Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Volume 2 is where things really start to heat up for the Power Rangers. Luckily for the sake of my sanity the unnecessary personal drama finally dies down in the second or third chapter of the book and switches to the drama of the Rangers figuring out how Rita managed to beat them so easily, when, up until this point, the only thing she's managed to accomplish is losing a bunch of monsters and doing some property damage. But it's not until the final chapter that Zack and Tommy make up, which is kind of annoying.
This volume begins a trend where every fifth issue, a standalone story is told about a particular character. Issue #5, which is the first chapter of this volume, focuses on Zack. But while it focuses on Zack, it doesn't explain Zack's behaviour towards Tommy in the previous volume. What I like about this issue though is that it shows that Rita isn't stupidly just attacking Angel Grove all the time like it looked like she was doing in the TV show. The Megazord fight that happens in this issue takes place in Italy. That's right, Rita attacks somewhere other than North America, or Japan in the case of the Sentai footage used in the show. Lol.
This is the reason that I think Power Rangers as a comic book is a good idea. The TV show always felt so small in scope in terms of what the Rangers, their Zords, and the villains could do. Not just because fight scenes, particularly in the first season, were mainly limited to the Sentai footage, but because on the shoe-string TV budget that they have to work with on that show, both when Saban was working on it, and when Disney was in control, they just didn't have the money to do many of the cool things they wanted to with the Zords or the monsters. But comic books is where Power Rangers can, and should, thrive. In comic books the only thing you need to worry about is whether the artist can draw the thing you call for in the script. Movies are getting better with this, but, the problem with movies is that movies are more for a mass audience, and Power Rangers has never done well in that medium even back in 2017 after superheroes had become popular thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Which brings me to a few things they've done in both this volume and the previous one that would never have been done on the TV show.
Like Rita attacking Italy in this volume, in the previous one, Scorpina attacks Tommy at his house, putting his mom in danger. That would never have happened on the TV show. Especially in the first season, with the exception of "Return of an Old Friend" when Rita captured the Rangers's parents and held them for ransom against the Power Coins. And even then, she just left them in another dimension until the Rangers, backed up by the newly restored Green Ranger, were able to destroy the Dramole monster. Here though, she sends Scorpina in for a surgical strike against the Green Ranger.
What was really surprising though was when the Green Chaos Crystal finally detonated, taking out half the Command Center, including both Zordon and Alpha, and then after the Rangers evacuated, nearly losing to the Black Dragon, Rita takes over the Command Center and places her throne where Zordon's plasma tube had been. The first time I read these issues, in single form, I was like, "Um what? Rita is being smart about this?". As if I couldn't believe that Rita Repulsa, a villain who did nothing on the TV show, except send down useless monsters and henchmen, and hatch lame schemes to destroy the Power Rangers and conquer Earth, could come up with this massive of a plan that actually works so effectively.
Issue #5 is the only part of this book where the artwork doesn't work for me very well. It's not really cartoony, but it also isn't as realistic looking as the artwork in the other issues does. And that's just because it's not Hendry Prasetya as the artist on this issue. And it isn't that oddly disturbing cartoony look that the original Hamilton Comics Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had either. This is more of an actual animated series look that feels out of place in this series. The rest of the artwork is solid though.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, this volume wasn't as much of a CW teen drama series as the previous volume was. It still felt like that a little bit, particularly in the first few issues that are contained in the book, but definitely not to the extent that Volume 1 felt like. It's still a pretty great book though and I definitely enjoyed it. Again, Power Rangers works so much better as a comic book than it does as a TV show or a movie. The scope of the universe is so much larger than it ever could be on the TV show, and while movies are able to do a bit more since they have that larger budget, it's still a medium for the masses in a way that TV and comic books aren't. Because there's less unnecessary personal drama than there was in the previous volume, and because the artwork in issue #5 isn't as good I'm going to give Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Volume 2 9.5/10 stars.
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