BOOM! Studios’ One-Shot ‘Power Rangers: Across The Morphin Grid’ Turns Power Rangers Into Power Writers
by Scott Redmond
While the main Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series is about to end, BOOM! Studios is far from finished with the colorful teenage superheroes. Ahead of San Diego Comic Con, the publisher has announced the debut of a brand-new Power Rangers anthology story, with a very welcome twist.
Power Rangers: Across The Morphin Grid is an anthology issue, in collaboration with Hasbro, that will feature a number of actual screen actor Power Rangers as writers.
That’s right, the likes of David Yost (Billy, MMPR), Walter Jones (Zack, MMPR), Steve Cardenas (Rocky, MMPR Red/Zeo Blue), Nakia Burrise (Tanya, Zeo Yellow), and Meghan Camerana (Chole, Hyperforce Pink) will pen stories about their respective Rangers. They’ll be joined by Mat Groom and JD Sutphin on the writing side.
“A true honor to work with all the talented people at BOOM! Studios and be asked to write a story based on my character, Billy,” Yost said. “I had so much fun imagining where Billy would be at 28 years old. I trust fans will enjoy my story and all the various stories being told in this anthology. Let’s GoGo!”
Cardenas spoke about his excitement that BOOM! Studio’s is expanding the Morphin Grid anthology, and his part in the story. He said he worked in the past to somewhat flesh out the background of his character Rocky.
“But now to have the opportunity to create and collab and tell my own story is just a dream come true for me. I hope you enjoy what Mat and I came up with as part of this new chapter!” Cardenas added.
For her story, Burrise teased that a focus will be “what ever happened to Tanya and Adam?”
Camarena’s character Chloe was part of the Power Rangers Hyperforce tabletop RPG series created in a collaboration between Hasbro and the web production and livestreaming company Hyper/Hyper RPG. Despite the Twitch livestream nature of the series, the characters have enjoyed enough popularity to leap to the comics in recent years.
For this anthology, Camarena said that she “had such an amazing time writing it” and she “hopes it fills your hearts and bellies with big, out loud laughs.” Those laughs and bellies have to do with the fact that she stated the story features “Chloe’s Chaos Kitchen has Chloe accompanied by Sous Chef Vesper, cooking up some tasty and wild times.”
For this oversized issue, the publisher is turning to a team of artists including Paulina Ganucheau, Tango, Patrick Mullholland, Domo Stanton, and Anand Ramcheron.
Ganucheau said that working on the short with Camarena “has been pure joy and is such a bucket list project.” Adding that “I’ve loved Power Rangers my whole life so finally getting the chance to draw some comic pages, and adorable hilarious pink Ranger starring pages at that, has been a dream.”
Similarly, Domo said that this job was a “childhood dream come true” and that they pretended to be the Black Ranger as a child, so “getting the opportunity to work with Walter Jones is just next level awesome.”
Keeping to the theme, Tango said that the job was a “nostalgia trip” and “exciting new ground to be able to work on this small glimpse into Tanya’s future as a seasoned Ranger.” Noting that the story also gives nods to relationships that are important to her character.
Mulholland is making a return to the grid with this work, a fact that he said he is “very grateful” for and shared his excitement about the story by saying, “who better to tell a personal story about the Blue Ranger than Billy Cranston himself, David Yost!”
Power Rangers: Across The Morphin Grid #1 arrives on October 30th with a main cover from Ejikure and variant covers from Riley Rossmo, Goñi Montes, and Matt Taylor.
