With the Justice League / Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic book mini-series joining together two of the most iconic superhero teams in all of nerdom, they’ll need an equally iconic supervillain to oppose them. Enter: Lord Zedd, the evil husband of Rita Repulsa who wears his muscles on the outside and wields some serious power.
Take a look at his explosive entrance to the crossover in Issue #1 as he infiltrates the Power Rangers’ Command Center with his Z Putty Patrollers:
Lord Zedd makes an entrance. Art by Stephen Byrne. (DC Comics/BOOM! Studios)
“Obviously we have one of the the Power Rangers biggest nemesis of all time,” writer Tom Taylor told us. “He is going to be causing of a lot of trouble. But there will also be a villain from the Justice League's dimension who will be part of the problem as well. That won't be revealed until about Issue #2.”
We can only guess which DC villain is big enough to cause trouble for the combined heroes -- Joker, Lex Luthor, Brainiac, the list goes on -- but we have enough to worry about in the first issue alone. We got to read it early and it wastes no time getting right to the fan-pleasing action scenes and Morphinominal splash pages.
“I never want to hold back,” Taylor said. "When these two teams, these two Goliaths are meeting for the first time, I have far more ideas than I could possibly fit into 22 pages a month. I still look at the first issue and go, oh, I wanted to fit so much more in. Obviously you have to set up the whole premise and you have to teleport these people to the same dimension, but you really just want to get to the great bits. I have a bit of a motto whenever I'm writing which is ‘Death to exposition.’ I can't stand watching people talk about what we should be seeing, especially when you've got someone like Stephen who is just so incredible at delivering those shots.”
In a way, drawing this comic has been something artist Stephen Byrne has been training for his entire life. He shared with us some pages from a makeshift Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic he drew one day at a time during school lunch back when he was eight years-old.
Art by eight year-old Stephen Byrne.
Art by eight year-old Stephen Byrne.
Art by eight year-old Stephen Byrne.
“I was drawing obsessively,” Byrne recalled. "Those Power Rangers comics that I made were the first time I started to draw stories. I started to draw sequences. I was very interested in the monsters and stuff that they'd come up with each time and I wanted to create my own monsters. … So this is very serendipitous, coming full circle that now I'm getting to work on this.”
While DC’s current Justice League comic and BOOM! Studios’ current Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic have a fairly seriously tone, Taylor and Byrne said they wanted to make sure this crossover was, above all else, a fun experience for fans. (DC and BOOM! are teaming up along with Saban Brands to publish this crossover comic.)
Byrne, who colors his own drawings, said he took cues from Ed McGuinness’s Superman/Batman, which has a certain degree of cartoonishness to it. But that’s not to say the comic will be light and silly. It starts on quite a dramatic note, as you can see by clicking through our exclusive preview of Issue #1 below:
Zack the Black Ranger has always seemed a bit under cooked as a character compared to the rest of the team, but now he’s the main character of this big crossover.
“It always seemed like there were less Zack stories. There's always Tommy. There's always Jason. Kimberly gets a lot. Zack seemed to be on the periphery and he was the guy to do a little cute aside. So I want to lean straight into him,” Taylor explained. “And I've also done a bunch of conventions with Walter [Jones] who played him. And knowing him and knowing how he talks it made it much easier to get into the voice of Zack because I've watched this guy Cuban dance at 2 AM and that helps get into the right headspace.”
Taylor first made a name for himself in the comic world by writing an unexpectedly dark, charming, and faithful story for the Injustice: Gods Among Us digital-first comic series. Fans were drawn to his penchant for creating unexpected character pairings, most notably Green Arrow and Harley Quinn, so we asked if we could expect to see any unexpected pairings in this series.
“I can tell you that Batman and a pink Power Ranger is a great visual,” he teased.
If you can't wait to see that particular team-up, we have just a taste for you. Here's your first look at new variant covers, each featuring a Justice League/Power Ranger character team-up, including Batman/Kimberly:
The Justice League / Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #1 FOC date for retailers is Monday, December 12, 2016. The issue goes on sale Wednesday, January 11, 2017. Also, the first issue of Taylor's six-issue limited series The Deep will be on sale from all-ages imprint KaBoom! the same day. You can see Byrne's next upcoming work in the Love Is Love charity comic book for Pulse shooting victims, out December 21, where he contributed art for an Archie Comics story.
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
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