Yesterday, while I was being inundated with advertising for the upcoming ‘Fant4stic’ film (from everyone BUT Marvel Comics) and desperately scouring the back-alleys of the innernets for a decent picture of the Yellow Ranger from Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman, I had an epiphany: Johnny Storm hasn’t ever really been a successful solo act. Sure, he headlined ‘Strange Tales’ back in the day, and has a couple of short-lived books of his own, but nothing like Ben Grimm’s epic 100-issue run in ‘Marvel Two-In-One.’ Like the Yellow Rangers of the world, Johnny just seems to work best in a group setting (and even then he hasn’t been an Avenger like all his FF compatriots), leading us to today’s supporting-cast query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) has one word for you, and that word is ‘Wildfire’, asking: What team-oriented character do you most want to see in their own solo adventures?
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Is it really “Fant4astic”? Oh my lord, it feels so juvenile and 90’s gimmick. Oh well, my answer to the question itself is New 52 Shazam. He totally needs and could carry a solo book.
After some rumors started floating around a couple years ago, I really want to see a series or movies with Tommy Oliver on his own. Even a comic series could be interesting. We know from Super Megaforce that he has both the MMPR Green and White Ranger powers to some degree, and even before that we saw in “Forever Red” that he still had his Zeo powers and he eventually became the Dino Thunder Black Ranger. Also from Dino Thunder, we know he never really left being involved with the Power Rangers to some degree as he had files on every previous team (as well as apparently having files on others since there were some pre-Zyuranger Super Sentai team symbols among his files). So I could easily see him working in the background while the current team is facing the big battles. Maybe he’s facing smaller scale emergencies or is more of a “black ops” one-man strike team against individual evil threats.
Similarly, while not part of a specific team, I keep hoping we’ll see some AkaRed solo stories. In a way, he is already solo since he is the embodiment of the Sentai Reds and doesn’t really belong to any specific team (although he was part of a pirate group with Captain Marvelous, it wasn’t a Ranger team), but he always shows up to work with a team, be it an existing team or a team made of rangers from various other teams. I’d like to see him handle some bad guys solo, utilizing the powers of past Red Warriors but not actually fighting alongside anyone else.
And while not exactly a team so much as a group that happened to travel together, I’d really love to see Amy and Rory as a solo duo (I know, that isn’t exactly “solo”, but still they aren’t getting help from the madman with a box). They may have been trapped in the past by the Weeping Angel, but I just can’t see those two settling down to a normal boring life. They may not have had any more adventures in space and time, but there could have been all kinds of aliens and other mysteries on Earth that they could investigate. Plus, with Rory’s knowledge as both a nurse with medical knowledge years ahead of the time they were stuck in AND being The Lone Centurion, it is hard to imagine he didn’t at least save a few lives in one way or another.
Shane Gooseman, as a wandering cowboy, always on the move, maybe tomorrow he’s gonna settle down. Until tomorrow, the whole universe is his home…