This week Rae Media puts a new sci-fi hero into the stands: Tisena: The Woman of Tomorrow, a genre-blending series from creator TJ Sterling and the Xong Brothers. With the first issue on sale now and the second listed in Rae’s July 2026 solicitations, the book is already drawing attention for its nostalgic action beats and its contemporary themes.
At its heart the series follows Tisena, the final Okemus Hunter displaced from a future timeline who has made present-day New York her base. When her only ally, Mesar, is taken by a clandestine military faction known as Faction 6, Tisena races to stop the group from turning Okemus technology into battlefield-grade weapons. Her search pulls her into an uneasy partnership with Amara Andrews, an FBI agent pursuing a personal disappearance tied to the same conspiracy.
The comic leans on familiar Sentai and Power Rangers tropes—team-based combat, color-coded heroes, and mechanized threats—but combines them with noirish buddy-cop dynamics and hard sci-fi stakes. Sterling frames the conflict around moral grey areas: adversaries who seek redemption, technologies that corrupt, and the cost of protecting a future that may never exist.
- Release details: Issue #1 lands this week; issue #2 (of a planned six-issue arc) appears in Rae Media’s July 2026 solicitations and will move through Lunar Distribution as part of the Massive Indies slate.
- Creative team: TJ Sterling (creator), art by the Xong Brothers, with multiple variant covers from notable illustrators.
- Cover highlights: A hand-drawn, colored-pencil look by Marvel artist DaviGo; a variant by Caanan White (known for work at Marvel, DC and Milestone); and a vintage-styled cover by Marcus Williams, familiar to readers of classic strip art.
- Genre touchpoints: Super Sentai-style action, sci-fi world-building (Okemus universe), and procedural elements via the FBI subplot.
- Representation: Rae Media continues its emphasis on diverse, BIPOC-led stories, positioning the title as part of a broader indie push for underrepresented voices in genre comics.
For retailers and readers this matters because the title arrives amid growing interest in independent, culturally diverse takes on established pop-culture templates. A successful launch could raise Rae’s profile among specialty shops and digital audiences, while the distribution partnership through Lunar gives the series wider reach than many small-press titles typically enjoy.
Visually the book trades glossy superhero sheen for a more tactile, hand-rendered aesthetic—a choice that reinforces the series’ blend of nostalgia and contemporary grit. The variants aim to appeal to collectors, while the main art direction signals a distinct identity within an increasingly crowded indie market.
Where to watch next: track retailer solicit lists and Lunar Distribution updates for final shipping windows, and follow early reviews to see whether the series sustains its initial momentum. If Tisena’s mix of martial-arts showmanship, ethical ambiguity, and serialized mystery holds up, it could become one of this summer’s notable indie releases.
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Hello, I’m Jax. I guide you through the latest comics releases and enrich your geek universe.