Image brings us a hero for the slacker age in Bounce #1 (despite the fact that the slacker age ended in 1999, as far as I know). Writer Joe Casey (Sex, Elephantmen) and artist David Messina (Star Trek: Countdown) have created an oddball hero in Bounce, quite literally. On an average day, he’s Jasper Jenkins – a pothead layabout with a comfy couch and an enabling roommate. But when duty calls, he’s Bounce – a hero in a black and yellow latex suit who seems to be able to, well, bounce. His super ability seems to consist of a high-powered cannonball, and he spends a lot of the comic tucked into a sort of barrel roll, hurling himself at the bad guys. The tale has an air of grim seriousness that was, frankly, hard to take seriously, and that seems to be its greatest misstep. I was chuckling a great deal while reading although, though I’m not sure I was supposed to be. Comedic highlights include the hero’s mask with a tiny spandex yellow goatee (he looks like the superhero version of Alice in Chains front man Layne Stanley) and super-drug-dealer The Fog, who is both the dealer and the drug. However, the artistic style is very serious and the cops assigned to bust the growing costumed hero/villain menace in the city are far too foul mouthed for anything other than rated R seriousness. Overall, the book has an uneven feel and I’d frankly have preferred a comedy.

The Green Team #1 is the companion piece to DC’s recently released series The Movement. It centers on Commodore Murphy, one of the wealthiest teenagers on the planet, and the gang he’s assembled around him, all also super wealthy young people.  There’s the starlet Cecelia Sunbeam, and oil rich brother and sister J.P. and L.L. Houston, who are joined by Prince Mohammed Qahtanii. The Prince is a nervous young man without the braggadocio the other billionaire teens exhibit. He’s on a mission from his father to determine if he is worthy of inheriting the elder’s wealth by generating some profits of his own, and the Prince believes that Commodore could be his meal ticket. Commodore, meanwhile, is investing his wealth in high-tech fringe science, with the secret goal of turning himself and his über-wealthy brat pack into superheroes. This story has none of the heart and soul that its New 52 counterpart The Movement did, as these children of privilege are more than just poorly named. They come off as flat stereotypes of the wealthy, and that makes it hard to root for them when they are confronted by a radical gang of costumed activists seeking financial equality. In fact, I found myself rooting against the privileged youngsters almost immediately, thinking they’d make better villains than heroes, the Legion of Doom to The Movement’s Justice League. The obvious cross-over to come could pit them as such, but it will be hard to stay interested that long without some more original character development here.

Speaking of crossovers, Zenescope Comics is cranking out #1 issues for its Unleashed Grimm Universe event. We took a look at the first installment a little while back, and what there is to see this time around isn’t much better. Hunters: The Shadowlands #1 seems to pick up where the last issue left off, with the five monster hunters trapped in The Shaowlands, separated from each other and lost in a timeless void. Years pass, in fact, and each hunter travels their own lost path before finding each other again. This is another sexy nymph versus monster free for all with little character development and a barley intelligible plot. Only the male hunters Elijah and Roman dress sensibly, as Sela, Liesel Van Helsing and Masumi the Samurai seem content to wander the hellish landscape in their lingerie, bathing suits, and bathrobes. The second story has a touch more promise, however.

Werewolves: The Hunger #1 features monster hunter Roman Asher, who has returned to Earth somehow and is on the trail of his favorite prey, a werewolf. The wolf is attacking campers indiscriminately, and Roman tracks it to the home of a local man and his daughter. The young girl is tragically bitten, then whisked away by a mysterious group of soldiers, who take her to a local veterinarian with secrets of her own. Roman here is slightly more rounded than in previous stories, brooding over a mysterious dark past. Also, unusual for Zenescope, every female character in the story is fully clothed, not an inappropriate corset or pair of hot pants in sight, and the tale has little of the sexualized element common to most of the Grimm Universe. It’s a welcome change, but won’t save the thin plot for long.

The next comic is a great example of why it’s important to call attention to the type of exploitative sexism seen at Zenescope. Akaneiro #1 from Dark Horse Comics, Spicy Horse Games and American McGee, is Little Red Riding Hood re-imagined in feudal Japan, the kind of fairy tale remix that Zenescope so often fumble so badly. This one is expertly crafted by Justin Aclin and artist Vasilis Lolos. This book tells the tale of Kani, living in a time beset by demons called Yokai. Kani helps save her village from a possessed bear with the help of The Akane, or Red Hunters. She is then taken on a a fledgling hunter, but must travel in her red cloak to their village successfully to begin her training. Along the way a wolf demon in the guise of an old grandmother has other plans for her. Kani is a brave, brash and charismatic young woman with a sense of duty, trying to overcome the death of her mother and prove herself to her Ronin father. She’s a fantastic role model for any young girl, and has the feel of a modern YA literature heroine, minus the obligatory love triangle. Her future team mates in the Red Hunters are the same – tough women in full suits of body armor, with a talent for balletic violence. There isn’t a hint of sexual exploitation here, just determined women trying to protect that which is theirs from darkness, and it’s a terrific and beautifully illustrated story.

Taking yet another story from its monthly omnibus Dark Horse Presents to turn into a full series, the publisher brings us the one-shot The Deep Sea. Years ago, a team of intrepid explorers set out to discover the mysteries of the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. Their mission went horribly wrong, costing the crew their lives and leaving behind one man, Paul Barry, to mourn his lost love Mary and her crewmates. Decades later, the ship is finally recovered, and Paul is on hand to find that Mary and her crew are alive and well, having spent what was to them only a day apart.  Worse yet, horrid monsters from the depths of the oceans are assaulting ships across the seas, and the rediscovered time traveling crew are convinced they are somehow to blame.  This tale perfectly combines elements of the best Science driven sci-fi comics we’ve seen lately (think The Massive or Nowhere Men) with Tony Akins slightly throwback artistic style.  The result is a swashbuckling action adventure that feels like Jacques Cousteau meets Buck Rodgers, with a couple of great ladies of STEM anchoring the team of time traveling adventurers. The Deep Sea is a great read, with the promise of more to come, hopefully in the form of a full ongoing series.

Other fun new stuff this week? Tank Girl is back with Solid State Tank Girl #1. Tank Girl and Jet Girl team up to save their Kangaroo pal Booga from a serious infection of electronic overload. These girl power icons hop into a “sausage” that then gets shrunk microscopically and inserted into their pal, a la Inner Space or Fantastic Voyage. There is a ton of innuendo and spirit, with little thought for linear story telling, as per the Tank Girl norm, and the book is ridiculous fun.

Geekquality: An early look at Extinction Parade seems to suggest that female vampires play a large role in the story.  What can you tell us about their character, and why did you choose to center the story on them?

Max Brooks: Our two main characters are Min and Laila, two female Euro-Chinese vampires living in what is now Malaysia. Initially they are thrilled at the rise of what they call the ‘subdead’. They love that the zombie-fueled chaos is breaking down all the barriers of human civilization that were increasingly constricting their actions. In the beginning it’s nothing short of Mardi Gras, a feeding frenzy where they get to kill anyone they want. Only later, as the crisis sweeps across the entire planet, do they realize that this is not just some passing blip. Suddenly they understand that the human race, and consequently their own race as well, now hangs in the balance.

With a story like Extinction Parade, there are obvious metaphors of inequality going on, be they racial or socioeconomic. Were any of those issues something that you intentionally wanted to address with this book? 

Inequality is exactly what I was exploring in this story, specifically the notion of privilege. When everything is handed to you, when you don’t have to struggle for anything, it leaves you dangerously dependent and vulnerable. To me that’s vampires: parasites on the dog of humanity, who’ve been handed all these wondrous gifts; strength, speed, agility, immortality, even anonymity. They think they’re at the top of the food chain, and, until the zombies come along, they are. Then one day that chain is being eaten away from the ground up and suddenly they have to confront the fact that they are in a war of survival that they’ve neither imagined, nor prepared for.

You’ve previously discussed a childhood fear of zombies being like “a plague”, rather than a predator.  Now you seem to be pitting one against the other, Zombies against Vampires. In light of recent events like mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut and the tragedy in Boston, are you seeing a more violent world, and is that an underlying theme in your new story?

I don’t think the world is more violent now. On the contrary, it’s statistically pretty peaceful when you compare it to, say, 1916 or 1943. What makes this time we’re living in now so special (and frightening) is that there are very few local problems anymore. We’re all so interdependent on each other that what affects some of us will send ripples through all of us.

Extinction Parade will be available in comic shops everywhere on Wednesday June 19^th, just two days before the release of World War Z.  We’ll have a review of the first issue, and all the latest on new stories in comics, right here in our weekly feature “We’re No.1!”

First up this week is Dream Merchant #1 from Nathan Edmondson (Olympus, Who is Jake Ellis?) and new artist Konstantin Novosadov. When Winslow was young, he had a vivid recurring dream that he was flying across a fantastical barren landscape. As he grew into a young man, he had a harder and harder time telling when he was dreaming this amazing dream and when he was awake. Now living in a mental hospital, Winslow’s life is suddenly shattered when nightmarish figures from his dreams emerge in real life and try to destroy him. Forced to go on the run, he’s joined by a young hospital worker, Anne, a rather naive young woman who describes herself as a former “juvenile delinquent.” She and Winslow have been having a bit of a jailhouse flirtation, and when he comes under attack she is all too eager to help him, just for “the adventure.” The main flaw with Anne seems to stem not from the way the character is written, but how she’s drawn. Winslow is tall, gaunt, and rarely smiling, and has a haunted appearance, as well he should. Anne is rather mousy, drawn with bobbed short hair and a fashion sense like a woman much older than her. Her look doesn’t seem to fit a wild child, free spirit she claims to be, ready to take an escaped patient on an adventure through a lucid dream. Overall, it is difficult to understand her motivations. The two are joined by The Dream Merchant, they mysterious old man who promises to explain all and teach Winslow to “hide in his dreams.” The Dream Merchant is a Jungian figure, managing to be both mysterious and frightening, and his unusual presence helps shape the books climactic ending.  This double sized issue was gripping, if a little off center, and will be one worth following.

Our second tale of slumber disturbed this week is Dream Thief #1, from Jai Nitz (El Diablo, Green Hornet) with art by Greg Smallwood. It’s the story of John Lincoln, who has a bit of a problem: he keeps waking up in places without remembering how he got there. He’s also stolen an ancient Aboriginal mask from a museum opening he was attending with a friend, while he was as high as a kite. To make John’s life even more complicated, now he seems to wake up and realize that he has other people’s memories in his head, and that he’s been killing people while he’s asleep. His girlfriend, who may have murdered someone herself, and several porn actors are his latest victims, and he’s beginning to worry that he should never sleep again. The mystery of the mask here is never explained but frankly, it needed to be.  As the first of five books, this one did little to set up much of the story, beyond proving that John is a bit of a jerk, his murderous somnambulism not withstanding.  The appearance of the deus ex machina mask is abrupt, and the other coincidences of the book are haphazardly piled upon each other, making the narrative difficult to follow. The character of John is solid (if unlikable) and he’s certainly in a pickle, so it will be hard not to continue to follow this one, but it needs to sort itself out rather quickly in issue #2.

Dark Horse Comics brings us an adaptation of one of literature’s most famous nightmares with The Fall of the House of Usher #1 by Eisner Hall of Famer Richard Corben. It’s a beautifully illustrated broadening of the tale, giving the original murky narrative a brighter hue. The narrator, here named Allen, has journeyed to the house of former schoolmate Roderick Usher, who has spent his time virtually alone honing his artistic talents. He’s been painting his sister Madeline over and over again, and his sister secretly informs Allen that she fears for her life. There’s an extra layer of narrative here that I don’t recall from the original short story, and the artistic style is masterful enough to engross you, no matter your feelings on Poe, or this adaptation.  It’s a beautiful book, and frightening despite the bright colors and somewhat cartoonish tone.

Another legendary artist and writer brings us a singular terrifying vision this week, as John Byrne (Uncanny X-men) gives us Doomsday.1 #1. Seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station are forced to do little but watch, as a gigantic solar flare bursts forth from the Sun, looking certain to extinguish all life on the planet. While the nations of the planet prepare for the unstoppable worst, these seven astronauts observe the near total destruction of their home planet, and determine to return to whatever home they have left. The frightening reality of the approaching end of all things in such a trivial and final way is haunting in this book, and creates a dull sense of fear that sticks with the reader after the final pages. The cast of astronauts is a bit too Disney, if you will, covering all the ethnic and gender bases as if constructed as a social studies project, but the characters are well conceived and their motivations are intensely human. They want to study what happened, they want to prove their theories about partial survival of their species were right, and they want to live, above all else. The art in this book has Byrne’s unique style, and while it felt a bit dated at the beginning of the story, that feeling soon fades as the gripping end of the world scenario takes hold.

Things get a tad lighter from here, beginning with Avengers: The Enemy Within #1. This isn’t truly a new series but another Marvel mini-series bookend (like we saw with their X-termination and Carnage: Alpha and Omega series) and the full story will span issues of their Avengers Assemble and Captain Marvel titles. It’s written by Captain Marvel scribe Kelly Sue DeConnick and centers on Carol Danvers as she attempts to deal with stunning new information: she has a lesion in her brain, and her powers are making it worse. She knows full well she could die if she over uses her abilities, but Carol has never been one to shy away from adventure. Now, someone else knows about her condition and is manipulating her into a dangerous battle that could be the end of the new Captain Marvel. Both Carol Danvers and Jessica Drew, the long-time Avenger Spider Woman, are featured heavily here. Former wrestlers turned super villains The Grapplers are on hand to put the ladies through their super hero paces, and it’s a ton of light-hearted action fun. My particular favorite was the muscle bound villain Poundcakes, a character who shatters all expected ideas of women’s bodies in comics, as surely as she smashes apart Central Park.  She’s built like a female Juggernaut, and she’s proud of it. This series makes a nifty entrance point into the Captain Marvel series, and anyone reading this blog who isn’t reading that comic is surely missing out on one of the best female centered comics going today.

Lastly we get a blast from the past (literally, more in a moment) with Battlestar Galactica #1. Those who were fans of the recent series might be a little disappointed, as this is a reboot of the original late ‘70’s TV show, complete with chrome-plated Cylons and Lorne Green as Adama. It’s intended to celebrate the 35^th anniversary of the original series, and tells the tale of Galactica’s two best pilots, Apollo and Starbuck, as they hop into experimental fighters to stave off a surprise Cylon attack. Their new ships are outfitted with new temporal weapons, and before they know it, they are lost in time and space, all alone, with Battlestar Galactica nowhere to be found! The book is fun for those of us who grew up with the original Star Wars wanna-be TV series, but the narrative is all over the place. The initial pages set up Adama as a saddened Commander who’s lost his family and wallows in grief, then takes a hard right turn as it becomes a dual Robinson Crusoe in Outer Space tale about the lost star pilots. Still, it’s campy fun, and worth a short run on any weekly reading list.

Birds of Prey, image via Wikipedia

I’m not sure when my attention to these shows started to dwindle. I visited fewer and fewer message boards, abandoned my fanfics, and my friend let her domain expire, losing all my carefully crafted vids. At that point, even though I was still a fan, my tastes had changed. I became obsessed with The West Wing and, for some odd reason, films from the 1940s. I made videos about George Lucas and Aaron Sorkin for school projects, and made Studio 60 t-shirts with my best friend. So much of how we express our fandom experience is about connecting with other people. Perhaps, as I found friends offline with whom I could talk about my favorite TV shows and movies, that was why I wasn’t drawn to FF.net anymore.

But in the last few years, I started getting sucked back into the online fandom experience, just as it was starting to get huge. Instead of instant messages and discussion boards, fans now have Twitter and Tumblr to process various obsessions. Twitter makes watching TV shows live more fun with specialty hashtags, some so popular that even the show runners and writers of some shows use the hashtags in their tweets.

As fans, we don’t just let the images soak into our brains, simply liking or not liking something. Instead, we share and analyze the reasons why we like it or don’t like it. We talk about character development and plot as if we were in college literature courses, but with a lot more passion and sense of humor than we might have been able to express in class. We have our own lingo that requires an online dictionary sometimes: flails, feels, OTPs, BROTPs, ships (verb and noun), canon, head canon, and more.

For many fans online, discussing their favorite media critically is not enough. People take it to the next level, by using the images and video to tell their own stories. Elevating it to an artform, fans create photo manipulations of characters that, if you hadn’t seen the specific TV episodes, you would almost believe to be real. The appeal of creating this type of fan art is very satisfying, because of how quickly it can be shared with the world thanks to various social networks. The result also provides us with reaction gifs. Oh so many gifs.

We don’t know who made this gif but that person is wonderful

In 2003, while I did watch a lot of television, only a couple of shows really occupied all my time as far as fandom. Sure, I watched Buffy, Angel, and Smallville as well as a few shows that were born and had died with relatively no fan following at the time. However, it did not occur to me, regardless of how I felt about the shows and the characters, to join more message boards. It would have been too hard to get immersed in lots of different fandoms because each fan community existed in a specific separate forum.

It’s so much easier and more accessible now to participate in fandom, mostly because I don’t follow topics on message boards – I follow people. There isn’t a need to create a new account (how annoying!) to discuss each individual show: all you need is Tumblr or Twitter, and finding fans with common interests, there’s quick access to spoilers, photos, and blog posts. Besides connecting with other fans, now it’s also easy to get to know the creators involved with my favorite shows. (Some I follow selectively, but when it comes to Warehouse 13, I think I follow up to six writers, the regular cast, the show runner, and Tom Lieber, a network exec who tortures me with pictures of Jaime Murray.)

Lexa Pierce (Karen Cliche) on Mutant X

Almost a decade ago, of the many people involved with the shows I loved, the only person I’d seen active on the Internet was actress Karen Cliche of Mutant X. She had started her own message board within a host of official boards called SafeSearching (now gone) and actively answered fan questions, shared with us her favorite films and music, and scheduled a meet and greet in Toronto. Most actors reply to fan mail or have fan clubs, but she was one of the few at the time who interacted with fans directly and often. It is hard for me to imagine creators getting any more involved with  fans in the future, than they already are.

Adam Horowitz, show runner for Once Upon a Time has been known to respond to fans on Twitter and even include a picture of a line of script from an upcoming episode. Due to the fan response to the relationship, Warehouse 13 show runner Jack Kenny tweeted a promo photo of Myka and H.G. saying “for fangirls and shippers.” There are even group twitter accounts for the writers’ rooms for various shows, like The Good Wife and Arrow. And then you have the stars of popular TV shows, who do even more to promote their work and respond to fans: tweeting photos from the set, sharing personal snapshots on Instagram, answering questions, and keeping everyone informed about their other projects.

Sure, we are probably overloaded with content related to our favorite things, but for most fans it’s an incredibly immersive and interactive experience. It’s been many years since I’ve gotten so involved with television and I can say I’m having more fun with it now, because so many people are with me, laughing at the same clips and gifs, and feeling the same way I do.

Dynamite Entertainment does a slightly better job with Damsels: Mermaids #1. (Yes, the Mermaid of the title is topless in a  least one variant cover, but that’s a common trope in mermaid art, as mermaids are creatures of the sea and don’t own clothes, apart from the occasional shell bikini.) This mermaid is presumably the same “Little Mermaid” from their Free Comic Book day #0 issue, but the story begins anew here.  The unnamed mermaid (she’s very serious about not revealing her name) is a despondent young woman, willing to take on schools of sharks to help out a selkie (a shape shifting seal-like mer-creature) with no thought to her own life. Indeed, her life is something she’d gladly give away, having had her heartbroken in the distant past. She sees little future for herself until she meets the exiled Prince John, castaway on her island.  She decides to help him in his quest to throw off Atlantean rule of his homeland, out of hatred for the Atlantean oppressors and not, thankfully, because she’s become starry-eyed over the Prince. Her bitterness permeates the book, and she’s one of the very few fully developed characters in the story. The Prince himself, like all Princes in such stories, seems too good to be true, though in this somewhat dark tale, that may bode for an interesting twist along the way. The book has that feel more than any other, that there’s something happening that you don’t expect all along, and it makes for an interesting read.

Dynamite isn’t done with us this week, or with fairy tales for that matter.  Their other #1 is a comic spin-off from the NBC television series Grimm. Detective Nick Burkhardt is a Grimm, someone who can see all the fairy tale monsters our parents read us stories about. However, they are very real, and have been waging an underground war for centuries. Nick and his companions are now on a mission to recover three magical coins that hold power over mankind, apparently. This book is a pretty straightforward but interesting entrance point for those who don’t watch the television show, although it suffers a bit by being part of a TV show. It has that feeling, in the very first chapter, of a TV series that’s already jumped the shark, filled with more characters than are really necessary (and poorly developed because of it) and plot twists that border on ludicrous.  It also introduces new characters, including Nick’s long lost mother, a Grimm herself, and a second female Grimm who saves Nick’s bacon against a group of werewolves in formidable hand to hand combatant. The unnamed character doesn’t even have a line in the comic – just a dramatic, nearly naked entrance. Yawn.

The misogyny and violence roll on with the unusual new book from Black Mask Studios, Twelve Reasons to Die #1.  The book “features” the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghost Face Killah, and he’s depicted here in his alter-ego of Anthony Starks (whom Ghost Face Killah aped form Ironman’s alter ego Tony Stark). GFK is given a “Created by” credit along with music producer and writer Adrian Younge, and the six-part series is intended to be a companion piece to GFK’s upcoming album of the same name. The story begins with a disjointed account of several rather pragmatic and ruthless men taking over organized crime in Italy after World War II. They engage in some gratuitous violence and reprehensible behavior with women, before Starks enters the scene. Then the story inexplicably shifts to modern times, where a wealthy recluse has paid a young man named Mr. Migdal to nab a rare record for him. This record has mystical properties, apparently, and is one of 12 in the world that seem to bring about untimely deaths to those who listen to them. There’s not a lot a narrative unity or flow in this book, but it’s still a compelling read. The underlying connections (with the exception of an odd interlude involving sheep, wedged between the two stories) are implied fairly clearly, and it seems that young Mr. Migdal, who refers to himself as a professional “crate digger”, is the main character. Further reading will be necessary to make sure that’s really the case, and I have to admit, this kind of crossover musical concept had me searching iTunes for the titular album, a match to the comic book with its violent thematic lyrics.

Mobsters and violence are an ongoing theme in our last two #1’s this week. Image’s Chin Music #1 is set in the real-life gang wars of the 1930’s between Elliot Ness and Al Capone, with an element of supernatural thrill added to the tale. Its main character, Shaw, is a seemingly immortal practitioner of some very dark magic, plying his trade as a pistol toting mob heavy. He’s able to take out Al Capone with a single magical bullet, all after having most of his skin flayed off by demons. This book is graphically violent to a point that makes it almost campy. Sadly, the demonic back story of Mr. Shaw is a little thin, and it makes it hard to decide if the reader should root for him or be very, very afraid. This book ultimately has the feel of an interesting gimmick that’s not very well fleshed out (pun intended.)

Lastly, Dark Horse Comics follows up their recent issue #0 with X #1. These two books could really have been numbered #1 and #2, as this book relies heavily on the material from the earlier issue. Uber-violent vigilante X is taking on both the mob and a corrupt police force, and he has help this time around from a self described muckraking blogger named Leigh Ferguson. The pink-haired punk writer Ferguson is really the most compelling character in this story, and though her reporter instincts seem like a combination of naiveté and deus ex machina, she’s a determined young woman who’s ready to harness the power of her readers to help X in his quest, despite her shock that X is in fact a real person. Leigh has a grim sense of humor that goes well in this dark and violent book, but she’s not very well rounded, and seems to  serve little purpose beyond narrating the story.

Arcana Comics had one of the best female characters of the day in The Steam Engines of Oz. Victoria lives deep in the bowels of The Emerald City of the Future, where she helps keep the cogs clean and the gears running smoothly for the great city, now ruled by The Tin Man. But is he the kind and loving fellow we remember? Victoria is also something of a jailer, bringing food and comforts to several unique characters living in cells far beneath the city. But when the (maybe good, maybe not) Witch of the North shows Victoria the ever-expanding Emerald City metropolis destroying the Land of Oz, she persuades Victoria to try and get the Tin Man to see reason. Victoria is an intelligent and resourceful young woman, who is rapidly losing the naivete of youth as her adventure shows her that the darkness below the streets of the Emerald City extends to the land above.

The Strangers from Oni Press was another standout this weekend. It’s a highly stylized super hero piece blended with elements of ’60′s camp adventures like early James Bond or The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. The Strangers are Verity Mills, a silver haired speedster; Michael Kono, the brash playboy; and Sandoval, the square jawed muscle of the group. Led by the mysterious Absolom Quince, The Strangers have both some super powers and spy skills galore, and their tale is a rollicking adventure that reads like an episode of the old Batman TV show. Verity Mills is the standout character here, and it’s great to see the female member of the team as the straight forward leader, while her more flawed male counterparts bring up the rear. This one is a preview of an ongoing series to come, so keep an eye out here for our review of the first full issue.

Dynamite has an intriguing version of the tale of the Little Mermaid in its free offering Damsels: Mermaids. It’s an issue #0 (my personal fave!) and a prequel to the upcoming series (there’s a lot of that happening on Free Comic Book Day), and it’s rather darker than one might expect. This is a tale of a mermaid who walks among men, deeply in love with the Prince of the land. Sadly, his love isn’t returned, and the Mermaid is captured by an evil sorcerer and locked away. Her only companion is a living tin soldier, who is willing to sacrifice himself, both for her and for the boy who owned the toy but lost his life to the sorcerer. It’s a fantastical tale with very real emotional overtones and seems much more promising than the original Damsels series. The Little Mermaid is a gritty and tough character, willing to make sacrifices herself, but it’s the valiant Tin Soldier who really steals the show in this one.

Two intriguing adaptations round out the best of Saturday’s freebies, beginning with Ramayan Reloaded, an expansive futuristic retelling of the Hindu epic The Ramayana, done by Graphic India (who also published the free Chakra by none other than Stan “The Man” Lee). Featuring a story preview by writer Ron Marz, with art from artists including Luke Ross (Gen13)  and Michael Avon Oeming (Powers) this is an amazing piece of effort that presents a new take on all the major characters of the epic, from a company dedicated to creating digital comics for the Indian youth market.

The second adaption is The Red Ten, a dark super heroic take on Agatha Christie’s classic mystery “And Then There Were None”. The free comic actually serves as the Issue #0 for the upcoming ten issue mini-series of the same name from ComixTribe. The Red Ten is the story of Oxymoron, a villainous cross between the Joker and Deadpool, clad all in white. He’s decided to eliminate the world’s great super team, The Alliance, one member at a time, beginning with his great nemesis, the female Batman analogue known as The Red.  Indeed, each member of The Alliance is a clear allusion to the great heroes in comics, featuring versions of both DC and Marvel characters.  How will the nefarious Oxymoron (there may never be a greater villain name, ever again) get to each of these iconic figures, and what will the story say about the genre as a whole? Only time will tell, but we’ll review the first issue here when it hits the shelves!

There are a few other honorable mentions, as always, including preview looks at Marvel’s upcoming Infinity crossover event, a comic version of the upcoming Beware the Batman animated series from Cartoon Network, a new Atomic Robo adventure from Red 5 comics (featuring a look at Bodie Troll!) and the frighteningly violent story of a supercop who’s no longer worried about crossing the thin blue line in Absolution, from take-no-prisoners publisher Avatar Comics. These are just some of the best freebies that were offered up this weekend.