Hey guys and gals!

For day #18 of Villain Month, I give you the original Power Ranger's arch nemesis, Rita Repulsa, as brilliantly suggested by my friend .

Anyone who remembers her from the very first season of Power Rangers is instantly awesome, in my book. Rita Repulsa is a sorceress who was trapped in a space dumpster by Zordon until an astronaut unwittingly released her and her evil friends, giving her the opportunity to take over the next planet she saw (which happened to be Earth, of course). Unfortunately for her, a group of super-hip early 90s teenagers called the Power Rangers would get the best of her and her minions time after time.

I was a huge Power Rangers fan as a little kid, so this brought back tons of memories. When Katie suggested it, I started laughing out loud at just how awesome the request was and I really couldn't help myself.

Rita is amazing, so much so that it was impossible to find a decent reference of her. Still, even if I had a hi-res reference of her, I'm sure this image would look more or less the same. It's definitely not entirely accurate, but it's close enough, and I think the face really reflects the annoying shrillness of Rita in general.

When I was looking for a good reference (again, to no avail), I was able to catch a glimpse at a lot of the episodic villains and I came to realize two things:

1) Everything in the original Power Rangers looked like a really good cosplay, but a really bad costume for a television show (metal things would wiggle and mouths never move, for instance).
2) Rita Repulsa looks like a serious drag queen. Look up pictures of her on Google images and you'll get a better idea of what I mean.

Just a quick anecdote: During show and tell in Kindergarten or first grade (don't remember which, actually), I brought in a toy of one of the Power Rangers villains - it was the armadillo guy - and my teacher scolded me because she thought it looked too frightening to show to the other kids. I cried because I thought it was cool but she didn't, and that made me really sad. T_T Just had to share that.

I hope this brings back all sorts of great memories and such. Let me know what you think in the comments!

EDIT: I just had to mention this before the comments started. The cone bra that Rita wears always seemed to be sticking out in different and strange directions in every picture I saw, so I drew them that way on purpose. Just needed to say that before I got critique on them, ordinarily they'd look better than that.

Adobe Photoshop CS, about 20 minutes total.

_{Rita Repulsa is (c) Disney if I'm not mistaken (formerly owned by Fox, but sold to Disney, I think), this image is (c) me, Andrew Green.}