Since it first began, Boom Studios’ excellent Power Rangers series has been masterminded by writer Kyle Higgins—but that’s about to change. A new creative team is on the way, and the currently-ongoing Ranger mashup event that is Shattered Grid means that some unfamiliar faces are going to be the new Power Rangers for a while.
Shattered Grid has not only brought together Ranger teams from across the franchise’s 25-year history, it’s dramatically torn them apart, as countless spandex-clad heroes fell to the wrath of the evil alt-reality Tommy Oliver known as Lord Drakkon. Boom Studios is promising that the event’s consequences will at least last in some way, to the point that when the new creative team of writer Marguerite Bennett and artist Simone Di Meo arrive, they won’t be giving us adventures with the original Mighty Morphin group. Instead, it’ll be with a Ranger team made up of heroes from multiple groups—alongside a brand new Ranger that eagle-eyed fans of Super Sentai will spot.
As revealed by Comicbook.com today, the new team—brought together after the events of Shattered Grid to face an ancient evil—will include Lost Galaxy’s Magna Defender; Zeo’s Yellow Ranger, Tanya; Ninja Storm’s Green Samurai Ranger, Cam; and In Space’s Red Ranger, Andros. But it’ll also feature two characters unfamiliar to Power Rangers viewers. One is the Ranger Slayer, a new antagonistic version of Mighty Morphin’s Kimberly from the same reality as Drakkon that was created for Shattered Grid. The other is actually a Super Sentai character that never made it over to Power Rangers, now named in the comic series as the Dark Ranger.
The design should be vaguely familiar to Power Rangers fans, as it comes from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, the Sentai series that went on to be adapted into Dino Charge. But this suit in particular never made it over; named the “Deathryuger,” it appeared in one of the series’ tie-in films, Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger: Gaburincho of Music, as the gear worn by the evil Debo knight known (fabulously) as Ferocious Knight D. It’s not the first time the comic series had added some nods to Power Rangers’ Japanese roots, but it’s a pretty cool way of using ideas that were never picked up by the show itself.
Marguerite Bennett and Simone Di Meo’s run on Power Rangers begins with issue 31, due to hit shelves this September.