'Power Rangers' Interview: Love in the Time of Collins...
Oct 27, 2020
Interview by Troy-Jeffrey Allen
Fans of Power Rangers: Time Force are getting another opportunity to visit the Power Rangers' past, present, and future! It all goes down in the pages of Power Rangers: Sins of the Future, a totally self-contained, original graphic novel from Boom! Studios. We sat down (er, via e-mail) with co-writer Matthew Erman to talk about how time catches up with Time Force Rangers Jen Scotts and Wes Collins!
PREVIEWSworld: Since this is a time travel story, WHEN does the story kick off?
Matthew Erman: Time travel story! Yes, it is. I think this is maybe a hard question to answer, or maybe I’m thinking too hard but when is anything? Really.
Technically the book itself begins in the middle of the story, somewhere, with Jen in trouble. We don’t know why and then we zip-and-zoop around. I think Time Travel itself was oddly underdeveloped as a narrative device in the Time Force season which I can only think had to do with budgetary restraint. Rarely did they go to the future. Mostly it was like bad guys coming back to 2001, which in hindsight is a very odd time period for a time traveler’s destination.
Anyway, I’m off-topic. The story kicks off almost entirely on page one.
And we’re focusing on Jen and Wes, specifically. Why zero in on this particular duo?
It was either Jen and Wes’s romance or Trip and Circuit’s (The Robot Owl) romance and while we were really torn in trying to decide which held more weight, we landed on Wes and Jen for a lot of reasons.
The fans and the community have been really aching for a resolution to the romance storyline. Which, to be fair, is absolutely a wild ride from start-to-finish. Jen falls in love, nearly gets a proposal — dude gets killed and she travels back in time to potentially fall in love with one of the dude’s ancestors?
And then the dude comes back and it gets really wild because he’s changed and is now like kind of a jerk. There was some more development in a crossover episode between a later season and Time Force that offered a bit of a soft resolution. Regardless, this wasn’t enough for Trey Moore, who demanded closure and that is why this comic exists.
Can we expect other Rangers to pop in?
Yes! But I really wanted this to be a Jen story, like from the ground up — so it is almost entirely her adventure.
Do you think this will give some closure or finality to Time Force fans?
I have no idea! I hope so! I don’t like to make promises about anything so no one gets angry with me. I’d say enter this book with the same expectations you would enter with any other piece of media, and you’ll probably enjoy yourself.
Since Jen and Wes’ romance are a huge part of the plot here, can we expect as much romance as action?
I’d say that between those two things, it isn’t necessary a give-or-take. I think there is romance in the action when you potentially consider what Jen is fighting for — This is also Power Rangers and there’s like a twenty-page action sequence in the middle.
I approached writing the Power Rangers like, I guess, being the Power Rangers is part of their emotional identity. Like how I’m a writer, they are Power Rangers. A lot of their emotions are tied up in this passion of theirs, for Jen it’s how she has fallen in love twice. For many of the other characters, there is an inherent emotionality to being a super-powered punch and kick lady or man. You can’t do that and be like stoic and lame.
It’s like pro-wrestling in how a lot of the action is the emotional “story” of the plot lines. When Big Boss Man wrestled Big Show in a terrible match after dragging Big Show’s dad’s casket around in a graveyard with a pickup truck you could tell that the match was going to be very emotional because of that. That’s how Power Rangers is, I think.
Will we be jumping around? Visiting points in MMPR history or actual world history?
I think this story really needed to be self-contained for a lot of reasons. I think one of the wonderful things about BOOM’s work on the Power Ranger Franchise is their ability and desire to tell these one-shot stories that can hone in on individual characters, teams, or moments in this enormous history. I think as a fan, and maybe this is just me, but an entire graphic novel say, devoted to Do
Why make this an original graphic novel?
I may be wrong, but there’s like two or three Power Ranger ongoings right now that are all written by Ryan Parrot and I feel like he owns that corner of the street. You know? He’s Joe Pesci of monthly Power Ranger comics and I don’t want him to break my legs if I cross him. I think he literally knows all of the Power Rangers.
Since there are two writers – you and Trey Moore, how do you two work together? Does one plot and the other dialogue? Or is it more of a mind-meld?
Trey came up with the entire story as a very lovely detailed skeleton (it had all the muscles and ligaments and everything had been nicely named) and that was passed off to BOOM and their incredible editors there (I worked with Matthew Levine and Dafna Pleban) to take Trey’s original idea and bring it to the page for an artist to illustrate.
Trey’s love of the series and this season, in particular, was apparent from reading his story and I wanted to give it as much respect as possible. That really meant doing something artistically new and trying something really intense and wild looking. Time Force Black looks incredible and on the page is a real force of nature.
Think we’ll get more of Wes and Jen in the future? No pun intended.
I’m pretty sure this book or this team would get a sequel if it was a New York Times bestseller. I don’t know the numbers to make that happen, it’s probably a lot, realistically. It’d be a pretty neat news story though. It’d for sure trend on Twitter and maybe like, get a nice blurb on CNN or something — I don’t doubt it’s a possibility. If enough people buy it they might review for the New York Times book review. That’d be pretty wild. I think the New York Times Book Editorial Team would like Power Rangers.
Power Rangers: Sins of the Future (JUN200773) is available on October 28, 2020 at your local comic shop.
? television series that features two of the most popular Rangers of all time, from Trey Moore (?Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
? ), Matthew Erman (?Bonding
? ) and Giuseppe Cafaro (?Saban's Power Rangers: Soul of The Dragon
? ). ? Fan favorite Pink Time Force Ranger Jen Scotts and Red Time Force Ranger Wes Collins have a star-crossed romance divided by time, as Jen comes from the future and Wes from the present. But just as it looks as though they've found their happy ending, they receive a dire warning-their romance could disrupt the timeline and change the destiny of humanity! ? As they struggle with a terrible choice-their relationship or the fate of the world-the shocking identity of their accuser sets them on a collision path with an enemy they never expected. ? Can Jen and Wes survive the threats to their past, present and future? Or will their love be the end of all time as they know it?
Troy-Jeffrey Allen is the producer and co-host of PREVIEWSworld Weekly. His comic book works include BAMN, Fight of the Century, the Harvey Award-nominated District Comics, and the Ringo Awards-nominated Magic Bullet.
