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Preface
LAST TIME ON POWER RANGERS PRIME!
It’s the crossover no one really cares about, but it happened. Power Rangers vs VR Troopers. And, guess who won?
The Troopers, of all people!
Black and Yellow disbanded, Blue got captured, and Red and Pink are forced to live in the sewers now. It’s horrible!
Now, let’s get back to the show!
The Cover
Very effective cover, probably my top one of the series so far.
First off, the concept of it is effective, showing Mark in the fetal position as he sits in his jail cell. It tells you all that you need to know about the premise of the issue and what it is all about. Clear and concise. But I’m also in love with the coloring. Rather than drawing bars, it’s using negative white space to create the illusion of it. Then, with sunlight filling the cell, it shows the freedom that Mark can see but not yet touch. Because in the darkness of the cell, we’re seeing a tragic flash of his past, showing him being trapped in that trauma as well.
The Story
So, we bounce back and forth between Flashback Land a lot in this issue, so I’ll sum this up in chronological order.
27 years ago, around 1998, an astronaut was drifting in outer space about to lose her oxygen, when suddenly, she was rescued by an alien ship.
That ship turned out to be one from the water planet Aquitar, where the astronaut settled down and eventually had a kid that was half human and half Aquitan known as Mark.
13 years later, a six-year-old Mark is having trouble fitting in with Aquitian kids his age, needing an ‘inhaler’ to take in water when he’s anxious. His mom comforts him and tells him that she would like to take him to Earth one day when it’s free of Eltarian control. But, soon, the Beast Brigade attacks the capital city of Aquitar, Analis, and Mark and his mother find themselves in the chaos of the invasion. They try to run together, but when Mark trips, dropping his inhaler, the two of them get separated. As they reach out their hands to each other, his mother tells him that it’s okay to be scared, but he needs to help himself right then. And that’s her last words before she dies in an explosion.
Soon enough, the Eltarians arrive and find Mark in the wreckage, taking him to Earth all alone.
And, now, in the present, this is what Mark is thinking about as he’s sitting in an interrogation room alone with Ryan wanting more answers about the Power Rangers. Ryan tries to offer sympathy, saying that he’s doing this because he’s scared for Valentina’s safety, but that triggers Mark into saying that he knows what it’s like to be afraid. It’s been like that his whole life. But now, he’s not afraid.
Summoning his Power Coin from afar, Mark morphs and tries to fight Ryan only to end up getting blasted unconscious from behind by JB…
Ending Thoughts
With the past five issues needing to introduce a whole cast of characters while attempting to establish and advance the plot that has been created, it’s good to see an issue that slows the action down and gives an in-depth look at one of them. Melissa’s strength in her writing is characters and their development, and that’s exactly what’s on display here for Mark.
We saw a little bit of Mark in the previous issues. Mostly shy and soft-spoken while keeping to himself. But here, it’s shown why this is the case.
Mark is half-human, half-Aquitian. Someone that we now see isn’t able to fit in either his homeworld or his adopted one. On Aquitar, kids kept bullying him for needing his ‘inhaler’, not having a full Aquitian’s biology, while on Earth, after seeing his mother’s death, he was forced to live alone on a strange new world, one that his mom warned him about, at a young age that kept judging him based on his refugee status. Anything of that nature would leave someone feeling so hurt from the experience. It’s expertly tied into the nature of drowning and how unique it is for Mark as a protagonist.
Mark is capable of swimming on his own, even thriving in the water, but as he grows up, he becomes more afraid of the water and relies on his mom as if she were his life vest. Once that’s gone, Mark becomes like his mom was in space, waiting around and floating through it all until someone has to rescue him. He goes through all of that until the events of Power Rangers Prime, where he finds a girl’s body in a dumpster needing help. Just like his mom. Only now did he have a chance to actually help her. Relating his fear back then to Lauren, he helped her as much as he could, becoming a Ranger in the process. And, by doing this, when Mark is on his own all over again, he finally finds the strength to fight back and not drown like his mother would have wanted.
Art-wise, we have a guest art team for this issue: Jo Mi-Gyeong and Ellie Wright. You might remember Jo Mi-Gyeong as the main artist for the Ranger Academy series. And, just like that series, the artwork here is excellent. The cartoonish and simple style allows for a lot of expression, especially through the characters’ eyes, and with the range of emotions that Mark goes through from fear to determination, it highlights the character’s journey through the artwork alone. Like with Ranger Academy with the alien architecture, many of the scenes showing Aquitar flesh out more of the environment not seen in the show, and create some interesting imagery as a result. And what it adds to this is the usage of the coloring. If you’ll notice, a majority of the comic utilizes the color blue. Even in scenes that aren’t underwater, it uses that coloring. It’s not a clear blue either. It’s murky, adding to the anxious tone of Mark’s past, feeling like you’re lost in a storm or submerged. But, when Mark morphs, the prominent colors become orange like a sunrise. It helps highlight Mark as the Blue Ranger while demonstrating that the ‘storm’ of his past has subsided and it’s finally breaking through. I can’t stress enough how much I love all of this.
Power Rangers Prime #6 shows us what’s lurking beneath the surface and how our newest Blue Ranger has more depth than meets the eye.
Random Thoughts from the Morphin’ Grid
- If I’m right in the timeline, that means that flashback with Mark’s mom would have happened around when In Space happened. So, maybe she was one of those ‘Rangers’? I mean, we never did get her name…
- We also need to talk about some of those aquatic animals because they look so cool as well. An octopus with a beak? A flattened dog?
- Mark’s refugee tag number is #082893. Those numbers are, of course, a reference to the first premiere of Power Rangers: August 28th, 1993.
- I do wonder why Mark was wearing that wetsuit in that flashback. Don’t get me wrong. It’s super cool and absolutely fits the aesthetic of the world. But, as you can see, most Aquitians are wearing robes or something like that. So, what was the purpose of him wearing that?
- I also have to compliment how the morph looks like a liquid covering him. We’ve seen so many morphs just be a flash of light, so it feels unique to see it in this manner, like melting metal covering their bodies. It adds to the feeling of them being forged as something new.
