Some weeks you just don’t want to read comics. Sometimes a bunch of new comics come out, but you can’t work up the energy to read any of them, especially not when immersed in some Baldur’s Gate 3. But I for sure checked out the Captain America Finale, for one.

Comic Book of the Week goes to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #111 because the new storyline kicks off in dramatic, exciting fashion.

Meanwhile, I am definitely still playing Baldur’s Gate 3, though the bugs are starting to get to me. Some are directly impacting one of my playthroughs, and the internet tells me it gets a bit buggier towards the end. I’m starting to wonder if I should just stop playing and wait another year for the Definitive Edition that’s likely to come out. At least I can watch and enjoy the new Ahsoka show! Which reminds me, I have yet to play that new Jedi game that came out in the spring…

Comic Reviews: Captain America: Finale and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #111.

Captain America: Finale
Writers: Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colorist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna

I very much enjoyed the start of Lanzing and Kelly’s Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, but the big Cold War crossover left me pretty cold. I haven’t missed anything since then, so let us say goodbye.

The end has come, so Bucky goes into the Outer Circle as the Revolution to play them from within, while Cap leads Destroyer (Sharon) and Nomad (Redacated) into a frontal assault on their compound. It’s all big and actiony and all the bad guys essentially play themselves before our heroes are victorious and the day is saved. And everybody lives happily ever after.

Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.

This finale summarizes my issues with Cold War and the whole Outer Circle storyline to begin with: the writing and art are phenomenal, while the overall story doesn’t have much gas in the tank. So let’s start there. The writing is a lot of fun. Captain America is consistently written well throughout this series and this issue, and I very much enjoy the supporting cast built around him. I still think Redacted/Nomad could have done with a much better design, but he’s still cool in my book. And Sharon looks great with the Destroyer redesign. They kick butt, there’s a bunch of action and the artwork easily keeps up. I especially enjoy how the creative team cuts back to Steve’s daily jog through Manhattan as a nice grounding trait. This is an overall solid issue as Cap and his allies kick bad guy butt.

The problem is that the bad guys suck. The Outer Circle has never lived up to the retcon that is their entire existence. That these chunderheads have somehow played a century-long game that makes no sense and have personally crafted everything from Cap’s identity to Bucky’s entire Winter Soldier career is laughable. They’re a bunch of nobodies, and they go out like nobodies in this issue. The most they seem capable of is hiring the same mercenaries as everybody else (Taskmaster and Crossbones) and then having their big, fancy city blown up without much trouble. Then most of them die rather quickly and easily. I never once bought into their retcon bluster, and I’m not surprised to see them quickly wiped off the board at the end here, never to be mentioned again. Good riddance.

TL;DR: The villains never took off in the first place, so their final fate here in the finale is more of a whimper than anything truly exciting. But at least the writing and, especially, the artwork are really good.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #11
Writer: Melissa Flores
Artist: Simona Di Gianfelice
Colorist: Raul Angulo, with assistance from Jose Enrique Fernandez
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire

Darkest Hour is here and it should prove to be an exciting storyline going forward!

Turns out, I guess Matt stabbed Grace Sterling at the end of the previous issue. I didn’t make that connection. But yeah, he’s still rather evil, and the Rangers — especially Billy — go hog wild against him. Everybody fights on Earth, and everybody is still fighting on Safe Haven, and Matt is going through some stuff, and then Dark Specter shows up and inhabits Vessel, as Rita planned.

Comic Rating: 8/10 – Very Good.

Fortunately, Dark Specter did not possess Matt. Unfortunately, Matt is still under Rita’s spell. I’d hoped that the Rangers breaking his sword would break him out of it, but that was not the case. I didn’t even know he’d stabbed Grace! They should have made that clearer. Anyway, this was another solid issue of Power Rangers, even if it does just stretch out the scene(s) from the last few issues even further until we get to that big issue-ending cliffhanger. We get some good drama, as the Rangers realize just how far gone Matt is, though the fact that so much is happening, and they’re all in uniform, doesn’t mean we can get too deep into it just yet. But it’s still a big scene.

There’s also some nice comedy, as Lord Zedd and his henchmen butt heads with the Omega Rangers. And then Lord Drakkon and his Coinless Rangers show up, so that should be fun. And then we get flashes of other Ranger teams, so I guess this is gonna be another big crossover where other Ranger teams from other seasons will show up? I guess we’ll find out. But Dark Specter is a sufficiently evil villain, and I look forward to the Power Rangers taking him on, with some solid Green Ranger storytelling on the sidelines. Plus, I think next issue will finally get into some new story stuff, hopefully.

TL;DR: The same story and scenes are stretched out just a bit further before the big Darkest Hour cliffhanger, but it’s still all good and exciting stuff.

The comics I review in my Hench-Sized reviews are just the usual comics I grab from Comixology any given week, along with a few impulse buys I might try on a whim. So if there are any comics or series you’d like me to review each week, let me know in the comments.

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