It’s your friendly annual reminder to go out and visit your friendly neighborhood comic shop and pick up some free comics.

Free Comic Book Day is an annual event that takes place the first Saturday in May (May 7, 2011) to help generate – or regenerate – interest in comic books.

A lot of the big comic companies release titles for the day and, depending on your shop, you can often find a few decent indies as well. Some even dump out those quarter boxes simply to get them out of the store. (But please, please, please do not think that every comic in the store is free).

Remember our good friend Saren from the original Mass Effect game? Ah, that xenophobic madman brings back so many memories.

Well, if you’ve been missing Saren after thwarting his plans in the Mass Effect, you can witness his return to the series. No, it isn’t the next Mass Effect game. He’s showing up in the next issue of the comic book series Mass Effect: Evolution.

This week’s comic feature is The Dreaming for $1.99 by Tokyopop. In this series twin sisters Amber and Jeanie Malkin are accepted into the Greenwich Private College, an exclusive Australian boarding school, located in North Sydney. After girls begin disappearing from the school something begins to invade their dreams. Check out the first issue of The Dreaming and follow Amber and Jeanie as they try to solve the mystery of Greenwich Private College.

This week’s comic feature is the Telara Chronicles for 99 Cents. This comic is the prequel to the game Rift Plans of Telara and takes place 80 years prior to the MMORPG game. The comic series follows Asha Catari, a plane-touched warrior with magical abilities, who is on a mission to steal a device that can summon a rift…

This week’s comic feature is Deadpool for $1.99. The Mercenary with the big mouth is back and ready to kick butt. In the first issue the planet is being invaded by Skrulls and the only person who can save it is one big disfigured and mentally insane mercenary. That is, If he feels like taking out the Skrulls. Check out the first seven issues to find out if he helps save the planet or not.

This week’s comic is an issue of Hero 9 to 5. Imagine a world where becoming a hero is a lot like applying for a job at a fast-food restaurant. In Hero 9 to 5, just having a little power such as shooting flames from your hands can put you on the government’s time clock as a personal super hero to aid the rich, leaving the poor having to seek protection from a government with limited resources.

This week’s top digital comic is Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Well known for his films including Mirror Mask, Coraline and Beowulf comes Gaiman’s award-winning comic horror-fantasy series.

This week’s featured comic is a free issue of Blood Hunter (#1). Blood Hunter follows the life of the last living human on earth, an infant girl, in a world ruled by vampires. A world they inherited after the vampires helped mankind destroy themselves causing humanity to become extinct until a lone warrior named Vincent, a warrior highly skilled and trained hunter hardened by 150 years of hunting and killing any human that shows up on sensors, happened upon a group of Karantani. While fighting the Karantani an infant girl crawls towards him amid the chaos and triggers an old memory.

This week’s featured free comic is Starcraft #1. The comic series follows a group of outlaws called “The War Pigs,” group of convicted criminals each serving a life or death sentence. Because each possessed unique talents and expertise the Terran Confederacy military program created the “War Pigs” to take on dangerous missions. But the missions are far from over. Former captain Cole Hickson reunites the group for a new mission, the assassination of Jim Raynor. Follow the group on their next mission this week in the PlayStation Comic Store.

Also check out the massive list of new comics…

This week’s featured free comic is Dean Haspiel’s Street Code a story about a New York bruiser named Jack who moves to Brooklyn to start a new life away from a drug-filled community only to find a different world in which he must learn a whole new Street Code to survive. Also check out the giant list of new digital comics avaialble through the PlayStation Network (PSN)…