Superman's Good Guy Gang 2025 FCBD Special Edition

From Most Excellent Comics and Gaming in Enfield CT USA for Free Comic Book Day 2025.

Title: Superman's Good Guy Gang 2025 FCBD Special Edition
Issue: 1
Date: 2025
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Rob Justus, Ben Clanton
Artist: Rob Justus, Cassandra Federman
Letterer: Lucas Gattoni

This Free Comic Book Day giveaway previews two upcoming DC graphic novels for young readers. 

The title story, clearly influenced by the current Superman film, has Superman and Green Lantern (Guy Gardner) meeting Hawkgirl for the first time. Hawkgirl is wielding a sort of studded soccer ball instead of her usual morningstar here. We get the standard sequence of misunderstanding, fight, and team-up, but the team-up part gets cut to a cliffhanger just as the giant-robot villain shows up.

The second story is the more surreal Aquamanatee, who makes several sea cow puns while failing to address the issue that all manatees are, by definition "aqua" (though not the color aqua, but then, Aquaman isn't the color aqua either). The jokes were okay, as cow puns go, but it was hard to see where this was going. Is there a story, or do Aquamanatee and his fish sidekick just tell jokes?

I understand the need to market, but this book might have been better off devoting its full page count to previewing one of these books.

Rating: 4.5/10

Speed Racer #0

From Free Comic Book Day 2025 at Most Excellent Comics and Gaming in Enfield CT USA.

Title: Speed Racer
Issue: 0
Date: 2025
Publisher: Mad Cave
Writer:David Pepose, Mark Russell
Artist: Davide Tinto, Chris Batista, Sabrina Cintron
Colorist: Rex Lokus, Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Buddy Beaudoin
Editor: Chas Pangburn

An updated reboot of the classic anime with two stories, one for Speed himself and one for Racer X. The setting is the fictional Palm City and the vibe is very definitely borrowing from the Fast and Furious films. Speed is a street racer, driving his heavily modified Mach 5 through the streets of a city obsessed with the anything-goes sport of "Formula X" racing. Spritle, updated as a youtuber, provides most of the dialogue here as Speed is more of the silent type, and is busy evading the police for most of the scene. A veteran cop clueing in a rookie on life on the streets of Palm City provides a bit of extra story perspective as well as giving some setting background. 

Speed as the outlaw street racer makes sense, although it makes so much sense that it feels like to most obvious possible direction that this reboot could have been taken in. The action was fun, though. Car chase scenes don't always translate well into comic panels, but the artists here did about as good a job as was possible to convey the pacing and movement of the action. The end of the story teased some of the other familiar characters who will have roles moving forward.

The second story has Racer X beating up some gangsters and keeping Speed from getting shot by a sniper. Pretty standard comic-vigilante jobber squash, but it kept the feeling of Racer X watching over Speed that was such a part of the show.

This was a good start to this new vision of Speed Racer, and it had enough action and plot development to be more than just a teaser.

Rating: 7/10