I just realized a couple of things about both of the comics that I have recommended in the last two weeks: they’ve both been from Image Comics, and they’ve both been Science Fiction comics. That really is not representitive of the majority of the books that I tend to read from week to week, but I figure that DC and Marvel publications get enough attention that I don’t need to talk about them here. That said, I am going to try to mix it up a little bit more in this and the coming weeks.

While it’s still a book from Image Comics, it is not Science Fiction! Rather, Dynamo 5 is a capes & cowls title created by esteemed writer Jay Faerber (of Noble Causes fame) and artist Mahmud A. Asrar. Dynamo 5 follows the lives of a superhero team made up of 5 siblings – each from a different mother – who have each inherited one of their father’s 5 abilities. These include telepathy, flight, super strength, vision (x-ray, telescopic, and laser vision), as well as shapeshifting. These 5 children, having been introduced to each other by Maddie Warner (the now widdowed wife of Captain Dynamo who bears no relation to the children) as well as just having their latent powers activated by radiation exposure, have now been tasked with defending Tower City in place of their late father.

Premise aside, Dynamo 5 is a whole lot of fun, and it’s drawn beautifully. There are just enough twists and turns to keep me interested from month to month, but not so many that I feel like I’m being exploited. It has been coming out for just over a year and is at issue #14 plus an annual, so it has been coming out pretty regularly. Trade paperbacks for Dynamo 5 have also been coming out in a timely manner, the first of which contains the introductory story arc, covering issues #1 – 7. It’s available at what appears to be a permanently discounted price of $8 from Sci-Fi Genre, or $10 from Amazon.