Comic book adaptations of movies and TV shows are weird entities. Especially ones from the '90s. If you take a look at the Star Trek comics put out by DC Comics from 1989 until 1996, or the early comics based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers that were put out by Hamilton Comics and Marvel from 1994 until 1996, they are just those TV shows with no real depth to them. There's some creativity to the stories, because they don't have to worry about the limitations in filmmaking technology in the '90s or figuring out a budget for the episode, but it still follows the formulas of their respective shows.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #1 is probably the most formulaic Power Rangers comic ever published by any comic book publisher who has ever held the comic book license for the franchise. It sticks so close to the formula of the TV show, which was just starting it's second season when the issue came out, IF they followed the usual comic book practice of publishing an issue a few months before the date shown on the cover, or if they didn't do that, then it would've been just after the two part episode, "The Power Transfer" aired. Either way, the show's second season was in production for sure when this issue came out, even if the episodes hadn't started airing yet. As a result, we've got Lord Zedd in this issue as well as the Thunderzords, but no Tommy, though he is mentioned as still being the Green Ranger in this issue.
The story is that Billy has an insect display at the Angel Grove High School Science Fair and Lord Zedd sends Squatt and Baboo to steal Billy's rare Dracula Moth, though it's in it's Caterpillar state for some reason, and turns it into a monster. After the Rangers deal with the Putties that Zedd had sent down, they morph and attempt to take out the monster, though it incapacitates the Red Ranger, Black Ranger, and Yellow Ranger, which the TV show did a lot of during that period where Tommy was the White Ranger but Rocky, Adam, and Aisha hadn't replaced Jason, Zack, and Trini yet, to hide the fact that Austin St. John, Walter Jones, and Thuy Trang had already left the show. So this leaves Kimberly and Billy to try and obtain some venom from a giant spider in another dimension that can dissolve the coccoons their three friends are trapped in. Though I guess their Blade Blasters wouldn't work on them like they did on the coccoon that Scorpina's giant pet worm monster trapped them in in the season 1 episode "A Star Is Born". Of course by this time the Caterpillar monster has transformed into the full Dracula Moth, and then Lord Zedd makes it grow. The Rangers form the Thunder Megazord, and destroy the monster, saving the day. Pretty standard for an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers back in 1994.
I wouldn't normally give away the whole story in this review, but like I said, it conforms to the standard Power Rangers formula well enough that there aren't any real surprises in the issue. Which is fine. However I do have to wonder if this issue was supposed to take place during the first season of the TV show. Throughout the entire issue Lord Zedd acts like Rita Repulsa instead of himself. For example, instead of throwing the growth grenades that Zedd always threw to the monster when he wanted to grow it, Zedd throws his staff like Rita did on the show. Also, when the Rangers blow the monster up, Zedd claims that he has a headache, which is another Rita-ism that was a staple of the show during the first season. But the script feels like it was written with Lord Zedd in mind because there aren't any discrepancies between the artwork and the script and none within the script itself.
I think what likely happened is because the comics have to be written so far in advance and the artwork done as well, I think what happened is that the people working on this issue didn't have very much to go on since it's likely that season 1 was still airing when they started writing the issue, but the Thunderzord suits and models, and Lord Zedd's design were available and that's all they had to go on since there wasn't any filmed footage of Lord Zedd available yet. They also probably watched an episode of the show, saw Rita, and not knowing how Lord Zedd would behave since he hadn't appeared on the show yet, figured that he would behave in a similar fashion to Rita. Which is fair and I'm certainly not going to dock points off my final rating for it, because this happens in comics all the time. It's why the crew acted weirdly in the first six issues of the Star Trek: The Next Generation comic by DC Comics. The comic was written so far in advance that the show hadn't aired yet and all they had to go on were promo images and the show's bible to get an idea of what Data or Worf would look like and how Riker might interact with Picard.
The art in this issue is pretty good. I mean it's not as solid as the artwork would be in the later issues, but it's still pretty good. Though I do have to wonder what they used in terms of reference for how Billy would look. There's a couple of shots in the issue where Billy looks a bit on the chunky side and his face looks like the way I imagined Bilbo Baggins to look in the The Lord of the Rings books and how he looks on the front cover of the VHS of the animated The Hobbit movie. Which sounds stupid and completely insane, but that's how Billy looks.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall there definitely better Power Rangers comics out there, including issues within this particular series, but this issue is pretty decent. Yeah, sure, it's the standard MMPR TV show formula and the story goes the way you would expect it to go, but it does it well. I didn't have any Power Rangers comics when I was a kid, but if I did, this is what I would expect a comic based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to be like reading it in 1994 when the TV show was still in it's early seasons. Reading it as an adult I appreciate it for it's simplicity especially since 1994 was a really weird year for comics. Superman had just come back from the dead sporting his super mullet, Dick Grayson had just become Batman, the Clone Saga was just starting for Spider-Man and Hal Jordan had just tried to destroy the universe as Parallax during the Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! event and I'm sure the X-Men were going through some things at the time too. I'm giving Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #1 8/10 stars because some of that artwork is just ridiculous.
Update: This issue came out on November 30th, 1994, which was less than a month after "The Power Transfer" originally aired, which is probably why Tommy showed up as the White Ranger and Jason, Zack and Trini were replaced with Rocky, Adam, and Aisha after only two issues. I also tried to look information up on why Lord Zedd acts like Rita in this issue, but RangerWiki doesn't have anything on it and there isn't any information anywhere else online either. Also, I did look at the reproduction of final artwork of Lord Zedd from season 2 in Power Rangers: The Ultimate Visual History and the way Lord Zedd looks in this issue is exactly how he looks in that drawing. So that's likely what the artist for this issue used as reference for the character since he hadn't appeared on the show yet when the issue was written and drawn.
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