We take a break from the story of Lord Zedd trapping Angel Grove inside an energy dome, effectively cutting off the Rangers from the people they've sworn to protect, and jump back several weeks as we explore the secret origin of the new Green Ranger.
With the revelation at the end of the last issue that the new Green Ranger is Matt, we finally get to explore just how this came about. What's immediately most surprising is that when he first appeared on the scene at the end of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers he'd literally just become the Ranger, with Matt having been plucked out of the carnage of the Dark Ranger attack on Angel Grove.
I was expecting that Matt would have been selected before this, and that he would have been in training before finding himself going out into battle against Lord Zedd, but no, this was all completely new to him and he got thrown in the deep end, having to fight Zedd in his first time as a Ranger.
This fight does, however, seem to hint at something that fans have suspected for decades, that the powers the Rangers use come with a degree of knowledge, and that once they morph they not only get an increase in strength and stamina, but in fighting ability too. We see that Matt is advised to 'let the coin' do much of the work for him. Not only does this go some way to explaining how Matt, a character we've not seen show much fighting ability before, is able to do so well here, but it also starts to explain how Rangers across the franchise just seem to know how to do certain things.
Following the fight with Zedd we get to see that Matt wanted to just give the powers back and return to being a civilian. It's only through talking to Grace, someone who had the powers of a Ranger and was made to give them up, does he come to the conclusion that he can do more good by keeping the powers. Thus begins weeks of training at Promethea, where he begins to learn some of his new abilities, and even gets to meet his new partner, an upgraded Dragonzord. Which is just freaking awesome.
Over the course of the book we see that despite having decided to keep the powers so that he can try and do some good in the world he's struggling with this new double life, and that this is a big part of why he makes the decision to go public with his identity. It was a bod decision to make Matt go public, but seeing how this was affecting his life, how he was juggling the disappointment from his family with his desire to do the right thing makes it make a lot more sense. I think it also shows a little of how interesting this story-line might end up being.
There's not a huge amount in this issue that moves the story forward, but there's a lot that fills in gaps for what's already been. It answers a lot of questions readers have had, and more importantly, it shows us Matt's motivations, and shows us how he's going to end up being a different kind of Power Ranger from the rest of the team. Now that we've got all this new information all that's left is to see how it all plays out when Matt and the other Rangers come face to face once again, and what this might also mean for Billy.
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