Power Rangers Zeo

With the Power Rangers movie out in theaters now, the long-running tokusatsu series is getting more attention than ever, and we are happy to provide far more information than you require. We've got our ongoing episode guide to the original Mighty Morphin, but today, we're doing what we do best: Arranging every installment of the long-running franchise into a definitive (and only slightly arbitrary) list.

This week, Boom Studios --- which, in the interest of full disclosure, is a company I've done some writing for --- announced that they'd acquired the rights to Power Rangers with plans to launch a new series sometime this year. It's pretty exciting news, but at the same time, the news about a bunch of teenagers with (shockingly positive) attitudes coming to comics always gets me a little bit down, because it reminds me of one of the biggest missed opportunities in the history of the franchise. See, this isn't the first time that the Power Rangers have made an attempt at conquering the world of superhero comics, and there was a time when they only made it through one issue with a story that was more notable for the books that it advertised and never came out than what happens in the issue itself. The year was 1996, the comic was Power Rangers Zeo, and the man who had the license... was Rob Liefeld.

Q: How spooky/goofy is the Power Rangers Zeo episode “It Came From Angel Grove”? -- @aleams A: I didn't realize it until I went back to check, but I've written about Power Rangers Halloween episodes two years in a row in my spoooooky October Ask Chris columns. At this point, that's about the closest thing that ComicsAlliance has to an actual tradition, like carving a Jack O'Lantern that then attempts to get paid to write about superhero shows from the '90s. So let's dive into it, but I'll tell you right now, folks: I'm going to go ahead and guess that this thing ends up leaning pretty heavily towards the "goofy" side of your proposed Spooky/Goofy axis.

It's almost Halloween and that means three things are on everyone's mind, costumes, monsters and monster costumes. You could spend your entertainment hours trying to get your fill of all that jazz through conventional methods, but I propose the more efficient alternative of living vicariously through The Power Rangers -- or as I like to call them, mankind's single greatest collective contribution