BOOM! Studios; $3.99

The monstrous alien race known as the Sharg have returned to Earth, and despite doing everything they can to prepare, the four most recent cadets in the force are wildly out of their element. Cadet Park also has to deal with the fact that the manmade mech Hero Force doesn’t always want to respond to her commands, and it goes berserk in the middle of the fight. The cadet force earns the respect of Captain Tanaka, though their direct disobedience of the general comes back to bite them.

Mech Cadet Yu’s action really takes off in this issue, now that the Sharg have returned – but the narrative manages to be significantly deeper than just giant robots fighting giant monsters (fun as that may be on its own). This series continues to pay grand homage to the classic mecha anime series of the 1990s without feeling like it’s just aping what came before, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

-Carrie Wood