Godzilla Vs. the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Godzilla is the King of all monsters and a champion of “Vs.” titles. He survived “Vs. King Kong,” so there is a good chance he can survive the Power Rangers too. However, they will eventually have to be like “Ecks vs. Sever” and find a way to work together. “Team-up” might be too strong a term to use for the King, but the Rangers will try to keep out of his way while he battles the monsters controlled by Rita Repulsa and the Xiliens in Cullen Bunn’s Godzilla Vs. the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (the tradepaper collection of issues 1-5), illustrated by Freddie Williams II, which is now on-sale at book and comic retailers.

As often happens, the Power Rangers were fighting Repulsa, having discovered her plan to invade another dimension. Somehow, she managed to slip into Godzilla’s universe and Green followed after her. When the rest of the Rangers catch up with him, they find themselves battling Godzilla, in their mecha-“zord” forms. It is easy to see why they perceive him as a threat, but after not exactly vanquishing him, but sending him off in a greatly weakened condition, they learn the King was the innocent planet’s sole defense against the monsters created by the Xiliens, the deceitful militaristic aliens first seen in the Godzilla film Invasion of the Astro-Monster.

Although Repulsa and the Xiliens do not trust each other, they quickly form an alliance to defeat Godzilla and the Rangers. It will obviously be a little trickier for the Rangers to come to an understanding with Godzilla, but they have to figure something out, since their ‘zords are largely depleted from their fight with King.

In some ways, the Godzilla-Power Rangers team-up finds clever ways to combine the Toho and Saban universes. For kaiju fans, after Godzilla, the biggest star of the limited series will be King Ghidorah. In fact, it arguably better represents the Toho characters than the Power Rangers. Frankly, the none of the Rangers seem to have much personality, accept perhaps Green (Tommy Oliver), who comes across like an undisciplined screw-up. Really, the best realized character is the duplicitous and megalomaniacal Repulsa.

There are a lot of big, world-shaking monster-clashes going on, but the frequent gods-eye perspectives are almost too big. The art has baroque-like dimensions, in which individual characters inevitably get lost. At times, it is also difficult to follow.

When it comes to team-up concepts, Godzilla and the Power Rangers is almost as fan-enticing as Superman Vs. the Amazing Spiderman, but it is not a grabby introduction to either franchise for new readers. Godzilla probably gets the best of it, which makes sense, since he is the King. Mostly just for die-hard fans of either universe, Godzilla Vs. the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers releases today (11/8) in a bind-up tradepaper.