For my 300th post, I could have taken the advice I offered Jesse Starcher as he approached the 300th episode of the Source Material Comics Podcast and focused on “300.” I've never read the comic, but that's in part because I saw the movie and didn't care for it. Usually, I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the book or comic, but based on Frank Miller's work in “Sin City” – both on the page and screen – I anticipated my assessment of it wouldn't be much better.
So instead, let's turn the clock back to some of my early work, filled with anger and bitterness. The source of my rage? The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
Yes, that's my incomplete poster of those teens with attitude taking on a veritable plethora of pop culture opponents, largely but not exclusively from the realm of comicdom. This may shock you, but there were no drawn-and-erased guide lines here. I had no patience for that stuff when pencil didn't always erase cleanly and I wanted my vision fully realized ASAP.
You've seen before that, whatever you think of my writing, I'm better at it than I am at drawing. So perhaps the more interesting question is: Why did I hate the Power Rangers so much?
The original “Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers” – at least the Americanized version, not the Japanese show whose stock footage it used – premiered in August of 1993. I was a teenager whose interests included superheroes, giant monsters and action. So, kind of a lot like middle-aged me. This show should have been right up my alley.
I remember intentionally watching the first few episodes, though I can't recall if my brother, almost 10 years younger was involved. While I certainly appreciated the Pink Ranger, something about the overall show did not connect.
It was probably aimed at an audience a bit younger than me, but I don't know if that would have turned me off of it. Most of the stuff I liked was at least believed to be aimed at people younger than me. I remember being teased at elementary school for liking the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, even though they were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. People can have different opinions, and not everybody has to like the same thing, but come on.
I also found some aspects of the show ridiculous. The dialogue could be cheesy, and while the efforts that went into the fight sequences was evident, sometimes you could see the wires holding the creatures and robots up. Other times, the Rangers or their enemies would yell and go flying after a blast of energy that clearly didn't hit anybody.
So I guess I felt like I was a little too mature and/or cool* for this show, which is fine. The correct response would have been to ignore it. But I decided to attack it – with art!
Not only did I start drawing this poster, I was planning a story in which the denizens of multiple comic universes joined forces to take down the Power Rangers. I don't remember if I ever came up with a reason why, but I have to believe it was or would have been something more than them being cosmically annoying.
Among the few scenes I remember actually coming up with was one in which War Machine shot down the Rangers' Zords by targeting the cables holding them up as they flew. In another, he or someone, fired a warning shot at the Rangers, who were toppled by the beam, just like the ones that didn't hit them in the show.
I did write out a few pages in a notebook at one point, but gradually I lost interest. I did not, however, lose the poster. So to celebrate 300 posts of rambling about this, that and the other, let's see what sort of time capsule this picture provides:
Quinjet. The Avengers' signature mode of transportation. I was probably familiar with it more from the team's West Coast branch. I had read some of the adjective-less Avengers issues at that point, though I wondered why they didn't go by East Coast Avengers.
Red Tornado. I'm not sure why I included him, other than the fact that he looks awesome. I was still a few years away from being a regular collector of DC comics, and the title with which I most associate him, Peter David and Todd Nauck's “Young Justice,” hadn't come out yet.
Pink Ranger. I'm pretty sure I didn't want to have Red Tornado, or anybody else, committing an act of violence on my unrequited crush. Incidentally, my first foray into Power Ranger comics, even before “The Road to Ranger Slayer,” was a limited series focused on Kimberly Hart reclaiming the mantle. Actress Amy Jo Johnson even co-wrote a Rangers comic herself, and I always appreciate folks acknowledging and appreciating the roles in which they were beloved.
Jacksonville Jaguars mascot. I'm not sure exactly when I started or stopped drawing this, but I thought it was pretty soon after the show debuted. Wikipedia, however, tells me Jacksonville was awarded an NFL franchise in November 1993. So I must have been working on this nearly a year later, because I believe this image was based on Halloween trading cards featuring NFL players, maybe from Sports Illustrated for Kids? Since the Jaguars and the Carolina Panthers didn't start playing until 1995, they didn't have any players, so their mascots took those spots. I think.
Sunfire (Age of Apocalypse). Sunfire's always been one of those characters I liked despite not reading a lot with him in it. I thought his original costume looked cool and his Age of Apocalypse redesign turned up the heat even further. This lends further credence to the 1994 timeline, as the kickoff issue, “X-Men: Alpha,” wasn't released until Dec. 27, 1994, but the character had been seen in a ton of promotional material, including that cover, from which I clearly swiped this pose.
Prototype. In my opinion, the coolest looking character from the Ultraverse. I only bought one issue of his series off the rack at the time, but dollar bins and vendor malls are helping me rectify that situation.
Scarlet Spider. I love store-brand versions of iconic heroes, sometimes even more than the original. I wasn't reading the Clone Saga as it came out, but I heard and read about the outrage. Scarlet Spider's costume is cool, especially if you don't have the patience, or skill, to render Spider-Man's threads.
Invisible Woman, flying Wonder Woman's invisible jet. I just made that up, but I'm officially retconning it as canon.
Spawn. This would have been around the time the first Spawn/Batman crossovers were coming out. Not sure if I knew Spawn was short for “Hellspawn” at this point, but I did know the guy looked cool. In one of the scenes I imagined and, maybe, wrote down for the story, Spawn, Savage Dragon and the Maxx rescued a woman being held hostage – with Spawn slamming the perpetrator's head into a toiler – before being recruited to the big cosmic battle.
Yellow Ranger. The other female Power Ranger is dodging the violence, unlike her male counterparts. Was I a sexist or a gentleman?
Siryn. I was regularly collecting X-Force at this point. Hard to say if this pose was taken from a comic or trading card, or if I tried it on my own, but one look at her face and it's easy to see why so many of the characters I included here had masks that fully covered their mugs.
Dave. I had a running joke with the same friend who made me briefly think I was going to die at a “Star Trek” movie where we kept referring to some mysterious and ubiquitous figure as Dave. So the joke here was an enigmatic, powerful figure with a pretty regular name.
Robin. I believe this is the Tim Drake incarnation, and maybe I even knew that at the time. But let's not lose focus of the sweet reflection of those flames on his cape.
Wolverine. I mean, he's Wolverine. Even before he was a New Avenger, he had to be everywhere. And it looks like I took some time on his face, by which I mean I took some time aping those lines from a Marvel Masterpieces card.
Warblade. I had to look this guy's name up. I probably hadn't read a comic with him, but I'd seen him in Wizard and elsewhere as one of the Image heirs to Wolverine's stabby legacy.
X. Another guy I read about in Wizard. I was trying to include characters from everywhere, as I was sure Dark Horse would not want to be left out of pummeling those annoying Power Rangers. And I don't think I forgot to finish coloring him; those are muscles!
Blue Ranger. Maybe I identified with him as the nerdiest member of the team, or maybe I was making fun of him by having him be the one calling for help, then “Uncle!” before graduating to “Mommy!” No doubt he would last longer in a fight than I would have, powers or not.
Raphael. All due respect to Partners in Kryme, but he is not, in fact, “the leader of the group transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop.” But he was and is pretty popular among TMNT fans, just not me. I'm not sure why I chose him instead of my favorite turtle, Michelangelo,*** or frankly, any of the others. No offense if Raphael is your guy, but from where I was sitting, Mikey was funny, Donatello was smart, Leonardo was a leader, and Raph was... surly?
Batman. The silhouette look probably came from that Spawn/Batman issue. Kind of surprised I didn't go with the Azrael version, but those gloves looked hard to draw.
Hulk. Definitely swiped from the Marvel Series II trading card, although I tried to make his hand look grabby. The Green Goliath was my favorite comic book character at the time, having not fully appreciated the Thing and not realizing how amazing Squirrel Girl would turn out to be.
Red Ranger. Jason, the Leonardo/Cyclops/Captain America of the group. Kudos to past me for putting a little effort into those T-rex teeth on his helmet.
Badrock. If my estimate on when I started working on this is right, it was around the time the first issue of “Badrock & Company,” one of the only early Image titles I followed, came out. I don't know if I picked up his look from there or Wizard.
Green Ranger. My favorite of the original Rangers. Why did I have a favorite when I disliked the concept so much I had to express it through alleged art? Look, I'm a complicated guy. He was my favorite color, he was a variant on the originals, the Pink Ranger liked him, it could be a lot of things. But he's getting punched by Badrock, so clearly I didn't like him that much.
Donkey Kong. I remember thinking Donkey Kong was cool at different points, but the fact that he was a video game villain who later became a playable hero had to have appealed to me. Also, big monkey wearing a tie.
Black Ranger. If there was anything the 2017 “Power Rangers” movie got right, it was not matching the color of the Rangers' uniforms to their ethnic stereotypes. As Zack is getting zapped by Dave here, I got to draw one of my favorite comic book effects – an energy blast coming out the other side but not actually blasting through the target. Is there a name for that?
Moon Knight. Moon Knight is one of the coolest looking characters in all of comicdom, who I met as a member of the West Coast Avengers. And please note the attempts at texture and shading that aren't just mildew from whatever basement this was stored in over the years.
Clayface. I may have seen or heard about him in a comic book context at some point prior, but I really met the character, as I'm sure many others did, via “Batman: The Animated Series.”
Alpha 5. The Power Rangers' loyal executive assistant/comic relief. What did you do? It probably had something to do with having a design I didn't want to draw, or maybe I just thought it was funny to have him stomped mostly into the ground. I'm sure it was unrelated to running out of space for people to stand and lacking confidence in my ability to draw him sprawled on the ground.
The Maxx. An Image character whose series I did buy for a while. I like how I tried to draw him dynamically striking the Red Ranger but also just kind of scrunched up and kneeling.
Fone Bone. The main character in Jeff Smith's “Bone” comic series, which I had not read at that point, only read about in Wizard. When I finally did read it through the library years later, it joined Grant Morrison's “JLA” and Kurt Busiek's “Astro City” as titles I'd heard praised ad nauseum in the magazine that somehow exceeded the hype.
Luigi. I've always found Luigi more appealing than Mario. Maybe it's the green. Maybe it's the fact that he's taller. Maybe it's that he doesn't go around naming everything after himself (except mansions). Or maybe it's just me tending to like the variation more than the original. I drew him as a little cartoon man rather than trying to make him more realistic or human-scaled. He's probably trying to find a mushroom.
The Tick. I had heard about him but didn't see him in action until the Fox Kids Saturday morning cartoon, an absolute joy that I still find myself quoting today (“I 'm makin' gravy without the lumps!”) Although often clueless, I feel like the Tick would have been one of the first ones to point out that maybe they shouldn't be pummeling these fellow superheroes.
Sludge. I have no idea what this Ultraverse character would think because I haven't read any of his comics. But since a number of them were written by Steve Gerber, I want to change that soon. I either based this on an ad in one of the few Ultraverse comics I had, the Ultraverse card set I bought in lieu of reading the comics or maybe from Wizard. I know Sludge was the key to my plan to win one of the magazine's custom action figure contests. I figured all I needed was to get a Swamp Thing action figure (which I recall being pretty prevalent at the time thanks to a cartoon) and paint it black and/or blue. Never got around to it though.
And so there we have the roster of heroes and others united against the Power Rangers for the crime of getting on my nerves. I hope I've mellowed some since then. I haven't written any fan fiction about heroes teaming up to take down John Wick for being a murderous hypocrite or movie Deadpool for, well, a lot of reasons.
But while I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing an honest opinion, even if it is unfavorable, or speaking against something you feel is morally wrong, I hope when I do it here it's done good-naturedly and respectfully. People can disagree about comics, movies, TV shows and real life, but when at all possible, we should try to do it kindly.
Besides, over the years, despite the vast forces arrayed against them in my imagination, the contemporary comics work of Kyle Higgins, Ryan Parrott and others has helped the relatively small band of Power Rangers triumph and win, if not a battle, my respect. So in that way, maybe it is kind of like 300?
* - Neither of which was an accusation frequently leveled at me then.**
** - Or since.
*** - If you want to get technical and say Casey Jones doesn't count.
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