When it first appeared on American television sets in 1993, “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” was like nothing else on TV. The brainchild of Israeli-American music producer Haim Saban, the show stitched together segments from the Japanese children’s program Super Sentai with newly recorded live-action footage, and its unexpected popularity quickly cemented the Fox Kids Network’s reputation as a pop-culture powerhouse. Garish, heartfelt, utterly strange, and bursting with irrepressible energy, the show was a dramatic departure from the animated fare that dominated kids TV at the time, and came closer than any program before—or since—to being a “live-action cartoon.”
Three decades later, the Power Rangers are global icons and a billion-dollar business. In “Morphenomenal,” journalist and lifelong fan Joshua Moore delivers a deeply researched narrative history of Power Rangers—from its inception to today—and details milestone moments for the brand and show, as well as offering fresh looks at its thriving toy line and an adult fandom that can’t get enough of those “teenagers with attitude.” Drawing on original interviews, new research, and the kinds of insights that only a true devotee can bring, this is a bold and boisterous account of one of the most unusual and beloved franchises in pop-culture history.
REDISCOVERY IS UNDERVALUED
To say that Morphenomenal was written amid a tumultuous period for the Power Rangers franchise isn’t particularly illuminating, because unrest is the brand’s fuel.
Fans have fretted about Power Rangers’ cancellation since at least the late 90s, but their fears were finally realized when, last year, current brand-owner Hasbro ceased production of the show in New Zealand (where it’d been made for 20 years) and auctioned off decades of screen-used costumes and props. Understandably, a lot of fans — conditioned for 30 years to expect a new season of the show to arrive in front of their eyeballs (and oodles of accompanying toys to invade their bookshelves) — were distraught when that didn’t happen in 2024.
I was disappointed, but more for the people down under whose livelihoods were impacted than about the show’s “demise.” There are almost 1,000 episodes of Power Rangers to enjoy; if another was never made — and there’s zero chance of that being the case, because capitalism — the world it put into the world is so much more imaginative and inspirational than 99 percent of TV shows that have ever existed.
Through the course of writing, I intently re-watched about two-thirds of those episodes, an experience that affirmed some of my prior feelings about certain seasons (Time Force remains my all-time favorite), opened my mind to others (my 23-year-old self would be aghast at his 34-year-old self’s newfound admiration for Megaforce), and forced me to engage with the show on the deepest level I ever have. It allowed me to notice things I hadn’t before — like an incredible directorial decision in the final episode of season three, “Hogday Afternoon, Part II” that subtly calls back to the series premiere. (Read my book if you wanna know what that is!) I’m still seeing and feeling different things about the show every time I watch, and I have Morphenomenal to thank for that.
I’ve loved Power Rangers since before I was potty-trained, but I’m not sure I really appreciated it before embarking on this adventure. Certainly not in the way I do now. Even if the book were a complete flop, it somehow made me fall further in love with a show I’ve loved my whole life. I hope it can invigorate others, too.
A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN TWO YEARS … AND 45 MINUTES
July 2021: The idea for Morphenomenal originates in summer 2021 while reading Claire McNear’s Answers in the Form of Questions on a Florida beach.
December 2021: I begin pitching my proposal, developed through the aid of instructive podcasts and other materials put forth by New York Times bestseller Jennifer K. Armstrong (Seinfeldia) and Kimberly Potts (How We All Became the Brady Bunch). If you ever want to write a non-fiction book, I highly encourage you to, at a minimum, listen to their now defunct podcast #Authoring.
February 2022: My wife, Stephanie, and I get married. I wore Power Rangers socks and her garter had Power Rangers helmets on it.
June 2022: I make the scariest decision I’ve ever made in my life: I leave an awesome career of 13 years for another, in part, to support development of a book that might never come to fruition.
November 2022: Stephanie is pregnant after a few months of trying. (Fuck yea!) Our son, Jason, is born in August 2023, a day after his mother’s birthday. Based on the math, he was conceived around my birthday. What a legend!
February 27, 2023: I’m sucking down Coke in a local McDonald’s, determined to fire off one last round of pitches to agents before throwing in the towel for a year or two – our kid comes first. I send an email to a man named Mark Falkin at 3:12 p.m. His response arrived 45 minutes later. He becomes my agent.
May 18, 2023: Publishers Marketplace announces that Applause Books will publish Morphenomenal in spring 2025.
I don’t think my journey to publication is unique except in the ways that all journeys to publication are unique. Every book, regardless of genre, is different in its content but also in the life happenings that accompany us as we’re writing. No matter how many other books I write, none will ever come with another Jason. This contribution to the literary world was forged in its own cocktail of panic attacks, mid-diaper change piss missiles, and stinky milk hands. And that recipe is gone forever.
Embrace your current chaos. You might miss it.
BOOKS ARE BABIES
They both need to be fed. Neither is capable of walking on their own. You’ll want to reach for a bottle of Woodford Reserve after a long day with either. There’s no ideal way to raise them. And you’ll never know how much time you really have until they’re in your life.
Jason’s existence made it incrediblydifficult to focus on writing for a while. See, I was so worried about pitching the book to agents and then, once connecting with Mark, pitching it to publishers, that I didn’t actually spend a whole lot of time writing the damn thing until putting digital ink to my contract. At the time the project was publicly announced, about 10,000 words of the actual book-to-be — the prologue and first chapter housed within the proposal, and the start of a second chapter — existed in the 80,000-word narrative history I promised to deliver by April 1, 2024.
The final manuscript is closer to 90,000, and a substantial portion — about 60,000 words — was written over the course of three months, November 2023-January 2024. It was impossible not to spend every waking moment with Jason in the early-going; I might have written 1,000 words in his first couple months of life despite taking a month of leave from my day job. Guilt persisted amid the final flurry, but the threat of a breached contract is a good motivator. Good thing I’m used to deadlines!
EVERY PERSON SHOULD HAVE TO WORK AT A NEWSPAPER
Since 2009, I have been employed, in some form, by the Lexington Herald-Leader, the paper of record in Lexington, Ky., the state’s second-largest city. I started as a part-time news assistant, eventually became a full-time news assistant, then a full-time sports reporter, then left the paper for a job in marketing but stayed on as an “on-call” reporter.
Morphenomenal wouldn’t exist without the Herald-Leader. I didn’t study journalism in college but learned everything I needed to know within the walls at 100 Midland Avenue. How to edit something when you’ve only got space for about 300 words and the story from the Associated Press wire has 894. How to distinguish between bullshit and horseshit when a coach says in a survey that they’ve got the best player in their region. How to accidentally piss off a college offensive coordinator who’s now the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Newsrooms teach you so much more about yourself and the world around you, whether you ever actually want to work as a reporter. The best years of my working life were in a small-but-mighty one.
I’m not gonna overly belabor this point, but real journalism is the most vital organ to a functioning society, and I believe that its increasingly vestigial status in the 21st century is what’s gotten us to the point where a sitting U.S. president can *insert whatever unknown batshit thing he’s done or said on the day this publishes* without repercussions.
If more people spent time with the newspapers and organizations dedicated to covering the people and places in their own community, instead of getting misled by a meme shared by a wannabe-actor-turned-grifter, well … y’know.
I SHOULD READ MORE (AND LESS)
A lot of writers say they read a lot. I am not a lot of writers.
I’m legitimately embarrassed to admit that I’ve read maybe 10 traditional books, cover-to-cover, in the last four years. (Including, yes, those mentioned above.) The last non-comic book work of fiction I remember completing was Tom King’s A Once Crowded Sky circa 2013, and even thatis experimental with its use of comic-book imagery and inserts. This is by no means a knock on comics – they were the reason I first picked up a newspaper! – but my brain would benefit from more colorless sustenance.
I am a lot of writers if “reading” is opened to the likes of newsletters, bite-sized and long-read pieces of journalism and observant and/or funny threads on Bluesky. I’d wager that I read 10,000 words a day, easy, and that’s probably underplaying it. But even when a thread posits the question, “Who would win in a fight, Goku or Mewtwo?” or an article breaks down the NBA MVP race, sirens call out from every pixel. “Take a hit of the good stuff,” they scream, waving toward the stockpile of doom that’s just a scroll away.
There’s only so much will-power a man can generate. But even one evening where a screen gets swapped out for a library book is one less evening spent stewing in a digital mud puddle. I might still get mad, but at least there will be more intention behind it.
JOSHUA MOORE is a freelance writer, marketer and on-air talent based out of Lexington, Ky. He loves and lives with his wife Stephanie, their son Jason, and two clingy cats, Maple and Steamboat. Morphenomenal: How the Power Rangers Conquered the World is his first work of non-fiction. He has self-published two books of poetry, No Fries and Dark Peace.
Morphenomenal: Bookshop.org | Barnes & Noble | Amazon
Joshua Moore: Website | Power Rangers Newsletter | Bluesky
