Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Talk about dark.   Someone gets decapitated in this.  As in the head is torn off and brought out as a 'hey, look what happened, and lose all hope,' type thing.   (I think it's clear that it's not the Rangers tearing off heads...)

When Tommy and Billy escape their enemies, they end up in a terrifying future in which Rita rules the Earth.   What's happened and can they make their way back to their timeline?   Can they change things so that Rita doesn't conquer the Earth? 

This is far darker than anything in the show, and it allows the writer, and artist, to explore a more complex world: solutions aren't so easy that they can be fixed in a short episode.   Things aren't merely fixed because people realize they're wrong.   Even with Tommy changing sides - he's given power by Rita Repulsa and later joins the Rangers - the show had a fairly cardboard good and evil dynamic: when you were evil, or a bully, you just were.   When you were good, you might make mistakes, but you tended to always have good intentions, and an apology would fix all.   

Not so here.   Tommy's more conflicted about his Power Ranger origin, and sees the other as good and himself as less good, even when there's fairly solid proof this isn't true.   No amounts of apologies will fix a decapitation.   (And even when Rita does evil, she tends to do so in ways that don't kill, or even maim in ways that do permanent damage.   But the ways that people rally, or don't, after such blows is a deeper, complex part of human nature; allowing Rita and her crew to go around ripping off heads allows the Rangers to rally - or not - in the face of such barbarism.   It was something they never had to face, or even think about, because it would never happen in a kids show.

Of course, violence doesn't automatically equate to complexity.   It can be for shock value or simply not show consequences that are realistic, or complex.   This comic doesn't stay true to much of the TV show: it's more violent, but it does stay true to much. The value of friendship, of sticking together, how good can overcome evil, about doing good, and the diverse cast of characters.   The changes, like the more violent nature of this comic, aren't added in place of what it keeps the same, nor are they gratuitously added.   They're added to build on that, but to place greater challenges in the way of the Rangers and showing that no matte what, they will continue to fight.   It's added to explore these characters more deeply in the face of these challenges.   

The cheese is gone, replaced by more character development than I would have expected.  

And I'm loving it all.