This Saturday, after you sleep in a little bit to recover from all the awesome of seeing Thor on Friday, make sure to eat your Wheaties and get your ass out to your Local Comic Shop for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!  Yes friends, the greatest day of the year, the first Saturday in May, is HERE!!!!  (well, second greatest day, really, after Free Funnybook Day, coming next Monday!)

All week on IoM, we’re going to give advance reviews of some of the mostly hotly anticipated comics this Saturday and let you know which ones are worth checking out, or which ones might be better left for other fans.

First up?  Super Dinosaur Origin Special, Image’s offering.  From the Astounding Wolf-Man creative team of Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard comes this family-friendly tale of a boy and his best friend…a missile-shooting super-powered talking dinosaur!  It’s important to note that, if you’ve already purchased Super Dinosaur #1, this is not a reprint of the material from that book.  It’s a wholly original tale, and goes in depth on the origins of the main characters of the book (moreso than you even get from the first issue, actually).

Super Dinosaur is really going to be entertaining to you if you dig the core concept of the book.  It’s clear from page one that this is intended not only for all ages, but with a definite bend towards children.  The word “Awesome” is used every couple of sentences, and…well, it’s a story about a kid and a dinosaur, and has villains with names like Tricerachops, and Terroranodon.  If you’re chuckling right now, pick up Super Dinosaur.  If you’re rolling your eyes, give it a pass, or pick it up and give it to a ten-year-old boy, who’s going to love the hell out of this.  Me?  I dug it.  I mean, I get that I’m not the intended audience, but I loved dinosaurs as a kid, and this book definitely appeals to my inner child.

The art by Howard is pretty great.  The guy is really imaginative with his character designs, and, should some toy company pick up the rights to Super Dinosaur toys, you can expect to find a figure of SD somewhere in my office.  So if you’re still nostalgic for Dino Riders, pick this book up this Saturday, May 7th!