Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. In this episode, Linkara looks back at Image's attempt to make a Power Rangers comic!
Originally uploaded January 17th, 2011.
RUMINATIONS: Yeah, this one’s getting posted before the Cry for Justice reviews. Why? Because that’s the way it was always SUPPOSED to be posted.
I had it all planned out, you see - I had lots of ideas for the rematch with Mechakara. One particular effect that I had seen done on Backyard FX that I wanted to replicate was punching through a wall. I was going to use cardboard and posterboard for the task to create a false wall for Mechakara to burst through and attack me. Aaaand it never happened because I kept running out of time. I still tried to pull out all the bells and whistles, though. Ron Wasserman made original music for it (met him at Power Morphicon in 2010, and the man is super-sweet and talented when it comes to Power Rangers stuff), I brought in long-running continuity concerning Neutro (at the time, Dr. Insano had run in on Spoony proclaiming that Neutro had been stolen), and hell, having a Zord fight in itself against a giant Mechakara. I kept prioritizing other stuff, recording the fight scene in little chunks here and there (hence why the lighting and background elements keep shifting), trying to figure out how to write the conclusion to the arc itself to make it epic and grand. But then other problems arose - the Neutro costume’s green screen bleeding, the Zeo suit not being ready yet, etc., etc.
But one thing was certain - Linkara HAD to fight and defeat Mechakara before his first confrontation with Vyce. That was the entire reason why Vyce finally confronted Linkara himself - he was tired of all the failure and decided to take matters into his own hands. And I knew I wanted the Vyce confrontation to be at the end of Cry for Justice - the extra little rotten cherry on top of one of the worst comics I’ve ever had the misfortunate of reviewing. And so I did the only thing I COULD do - postpone it and put it right between Cry for Justice part 2 and 3. I premiered it at MAGFest and it was a hit, though not as big a hit as I had wanted. A lot of people just didn’t react as positively to it as they did the first Mechakara fight. But that’s okay, still had a lot of fun doing it.
And once again major props to Iron Liz for putting up with the warm, uncomfortable Neutro costume. The real problem with that costume is that it was designed to fit her specifically and since neither I nor any of my friends have her figure, there are always parts of it that don’t fit right.
This was not the end for Mechakara, of course, if you’ve seen To Boldly Flee. How did Mechakara survive? Simple - the magic coin allowed him to regenerate and come back swinging. He just decided not to fight for Vyce after Linkara defeated him and instead turned his task back onto what he had been working on before - gaining power to destroy the fleshlings in his own universe. And that’s a story for another day.