![]() The blend of grounded human stories with larger than life sci-fi fantasy finds a balance that is just sublime. The people that make up the Massive-Verse feel like real people with complete lives before any powers get involved. Behind each mask, each catchphrase, and each energy blast there’s a person. The thing I love about the Massive-Verse aren’t just the neon colored costumes that are dripping with coolness, even though that helps: it’s the characters. Despite that I picked up Radiant Black and Radiant Red. Let’s just say I have more of a fondness for Toei Spider-Man than any of his Tokusatsu counterparts. I’m the perfect age for it to have been a hit for me as a kid but for whatever reason it completely missed me. Power Rangers is something I am supposed to love. Plus a good friend, hey Denham, had spoken highly of it. I feel like I heard “Invincible meets Power Rangers!” more times than I can count. I had heard of Radiant Black if you’re reading this there’s no doubt that you’ve seen the hype surrounding the book. I personally had found my way to the comics section and found copies of the first volumes of Radiant Black and Radiant Red. We were very happy with the Barry Manilow Greatest Hits find. ![]() The day before, my wife and I had stopped by the local Half Price Books, which definitely has more than just books based on my wife’s haul of $1 vinyls. The funny part is that I didn’t even realize this until a recent Sunday morning. I’d still read through 100s of issues a year between these dry spells but I was just consuming the stories, not really connecting with them. Before I was a Wednesday Warrior, reading comics as soon as they came out each week, but now I would go months without picking one up. After about 10 years of reading them I found myself more frequently going through dry spells. This leads to another major strength that the shared universe has over the multicolored Rangers.I was in a weird place with superhero comics. This feels more realistic and a definite inversion of these sorts of superhero tropes, especially since the actual team-ups are a rarity and that solo heroics are the norm in the Massive-Verse. Needless to say, this puts a definite wedge between Red and Black, and it's not at all something that would be seen in Power Rangers. In the case of Radiant Black and the rest of the Massive-Verse, however, this sort of development is far more drawn out, For instance, Radiant Black and Radiant Red fight against each other in the 4th issue of the former's book, eventually resulting in the death of the first Radiant Black. Likewise, Power Rangers SPD had a fairly arrogant recruit learn humility by being forced to serve as the Blue Ranger underneath a Red Ranger who had previously been a thief.Įven with these elements, the shows are once again bound by the needs of the material to form a fairly cohesive team fairly quickly. Later entries in the series wouldn't be nearly as squeaky clean, with the Quantum Ranger in Power Rangers: Time Force being an outright insecure jerk who resented both the Red Ranger and the rest of the team, despite receiving a warm welcome. In fact, much of the drama within the original team stemmed from things such as Jason wishing he could have done more to help his friend Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger. They were in fact a rather perfect group of teens who, despite coming from various backgrounds and social cliques, got along perfectly and never seemed to have any major disagreements. The irony of the original Power Rangers being "teenagers with attitude" is that they embodied very little of this attribute.
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