Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers #10 is now in comic stores, and we had a chance to the sit down with the team behind the BOOM! Studios hit series to talk all about it.
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Warning, there will be spoilers incoming for Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers #10, so if you haven’t read the issue yet you can check out our spoiler-free review here.
The new issue features the next chapter in the story of the Ranger Slayer, and ComicBook.com sat down with writer Ryan Parrott, Senior Editor Dafna Pleban, and Saban Brands Director of Power Rangers Content Melissa Flores to talk about the next step in the character’s journey, which includes an unlikely but delightful befriending of Bulk.
“I promised myself that I would try to sort of maintain the original sensibilities of the series,” Parrott said. “Keeping it small and focused on stuff. And so this scene for me is really just an extreme version of something we all do. Which is when all get older, we look back at high school and go, “Oh man, everything I thought was so hard or so important really wasn’t.” And so the story I’ve been telling so far is how hard it is to be a superhero in high school. It just seemed good to have Bulk and Kimberly, who’s sort of living in a post-apocalyptic fascist society commenting on how homeroom wasn’t that hard anymore. So, that was kinda what it all sort of summed up.”
“And also, I just think when you get older and you get through all this stuff, it just sort of peels away any of that holy mentality and stuff,” Parrott said. “It was just nice to get to dig into … It was nice to have Bulk and Kimberly be able to talk about the past against the present if that makes sense. You can literally have them comment on the things we’re about to see, and that just seemed opportune.”
Dafna previously teased a pretty heartbreaking origin for Kimberly’s metamorphosis into the Ranger Slayer, and now we can’t help but think Bulk will play a part in that. When we asked Parrott wasn’t giving spoilers, but did tease a bit. “But the heartbreaking origin, just keep reading,” Parrott said.
At one point there might have been a bit more to Ranger Slayer’s part in this story, but it didn’t make the final cut.
“I will say that was actually one of the reasons … I remember I had much more of a plot-oriented sort of beat here; and I remember Dafna sort of pulled me aside and was like, “Remember this is about the in-between moments.” This is what the book is about,” Parrott said. “It’s about talking about the things that you don’t … we aren’t rushing to the plot beat or rushing. We want to get into who these characters are; and this felt like a great opportunity to sort of dig into both who Kimberly would be after failure, after losing the world, after losing her friends then having to look back and still try to be a hero. I just thought, out of the people in the world to help her back up, Bulk would be the least likely person, and that seemed to work”
While this budding friendship is unexpected, there are seeds of it planted in book’s first arc.
“It was always sort of part of Ryan’s story from the beginning,” Pleban said. “In the first arc, there’s that really sweet Skull and Billy flashback of, maybe they had a friendship before high school that drew them apart. And, what I loved with the Bulk and Kimberly moment, was that it was almost a weird bookend of, that Bulk and Skull are often used as comedic relief in the show; and we have this opportunity, in this space, to kind of dig into them as people. And, whether we like it or not, real life bullies are still people. They can do bad things and monstrous things; but, often times, they’re still human beings. And to be able to explore that growth of these two characters, who also have the longest character arcs in the entire franchise, was really, really exciting.”
“That’s the nice part about writing a prequel in a weird way, is that I know where Bulk and Skull eventually end up, so it was sort of with them helping in the In Space series; being able to rally all the troops and stuff,” Parrott said. “Knowing that is already in the characters, that Saban created that inside the characters, it gives me a nice sort of north star to go to whenever I’m writing future versions of the characters.”
Another sequence later on shows Bulk falling into similar patterns, but this time around he gets far more than he bargained for from Billy. While some may look at this as the same old same old, Dafna actually looks at it from a different angle.
“I just … in the previous arc Bulk had a really human moment,” Pleban said. “He set himself up to be humiliated to protect a person he cared for from experiencing the shame; and, on some level, this felt like Bulk trying to reassert his identity but didn’t quite fit anymore. And so actually, also read this moment as a little sad for Bulk, that he was kind of falling back on old habits. That it doesn’t have to be him; but he doesn’t quite have the vocabulary to realize that yet.”
One of the things Go Go does extremely well is bounce between tones, going from the darker Drakkon universe to a high school prank gone wrong, and that is part of the series’ charm.
“It’s a nice juxtaposition to really illustrate exactly what they were saying, where you have this scene where everything is just so dark,” Flores said. “And they talk about how easy high school was, and then they start with the water balloon prank. And it is such a nice and harsh, literally a slap in the face, where you realize the juxtaposition of these scenes that are told right next to each other. Just beautifully done by Ryan”
As everyone agreed on, equal credit also goes to Dan Mora, whose visuals are stellar throughout. The series also excels at having some fun with the over the top elements that fans love in the franchise, and even things that we’ve all noticed at one time or another. Things like Ranger Slayer’s comment of “I was wondering how many buildings a girl had to knock over to get some attention” are littered throughout the book, and it’s part of the fun of writing someone who use to be a Ranger.
“I always love the villains who talk,” Parrott said. “I just like the Joker and all those characters. The more a character can be sort of braggadocios, especially villains, I just find those more fun to play with. And, especially considering she’s coming in and she’s a seasoned Ranger, as opposed to the new ones. It just felt like she’s, in a weird way, teaching them at the same time.”
The Rangers have come a long way in the series’ first ten issues, but Ranger Slayer shows them they still have a long way to go.
“One of the things I’ve been trying to do in each of the series is show an escalation in the Rangers ability to learn from them,” Parrott said. “I always try to use stuff that they’ve learned in a previous arc, and the present arc, and then sometimes the tales. It’s like when the Karate Kid tried to use the crane kick on the next villain; and, in Karate Kid Part 2, the guy’s like, “Get out of here with that.” That’s what I was thinking.”
“I love the idea that Billy comes in with the horn chains and she’s like, “Nah.” And then Zach comes in with the freeze blast and she’s like, “Nuh-uh.” And then they’re like, “We’ll go the Megazord.” And that’s not happening either,” Parrott continued. “I just love this idea that they’re kids and they’re learning, so they keep trying. There just like, “Let’s do that thing that we did last time” and then, no. So it just forces them each time … each villain is forcing them to learn, and evolve, and get better. And so, just having her be able to taunt them in the middle of that, I thought was sort of … would put the icing on the cake.”
You can read the full issue of Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers #10 right now, available in comic shops everywhere. If you want even more coverage of Power Rangers and Shattered Grid, you can follow me @MattMuellerCB and our stories on the CB Power Rangers Hub right here.
