This Week in Comics — Free Comics Saturday

Free Comics Sat­ur­day hap­pens the first Sat­ur­day in May. Its an oppor­tu­ni­ty for pub­lish­ers to intro­duce new read­ers to their pub­li­ca­tions and a chance for comics stores to draw a crowd on an oth­er­wise weak­er sales day. Either way, there were over a dozen dif­fer­ent titles to choose from this year and of course, at least one had to have some form of com­ic book mind con­trol plot ele­ment. I looked and I found this:

“Young Justice / Batman Super Sampler”

In the first half of this dou­ble issue, Young Jus­tice (orig­i­nal­ly from the com­ic then the ani­mat­ed series on Car­toon Net­work, con­sist­ing of Robin, Kid Flash, Super­boy, Miss Mar­t­ian and Aqual­ad) is called to defeat one of the Jus­tice League’s old foes, the Psy­cho Pirate, who is steal­ing a con­tain­er of plu­to­ni­um. By means of the Medusa Mask, the Psy­cho Pirate can manip­u­late the emo­tions of any­one around him, and that includes inno­cent bystanders sud­den­ly filled with hatred of Young Jus­tice. When that does­n’t stop them, the Psy­cho Pirate ampli­fies their own emo­tions of inad­e­qua­cy and despair and the team becomes emo­tion­al­ly entranced, but Kid Flash’s accel­er­at­ed metab­o­lism allows him to push through the emo­tion­al bondage. As for the Psy­cho Pirate, Kid Flash dis­arms him with a lit­tle “mud in his eyes” and removes the mask, stop­ping its effects. But that isnt the end. The Psy­cho Pirate is in the pay of anoth­er vil­lain, the Atom­ic Skull who want­ed the plu­to­ni­um and is more capa­ble of fight­ing off Young Jus­tice to the point of escap­ing almost with the goods.

Side note: the back of this issue adver­tis­es Warn­er Broth­ers’ Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Stars! DVD line, includ­ing Swat Kats, Chal­lenge of the Gob­ots, Thun­darr the Bar­bar­ian, Mr T and The Her­cu­loids. I men­tion this because the final three list­ed all have at least one episode with hyp­no­sis / mind con­trol episode, and I would sus­pect the oth­er two have at least one, as well.