Ranger’s shield symbol, though the blast impact still sends her flying.

With the Red Samurai Ranger gone Drakkon rounds up the other Samurai Rangers.

In the present, Billy has been able to connect Jen’s Time Force technology to the Command Center computers along with the Black Dragon tech in order to detect where Drakkon is. The Command Center suddenly alerts the Rangers that the Samurai Rangers timeline is being attacked by Drakkon. Jen joins the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to try to stop Drakkon.

After teleporting to a nearby forest the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the Pink Time Force Ranger find Drakkon’s Ranger Sentries guarding the Shiba house. The Pink Time Force Ranger detects an energy signature nearby.

At the lake the Black Ranger Sentries find the Red Samurai Ranger. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Pink Time Force Ranger try to save the Red Samurai Ranger but they are quickly overwhelmed by the Sentries’ Dragon Cannon. The Blue Mighty Morphin Ranger uses a Morph EMP to stun the Ranger Sentries. This gives the Mighty Morphin, Pink Time Force and Red Samurai Rangers the chance to teleport away.

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At Lord Drakkon’s castle Finster Five finishes syphoning the powers from the Samurai Rangers morphers. He then uses a special machine he created studying Ninjor to merge the Samurai Rangers powers with Lord Drakkon’s. The process works as Lord Drakkon’s suit now have elements of the Green and White Mighty Morphin and Samura Rangers powers.  

Finster-5 tells Lord Drakkon that they don’t need to use all the morphers to connect Drakkon further into the Morphin Grid. Instead all they need is one of the morphers from each set of Rangers in order for Drakkon’s powers to be complete. Finster-5 then says they can use the remaining Ranger morphers they collect to power their army since they have a lot to conquer. End of issue.

The Good: It’s never easy following up a major death with a chapter that delivers the same amount of highs. And it was something that was definitely seen in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26, which is not a bad thing at all. While there isn’t anything as surprising as the death of Tommy Oliver, Kyle Higgins still brings in plenty of emotion as the Power Rangers deal with what his death means. At the same time, the focus continues to be on the threat of Lord Drakkon as we learn even more about his plans to rule all of time and space.

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Throughout Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26 the shockwaves of the death of Tommy Oliver are felt. Higgins maintains this event as something that will hang over each member of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers throughout “Shattered Grid.” Billy speaking about who Tommy was spoke to how close they all got over the last quarter issues. Jason and Kimberly’s respective reactions was the highlight of these scenes. With Jason we see how hard he is taking this, especially after learning what happened to the previous Ranger squad Zordon had recently, as Tommy died and he wasn’t around to save a teammate.

For Kimberly her breakdown carried even more emotional weight as she was there to witness Tommy’s death. With how close she was getting with Tommy this was even harder for her as he was the first guy she was opening up to on a deeper level. Just as she was opening herself up to a relationship again having Tommy die in her arms carried a strong emotional weight. It’ll be very interesting to see how Higgins takes Kimberly’s character as she clearly will have a serious clash with Drakkon at some point in “Shattered Grid.”

As all that went on with the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers it was interesting to see how Jen Scotts appearance was able to put the focus back on defeating Drakkon. Higgins did an excellent job showing that Jen is still the strong, confident leader was back during the Time Force period. Her command of the situation as she explained how the Mighty Morphin team influnced other Ranger teams was done in a way that didn’t fully reveal everything. At the same time Higgins was able to use Jen’s character to explain how now each of the Power Rangers teams now lives in their own universes so that they can still appear all the changes Lord Drakkon has made to the timeline.

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On the other side of things Lord Drakkon continues to be depicted as a villain that you love to hate. Everything about the character, from how he talks to the way he stands, just has an aura of being completely irredeemable. Seeing how he combined Finster and Alpha-5 into one character was a fantastic twist of the knife reveal to provide further insult in how he has taken everything from the Power Rangers. His relationship with Finster-5 also was interesting to see play out as he is the only character Drakkon has shown to trust up to this point

Learning that Drakkon’s main goal for “Shattered Grid” is to absorb the powers of every Power Rangers team further pushes how he sees himself as a God. His thirst for power makes him a major threat as he already technically is the most powerful Ranger in existence as he has the Green and White Mighty Morphin and Samurai Power Rangers powers. Now that he is going after all the others there is a greater sense of urgency into how the remaining Power Ranger teams can regroup and defeat him before he becomes unstoppable. Though it is interesting to note that we may have already seen a future version of what Lord Drakkon will become with the mysterious figure Jen Scotts saw before coming to the present.

Adding to the impossible odds was the fact that while Drakkon is already extremely powerful his Ranger Sentries are just as strong. As we saw in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #25, Finster-5 has clearly found a way to make them as strong as the current Rangers. The Ranger Sentries weapons alone were powerful enough to almost de-morph both the Mighty Morphin and Time Force squad. On top of that the Samurai Rangers were only able to hold their own for a short time before being overwhelmed. If Drakkon is successful in getting more morphers so Finster can create more Ranger Sentries things will be even worse for all the Power Rangers.

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With how dark “Shattered Grid” is getting the back up “The New Adventures of Blue Senturian & Ninjor” was a nice change of pace. The Blue Senturian had that light hearted character that is more expected from the Power Rangers. That comes across well with both the writing and artwork being much lighter than what we are getting in the main story. It’ll be interesting to see if these adventures ever merge with the main story since it has two different tones.

Daniele Di Nicuolo continues to do a very good job getting the tone of the “Shattered Grid” story as he captured the sadness and pain every Power Ranger was feeling with Tommy’s death. With how things moved quickly at the beginning Nicuolo got across how each thing from the funeral to Jason receiving the Green Ranger shield was a major event. Nicuolo also did a very good job with keeping the action fast paced as the Samurai Rangers did battle with Lord Drakkon. He got across how powerful Lord Drakkon’s forces are even though they were fighting experience Rangers from different timelines.

The Bad: As good as the story in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26 was the one thing that was missing is more time given to Tommy’s mom’s reaction to her son’s death. While there were some time constraints with how big “Shattered Grid” is going to get a small moment where Power Rangers consoled Tommy’s mom would have been good. Not giving Tommy’s mom some dialogue did make it feel like there was something missing from this issue’s story. Especially given how the Power Rangers family life has been spotlighted during Higgins’ run this was a slight missed opportunity.

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Overall: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26 was a strong follow-up to the death of Tommy Oliver that kicked off “Shattered Grid.” Kyle Higgins did a great job giving Tommy’s death the emotional weight fans would expect as all the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were hit hard by it. At the same time Higgins was able to use Jen Scotts, from the Time Force squad, in the perfect role of getting all the Power Rangers refocused on the threat Lord Drakkon poses to all of space and time. Given all that Lord Drakkon accomplished in these first two issues of “Shattered Grid” things will only get worse before they get better for all the Power Rangers teams, which means fans should expect even more exciting stories out of this event.