Power Rangers' Shattered Grid Is The Key To A More Adult Franchise

Today, one of the most surprising comics success stories of the past few years comes to an end – and a new beginning – in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Shattered Grid #1.

The BOOM! Studios comic based on the classic Saturday morning repurposing of Japanese superhero TV has been a fan favorite and sales force in a soft market since writer Kyle Higgins and company launched it in 2016. And with this summer's Shattered Grid event (a story that saw a villainous alternate-universe version of Green Ranger Tommy Oliver called Lord Darkkon slash his way through virtually ever iteration of the show), the series has taken the Power Rangers franchise in directions never before seen like massive crossover adventures and major character deaths. And, along the journey for this series, the Power Rangers brand has changed hands from its longtime home of Saban Brands and into the control of Hasbro.

With today's one-shot, BOOM! celebrates the job Higgins and his collaborators have done while laying groundwork for a follow-up run by writer Marguerite Bennett and artist Simone Di Meo. To look across the entire Power Rangers comic phenomenon, CBR spoke with Higgins and Bennett along with Go Go Power Rangers writer Ryan Parrott and Melissa Flores, the Director or Power Rangers Development & Production at Hasbro.

Below, this superteam of Ranger creators digs into why the BOOM! comic has been able to take the franchise in a new direction, what about Shattered Grid strikes a chord with fans and what weird and wild directions the entire franchise will take when the event is all complete.

CBR: The end of Shattered Grid is also really the end of what has been a landmark run for the Power Rangers in comics. I know the various TV shows have played with some more in depth stories and continuity before now, but I also think that this comic has maybe taken the franchise as seriously as the fans have for the first time ever. How do you view that feel and its evolution? And how is Shattered Grid the appropriate culmination of this run?

Kyle Higgins: I don't know that it takes it more seriously. I think that it's designed for a different age range. The comic is for people like me who grew up with the show. And in some cases they stayed with it or in others aged out of it. I've said this before because it's apt, but I'm writing Power Rangers not exactly as they existed or as I remember them but as I remember them making me feel.

And we've been extremely fortunate. This book has been a perfect storm in all the best ways. Ryan and I have spoken about this before, and Marguerite and I were speaking about it earlier today, but it's very rare in comics to find a situation where you're supported by your editorial team, the people who own the property, supported by marketing and then you're empowered by all these different factions to come do great work. And there's no politics to navigate. There's no BS. There's no eleventh-hour art changes. Making comics is challenging. Making really good comics is damn near impossible. Or it can be. And this book has been a perfect storm of the factions I mentioned while also representing the first attempt at something like this for the brand. It's designed for a slightly older audience. So I feel incredibly fortunate and lucky to have been a part of this.

To build a story like Shattered Grid, that's been fascinating for a lot of people, it really comes from the support the people at Saban and now Hasbro have had for us as well as the desire to expand the property to some different audiences.

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Everyone, tell me a little about how much you think about that audience and those older readers. Also, I wonder what you all think about the book's general reception in the comics market. I'm sure a lot of people thought of Power Rangers as a simple kids franchise. Did you go into it saying, "We're going to prove the doubters wrong"?

Kyle Higgins: I'd say for me it's been all about taking the superhero storytelling muscles I developed over the years on Marvel and DC books and bringing it to a property like Power Rangers where we can tell a monthly team superhero book. I've thought of it in the vein of Justice League or Teen Titans or a great X-Men run. It's taking some of those aesthetics and traits and bringing them to the brand. That includes everything from alternate timelines to universe-hopping adventures mixed with real interpersonal drama. It's all the superhero storytelling ideas in a format unlimited by budget or pre-existing footage that limits you in live-action. It allows us to take Power Rangers and show it in its best possible light. It shows us what made us fans of this in the first place.

Ryan Parrott: I would add to that we've always felt Power Rangers was this unearthed treasure in comic books. It's a thing with all these years of weird history that had been untapped for an older audience. I've got to give credit to our editor Dafna [Pleban], though she's modest about it. When she brought me on and told me that she wanted to do a second book, she had a very clear vision of what Kyle's style was and what my working design would be. She wanted to expand into a new avenue for the audience.

For me, I grew up very late for the series. I only watched maybe the first season and then got back into years later. I was sort of unqualified to write Power Rangers. [Laughs] But Dafna told me what she wanted to do with it and how it would be set in the real world and be about kids trying to be superheroes while also trying to survive high school. That's what made me say "Absolutely." In a weird way, it taught me what I love most about comic books and about what I want to do there. I didn't come in saying, "I want to do this." The brand actually showed me what I liked.

Melissa Flores: Absolutely. One thing we really wanted to do when we started these books with the writers and with Dafna was to take seasons like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and retell the kinds of stories we couldn't tell in the medium we have – a kids live-action television show that airs for 20-minutes and has footage restrictions and budget restrictions. There's something you're limited by. But this allows us to skew the stories older and really dive into the characters. We don't have a budget but artists with amazing imaginations. These incredible writers are able to take the skeleton of what we've created and color in with such a larger spectrum that we couldn't have imagined. Our fans couldn't have imagined this, but we always knew we wanted it all the same.

This wasn't a stumble, and it wasn't an accident. Because I think everybody knew the potential. But I think it was absolutely surprising in the best possible way how adamantly the fandom responded and how passionately they love the writers and artists as much as we do. It's amazing and gratifying for us. I just read an outline and had to stop myself from texting Marguerite and going, "What?! How could you?" [Bennett Laughs] I text Ryan and Kyle all the time going, "WHY?" That's the best way to tell stories – emotionally. You want to do that for the brand, but you also want to do it for the fans. This is the perfect marriage of that.

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We'll talk about the Shattered Grid finale itself, but I did want to ask Marguerite about the handoff after this big story. Do you view your job to take the book and meet the tone and style established by Kyle, or is it more trying to do something as big and original with it as a follow-up?

Marguerite Bennett: Oh, goodness. I think my very first instinct was, "Let's get weird." [Laughs] That's sort of where we go with it – into the wild blue yonder. I would never try to "beat" Shattered Grid. This isn't a competition like that. I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, and it's all about how I can do something that deepens the stakes and enriches the stakes and goes in this bonkers new direction. If you've seen the teases in issue #31, we wind up in this bizarre new place.

One of the major inspirations was coming off of the deep sea – kind of like this cradle of creation. One of the reasons we can't study anything down in the deep is because of the pressure, but the pressure holds these unique and outrageous animals together. But once it's removed, we see them come up and either disintegrate or survive. If you've come up in that kind of crucible – if the parameters and expectations and structure of your life has been removed – who on earth do you become? We didn't want to do something that would be an addendum to Kyle's run. This is removed, but all of this has stakes and all of this is playing for keeps. It's really something wild.

Wild is a good word to talk about the Shattered Grid event as a whole, too, because it has done a lot of things with the franchise we've never seen before, including a lot of major deaths. But it also has weird little pockets and characters from odd corners getting their due for the first time ever. Can you each pick a moment big or small in this event that's indicative to you of why it's working creatively?

Kyle Higgins: For me, the book only got better as we went. A lot of that is because my creative partners in [artist] Daniele Di Nicuolo and [colorist] Walter Baiamonte. As we got working with each other, I found myself inspired more and more to try different things and push the boundaries emotionally and relationship-wise with these characters. It really came to a head in #29 when all the supporting Rangers teleported in in this beautiful meteor shower double-page spread.

As I said before, finding the right dynamic and creative situation to do work like this is incredibly hard and rare in comics. A huge part of this exceeding that is the collaborators and being inspired by what they do, and I've been incredibly lucky pairing with Daniele and Walter on this. There's nothing worst than writing something that you feel passionately about and then having it not work when the pages come in...and that can happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes there's just two different visions for the same scene. But that's never been the case here. That's what made me go for those kinds of moments. I had all the faith that Daniele and Walter wouldn't just bring these moments to life but do so in a way that went beyond my expectations.

Marguerite Bennett: I loved that meteor shower moment. You're looking at the sky with such anticipation, and you know the cavalry's coming. When they get there you just get goosebumps.

Melissa Flores: For me, there were two moments that really stand out. The first is when you see older Kimberly who has just seen Matt then go and have a conversation with Drakkon that you again see in the main series. I thought it was incredibly special to see that story take place over two books. The way that Ryan, Kyle and our artists worked that out was fantastic, and it's the culmination of the teamwork required to pull this off. The second moment for me was the same scene where we see everyone come together in that beautiful tapestry of art that we'd never have been able to pull off in any other place.

Ryan Parrott: One thing I think makes this all come together is that while Kyle's right, we all did get along, it's also true that Kyle was the captain of this ship. He kept things moving forward and did a great job of knowing when to expand the story into Go Go and do it in ways that were additive but never strayed away or took the main story off its direction.

When you ask what moment hit me and showed everything coming together, it was actually at the Shattered Grid Live event at Power Morphicon. It was the scene where Rita and Cruger and Zordon are talking, and it's not just because we had Rita and Zordon's actors there reading the dialogue. It was the reaction of the fans to it. It was hearing Zordon the actor thank us later for letting him do that again. It was a great moment where the comic was bringing people from the show back in and bringing fans back in. It was a really amazing moment to be a part of.

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Let's wrap with the finale. In a character sense, this entire run has been built around Tommy and Kimberly, and in this story we have a Tommy and a Kim in conflict that the heart of all of this. Where did you want to leave that relationship and the overall status quo of the series?

Kyle Higgins: For me, endings are the trickiest – especially in monthly comics. Building a narratively and emotionally satisfying ending that still leaves the door open for the story to continue is really tough. For me, the ending of the story was something I pitched from the start of the event. There's lines of dialogue in the final scene that harken back to a conversation in issue #25. It was all designed that way. It gives the emotional closure that I felt was necessary as I was leaving the book. But it still leaves so many questions unanswered and so many direction possibilities for Marguerite and Simone [Di Meo's] run. Like I said, it's threading a really fine needle, and I'm hopeful that we achieved that.

Things have been done in this story that even in a comic book sense can't be wound back. How does this story alter the landscape for the franchise in comics?

Marguerite Bennett: I really love it. I think it's sort of a free-for-all. But it gives me a lot of room for creative freedom.

Melissa Flores: We're just really excited for the franchise. We absolutely love Mighty Morphin, and we love those stories and think there's still room for more there. But we also love the additional flexibility we have to celebrate the entire 25 years of Power Rangers told though the story of this medium. I think a lot of our superfans and people reading the book and even the older Rangers are excited that their character's stories can continue to be told.

That's why Shattered Grid Live was such a special event, and it was totally unique. It's very rare to see a franchise with that kind of impact that can also pull these formats together and bring back the original actors for new stories. It has an amazing resonance with fans. At this point the sky is the limit.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Shattered Grid #1 is on sale now from BOOM! Studios.