#vrt 01

[kimberlyannharts]

VR Troopers!

So, back when Power Rangers Prime was first revealed, arguably the biggest talking point was that the series would feature the VR Troopers as major characters, and BOOM was quick to boast that it was the VR Troopers' return to comics after thirty years. So it wasn't really a surprise when their own spinoff miniseries was announced shortly after, alongside reprints of the VR Troopers comics from the 90s.

Now truth be told - a lot of this is unknown territory for me. As I never watched Power Rangers on TV as it aired until much later in my life, I certainly didn't catch the other adapted toku shows, and I never watched them after getting back into Power Rangers. My only exposure to the side shows would be their cameos in PR episodes, such as the Beetleborgs being the main villains of Forever Red. So because of that, while people were very excited for the VR Troopers to come back in these comics, my response was more ".......yeah okay."

So speaking from a non-fan's perspective, like any material based on an existing IP, this whole experience was probably more exciting to fans of the VR Troopers than it was for me. But as these guys were going to be an integral part of what was supposed to be BOOM's new main ongoing, I couldn't just ignore it. So here we are!

To start off, a brief summary of the VR Troopers miniseries.

This story is set in the universe of Power Rangers Prime, where Eltarians colonized the Earth back in the 50s and turned it into part of their intergalactic empire. The VR Troopers - Ryan Steele, Kaitlin Star, and JB Reese - serve them as their armored taskforce, implied to be specifically assigned to deal with "special" criminals such as evil mutants (though it varies between the miniseries to main series - we'll get to that.) In this case, a mysterious figure from an alternate dimension has been terrorizing Angel Grove, and upon her capture, the Troopers learn she's Ryan's long-lost mother Amy Steele. She has been working undercover to take down Grimlord, an overlord from another dimension bonded to the CEO of Ziktor Industries to bring his forces to Earth from his home dimension. After a lot of explaining and filling in the gaps of Ryan's very important family drama, such as the disappearance of Ryan's father, Tyler, and the Eltarians' involvement in that, everyone storms the Ziktor Building to confront Grimlord and the brainwashed Tyler Steele, now known as Dark Heart. Ultimately it ends on a pyrrhic victory for the Troopers as they're able to destroy the portal meant to bring in Grimlord's forces, but the villains themselves - including Dark Heart - escape through it before it collapses fully and Amy has to go underground to avoid Eltarian capture.

Overall a very straightforward story. And in its defense, it wasn't really presenting itself as anything more than a modern retelling of VR Troopers, just being set on Power Rangers Prime's Earth rather than its own seperate universe or even the 2016 series universe. The truth of the matter is if this was just a standalone miniseries, telling the story of a rebooted VR Troopers in modern day in hopes of maybe getting a full ongoing, I wouldn't have much to say about it except "it's fine." Because...it IS fine. It's mostly well-paced. The characters are all likable and the main trio of Troopers play off well with each other despite Ryan getting most of the actual narrative focus. The art is great, and how it portrays action and plays around with the format, like turning the comic panel gutters into bars of Kaitlin's cage, were more creative uses of the medium than I've seen in previous PR comics. Ryan's mother Amy is by far the best character in the book, being a hardened, war-torn warrior whose exploits in Grimlord's dimension would honestly have been a more interesting read than this miniseries in the first place.

I can honestly say my biggest critiques of the book as a standalone series have to do with its structure. I really don't think the book needed to be six issues long with the material we got. I think we could have cut it down to five, maybe even four issues - the events of #3, #4 and #5 in particular are certainly important, but because Amy, Ryan, and JB spend the entirety of these issues in the same damn room, it can feel like padding so the series can fill six issues, as well as just an over-reliance on exposition via narrated flashbacks. JB and Kaitlin are also very underdeveloped compared to Ryan, with them being more supporting characters to the whole Steele family drama that makes up this entire miniseries (AMY, an original character, feels more fleshed out than Ryan's teammates), but from my understanding this was also the case in the original show. The ending also can also feel unsatisfying with how little was actually resolved, due to the bad guys all escaping and Amy needing to leave, but that at least has the excuse that it was clearly meant to be continued down the line if not for Prime's cancellation. (The books set in Prime's universe taking it for granted that they'd be the years-long new main series for BOOM is a big factor in a lot of their faults....but we'll talk about that in the big Prime review in the spring.)

But no, what makes VR Troopers the series.....interesting and more interesting to talk about, is its relationship with its parent series, Power Rangers Prime. Because ultimately I have to say that while VR Troopers is a fine series, it's a bad spinoff.

To start, as of this writing, we still have no idea where exactly this series is meant to fit in the overall story of Prime. The only hints we get are the FCBD issue revealing that the news report Orion watches in Prime #1 is a prologue to this series, and in the series itself, Ryan hesitantly refers to Valentina as his ex in his internal monologue, alongside an accompanying text box telling the reader to check out "recent" issues of Power Rangers Prime rather than a specific issue. (At the time, Power Rangers Prime was up to #7 when VR Troopers #1 was released, which implies that the series probably takes place some time after #5 at the earliest.)

Ryan's offhand mentions of his girlfriend (ex-girlfriend??) are also the only references to Prime as a whole, not counting the general shared setting of a Angel Grove on an Eltarian-occupied Earth. There are no mentions of Rangers or a rogue space witch or having recently done an interrogation of an Aquitian-human hybrid. And as of this writing (after the release of Issue #14) Prime has had no reference to the events of this series either, like "hey, weird that Ziktor Industries suddenly shut down out of nowhere." The most accepted headcanon from readers that I've seen is that this series is set in the six-month timeskip between Prime #12 and #13, but who knows if Prime will give up precious page space in its final two issues just to confirm that.

Now normally, this wouldn't really be a big deal. After all, this was clearly done for ease of accessibility for readers who might be picking up this book but hadn't read Prime. The 2016 series had plenty of spin-off books set in that universe that weren't dependent on knowing every detail of the main story.

But here's the difference: the VR Troopers' role in Prime makes it virtually impossible for there not to be more connection, unless their miniseries was a prequel, which it clearly isn't (and even that's not a perfect solution). And without that connection, it makes for a far weaker execution of what they may have wanted when coming up with this revival of the property.

Throughout Prime's intro arc, the VR Troopers are the Prime Rangers' most recurring antagonists, even moreso than the Eltarians, as they meet the most frequently both on and off the battlefield. Ryan obviously isn't the main protagonist on the Ranger side, but he still has emotional and narrative ties to the Prime Rangers by entering the story as Valentina's boyfriend and Jun's best friend. He leads the interrogation of Mark after kidnapping him. He arranges the trade of Mark for Lauren. They ALL agree to let a captured Lauren free to help fight Jun's evil dad. Frankly, the idea of the VR Troopers having this whole separate adventure with Amy and Grimlord at roughly the same time without ANY mention of ANY of it is ridiculous, because they aren't Astronema in the 2016 series, who pops in to have a couple-issue adventure with the Omegas and then leaves forever - they drive the storyline that is supposed to shake up their entire world. Even an offhand "have you heard from Valentina since...?" in their miniseries would have been SOMETHING to make it feel like these stories matter to each other; instead the books are kept SO separate to the point where it feels like they don't belong in the same universe. This extends not just to the characters' roles, but their specific personalities and arcs.

As I said earlier, VR Troopers' main protagonist is unambiguously Ryan, with question of "what happened to the Steeles" being the driving question for the entire plot. Because of this, JB and Kaitlin can feel extremely one-note by comparison, simply because the book doesn't have time or space to dive into them as much beyond their basic character traits and some crumbs of backstory. However, I can still at least say the book gave them things to do and personalities to bounce off of Ryan and the greater plot - JB has his tech smarts and more logical approach to things, while Kaitlin is more outspoken and reckless, a bit of a conspiracy nut, with a journalism degree as a nod to her being a reporter in the original show. (As you can probably tell just from that description, Kaitlin has slightly more to do here than JB, due to her getting a small solo sideplot infiltrating Ziktor Industries while JB stays by Ryan's side as a sounding board and research help.) It might not sound like much, but it's enough to establish them as people and a team dynamic. And most importantly, it's leagues above their portrayal in Prime.

If VR Troopers has them as more side characters, in Prime they've barely anything more than suitfiller. What foundations of a personality they may have had in VR Troopers is nonexistent in Prime; going in blind like I did you'd never think Kaitlin was a conspiracy theorist or JB a tech guy. Their biggest contribution is to exist as more muscle in fights and show off references to their moves from the original show while Ryan gets all of the important scenes and relationships that drive the plot. Because of this, their supposed "heel turn" to wanting to help the Rangers feels hollow. Oh, suddenly Kaitlin and JB care about the harm they're causing? Why? What changed? Why were they so dedicated to the cause in the first place? (since of course, Ryan's reasons for being a Trooper are implied in Prime and plainly spelled out in VR Troopers but not Kaitlin or JB's outside of "save the world!") I think the intention is the Troopers slowly realize the depths of cruelty the Eltarians are making them sink to, but that doesn’t successfully land when we don't SEE this development.....develop. You'll have Kaitlin point out that Ryan's working so hard to bust his girlfriend and best friend....but then she'll jump into a fight with said girlfriend and best friend, ready to bring them in. And they'll keep up this violence throughout the book, whether it's kidnapping and painfully interrogating Mark, or forcing mutants underground, or having the third fight in as many issues with the Rangers, with no sense of doubt or self-reflection of what they're doing at that moment. And then VR Troopers doesn't help, thanks to both the aforementioned lack of acknowledgment of Prime's story AND how the Troopers becoming disillusioned with the Eltarians...is the point of VR Troopers as a series. Assuming VR Troopers takes place after Prime, if they've become uncomfortable with the Eltarians thanks to their adventures with the Rangers...why are they still going along with them in VR Troopers? It feels less like character development or a discussion of those willing to serve a fascist state and more just wanting to have their cake and eat it too, of strong foes for the Prime Rangers to fight but ALSO heroes we want to read about and root for in their own series.

Literally what changed, Kaitlin, that would make you go from following orders to questioning them!!!!!! It's the same mission!!!!!! What made you woke!!!!!!!!! And constantly bringing up the fact that Lauren is a human but not a mutant doesn't make them sound better - it's actually quite disgusting in context of Prime's worldbuilding, where it's flat-out stated even innocent mutants go under fire by the Troopers or Eltarian patrols simply for being considered acceptable targets. This is Power Rangers, where homophobia and racism between humans is nearly nonexistent and prejudices only exist in the form of looking down on other species like aliens or mutants, something this series doesn't try to dispute, and also doesn't acknowledge in VR Troopers.

And I’m more harsh on this than I would be with other instances of copaganda in Power Rangers because in this day and age in particular it’s deeply disturbing to see the book tiptoe around the evils of what is undoubtedly a specialized team of armed enforcers for a fascist state targeting those deemed "threats" simply because they don’t want to commit to the VR Troopers as bad guys; at worst foils to the Rangers who are simply misguided and are good enough to switch loyalties once they get too uncomfortable with their orders they clearly had no trouble following before. And this discrepancy is even more pronounced when their miniseries ignores their roles as cops serving the system entirely in favor of them being unambiguously the good guys, horrified at the concept of Amy taking hostages when RYAN, YOU DID THE SAME THING IN PRIME.

This is why I think the only way to really save the armed cop VR Troopers concept is to make their miniseries a prequel - this whole thing with Amy was their first mission, maybe how they first meet each other, how they meet Valentina and Jun. As I said, it's not the PERFECT solution - again, why wouldn't they turn against the Eltarians after learning what they did to Ryan's family? - but that's really just an inevitable outcome to making the Troopers so contradictory in their morals in the first place. (It's also kind of hinted throughout Prime that Ryan knows the Eltarians are dangerous and doesn't want to poke the bear by standing up to them, so maybe that could have worked with why he would stay with them - but this isn't really discussed further.) Maybe this is leaning into "it's bad because it's not what I want" territory but imagine if instead of the VR Troopers it was the A-Squad. Or the Sentry Force Four. Would the book hold back so much in framing them as villains? Would they have gotten their own miniseries where they get to be heroes with no discussion of the harm they've caused? Would Charlie get a moment where she gets sad over how no one is on her side?? I sort of doubt it, because they were already bad guys. Not the VR Troopers, where we want to sell reprints of their 90s books alongside their grand return to modern comics. Just ignore that the "grand return" involves them being violent cops targeting minorities.

But do the Troopers find that out, or question their missions to take down mutants, and that aids their decision to turn on the Eltarians? lol no. The closest we get to any acknowledgment of the VR Troopers being enablers of the Eltarians' crimes is Amy initially not presenting herself to Ryan because she feared he would be too blindly loyal to the Eltarians to want to help her. The mutants can still go on oppressed, though, we'll just ignore that elephant in the room

I feel this ended up being more of a review of Prime's story than VR Troopers', but as I said, it's difficult to separate them, not only because they share the same universe, but because how closely their storylines tie together and how their portrayal in one weakens their portrayal in the other. I don't think it was impossible to do this whole "the Troopers are heroes in one book and villains in the other" in a sort of flipped perspective situation, but that requires more intent than I think was executed here. If there was, VR Troopers wouldn't feel like such a missed opportunity for a more grounded and topical narrative, and maybe justified Prime spending so much of its opening arc as a backdoor pilot for their series. A decision that was all for naught, now with their shared universe cancelled. So thanks for that, I guess

[kimberlyannharts]

Ultimately I think my problem with the VR Troopers series so far (SO FAR, as this could very well change) is that it's going to be like, level 2 political commentary when the set up promised level 5. No amount of "but Ryan's so sad about his family :( The Eltarians lied to him and stole his father's work :(" will mean anything if you don't acknowledge that Ryan is canonically a hypocrite when serving his own ends

as well as just in general the Troopers canonically inciting violence against oppressed groups with justification as small as "it's my job!" and "he was aggressive!"

YOU guys are the ones that set up the VR Troopers as villains with clear parallels to police states irl! Follow through on that!!!

[kimberlyannharts]

LAST TIME ON.....VR Troopers? Sort of?

So if you're on a Power Rangers blog you probably know about how with that huge success came attempts to ride the hype by adapting other toku shows; from what I can tell the most well-remembered ones being Beetleborgs, Masked Rider, and, of course, VR Troopers.

When Prime first was announced they were quick to show off how the VR Troopers are being used for an official Power Rangers property for the first time in thirty years, and it's easy to see why. It's cool to pull characters from more obscure sources, and it opens up the possibility of others being used down the line too. So yay! Cool, welcome back, VR Troopers!

But what's confusing about it is...you'd think showing off how the VR Troopers are back would mean they're continuing the show, especially considering the show was cancelled before properly finishing its story, right? Well.....no, these are alternate versions of the characters. Well, that's okay, maybe it's a retelling of the show's general story but simply updated to modern times, like what the 2016 series did with MMPR? Not really, because this is set in a reboot of that series, in a new version of Earth with new lore - and the VR Troopers' role in it is fascist police serving the whims of a colonizing Eltarian society that hunt down Rangers and target oppressed citizens such as mutants, who are forced to live underground and scavenge for their survial.

So......welcome back, I guess????

It's VR Troopers #1!

= your dog is literally right there, man

= ignore the dad stuff in the first panel it's time to talk about the second one

= soooooooooo this issue gives no indication about where this fits in timeline-wise with Prime outside of "probably after #5" based solely on his comment about Valentina. That being said, the Troopers are a LOT more involved with the main series right now, with them capturing Mark, setting up a trade for Lauren, and from what the solicits imply, facing off against a Prime Zord. None of that is referenced, and it makes no sense for the events of this series to happen in-between all of that.

= So unless we get more hints of the timeline after this issue, my guess is (outside of, meta-wise, they want this to be less confusing for new readers who haven't read Prime yet) this series is taking place farther down the timeline than where Prime's at. Especially considering we have confirmation the issues are coming out every other month, which means this six-issue series is going to be drawn out until April of next year at the very least. So it's basically slowing itself down so it and Prime can be in sync by the time it ends. Why didn't they just release it later? eh. Considering how the VR Troopers' inclusion was one of the biggest talking points of Prime, I wouldn't be surprised if they were just quick to ride the hype and dish out as much VR Trooper news as they could.

Or maybe they wanted a series that would show the Troopers as the good guys so we don't hate them in the main series for being fascist cops. Or maybe both. Who knows! Anyway -

= oh boy, Robo-Joker? what's next?

= So for real, apparently this is a "Skug," the VR Trooper equivalent to Putties. Honestly I was very confused as to what was happening in this sequence until I looked it up and saw they can disguise themselves as humans

= HOTTIE ALERT HOTTIE ALERT HOTTIE ALERT

= Sexy implied robot body AND he's ACAB? sorry Ryan but I'm on this guy's side

= and so what if he's violently threatened hostages. Ryan also took a hostage whom the VR Troopers violently incapacitated and later used as a bartering chip to imprison an innocent woman so don't act like you're on some moral high ground, sir

= the other Troopers don't get much to do in this issue beyond backup for Ryan but at the very least I'll give it that JB was finally allowed to show some of his role as tech guy, as in Prime proper he's barely done anything of note besides fill the third suit. That being said, he still doesn't have much in the way of a unique personality yet, which is a shame

= Probably the most interesting thing about the issue is the confirmation that alternate realities will be a plot point, which could possibly end up connecting things to the 2016 series. The reality Mysterious Cloaked Guy is leaving even has a yellow tinge similar to the 2016 world's future, which could be a coincidence, but still noteworthy

= if the 2016 world really did fall apart thanks to Billy we all gotta beat his ass I'm sorry

= soooooo yeahhhhhh it's already pretty obvious as to what's going on here. It's almost TOO obvious to the point where you want to think it could be a red herring, but after catching the fact Mysterious Cloaked Guy has a copy of Ryan's photograph on a reread, it's hard to deny the fact that this is probably Tyler Steele, who rather than dying in his experiment, got zapped to some bad alternate world. I guess the real mystery is meant to be what exactly he's doing and what happened to him in the first place, but part of me wishes they just outright showed him as Tyler Steele to get it out of the way.

I did see another theory that it could be an alternate Ryan Steele as a twist, but......I've also kinda learned to stop overthinking theories when it comes to these comics lol

[kimberlyannharts]

First notes on VR Troopers #1 -

= Just a reminder - I haven't seen VR Troopers the show, so my knowledge of these characters and show plots are minimal. If I act kind of whatever over what's probably a big reference to the show, that's why.

= Overall it was....okay. Mostly just introductions and set-up, which is fine. Art and action were great, but nothing really pulling me in character-wise yet (Ryan's not THAT interesting of a POV character, and they're still fascist police no matter how nice and likable you're trying to make them seem. At least JB finally got to show off his role as the tech guy after he's been nothing but suit filler in Prime, but their personalities still don't have much variation.)

= And yeah, no indication of where it fits in the timeline with Prime; his offhand mention of Valentina being his ex is all we get. I'm going with my theory that the events of this book haven't happened yet in Prime

= The most interesting thing about it and its implications for Prime is the confirmation that we ARE touching on alternate worlds. So that's a possible point towards a future connection to the 2016 MMPR series

= Mysterious Cloaked Guy being Ryan's dad feels too obvious to the point where it almost makes you think it's a red herring, but didn't this kind of happen to Ryan's dad in the show, too