Oh, right, Free Comic Book Day.
Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow, and I realize I haven’t said a whole lot about it this time around. I’ve said plenty about it in the past, and I just spent a few minutes creating a “free comic book day” category so you can click on that and see my many posts on the topic. But, as always, we’re one of the stores that does Free Comic Book Day right, and I’m reasonably certain that we’ll give away lots and lots of comics and we’ll still make a profit while we do it (thanks to concurrent in-store special sales), like we do every year.
As for the actual comics themselves: Pal Dorian has once again presented his comprehensive review of this year’s offerings, which you can read at the Bureau Chiefs site.
Personally, my favorite free book this year is probably Weathercraft by Jim Woodring, but then I’m already a huge fan of Woodring’s work, so this is sort of preaching to the choir, here. It may be a little too much on the weird side for your average “I’m here for your free comics, give them to me” FCBD attendee, but I’d much rather give someone something weird than something boring.
Other good’uns: the Incorruptible/Irredeemable flipbook from Boom! Studios is a solid introduction to Mark Waid’s superhero universe; Yow! from Drawn & Quarterly is a great sampler for John Stanley’s classic kid comics, like Nancy and Tubby; The Tick #1 – a reprint of the very first, very funny issue of the spoof superhero series by creator Ben Edlund; Bongo Free-for-All presents more funny Simpsons comics, and you can’t really go wrong with these; and Fraggle Rock/Mouse Guard…the Fraggle Rock comic is nicely done, very children’s storybook-y.
Other titles:
War of the Supermen #0 didn’t come with that cover people were getting the vapors over, but the actual comic in question felt…a bit disappointing, to be frank. A little too dark and strangely violent for a Superman comic that we’re supposed to be giving to potential new readers.
Library of American Comics – Can’t help but think they should have gone the same route that Fantagraphics did with their Unseen Peanuts freebie a while back, and put out a Unseen Bloom County comic. Well, maybe not an entire comic of just previously unreprinted Bloom County strips, but a sampler focused mostly on BC with a few sampler pages from their other books might have been more of an attention grabber. (There may be contractual things preventing this I don’t know about, but still…it would have been neat to have an actual Bloom County comic book, don’t you think?)
Overstreet Guide to Collecting Comics – I will concur with my colleague Pal Dorian on this item. Free Comic Book Day is about comics as a storytelling medium, not as a collectible investment.
Iron Man/Nova and Iron Man/Thor – I wonder if there’s an Iron Man movie coming out soon? Anyway, they’re both okay, but it would have been nice to have, say, a Captain America comic to remind people that there still is such a thing, after the very publicized “death” a few years back.
Sonic the Hedgehog – I know these are popular with kids, but I swear to God, showing me a Sonic comic is like trying to get the dog to look at something on a TV screen. It’s just…my mind can’t even wrap around it, you know? This must be what it’s like to be a Newsarama commenter trying to read a Grant Morrison comic.
Anyway, that’s just me. Your mileage may vary, so go to your local comic shop and pick up a few. If you’re lucky enough to be near a store that’ll happily give you all of the FCBD books, get ’em all! What the hell, they’re free. And if you don’t like some of them…pass them on!
Speaking of the Bureau Chiefs, which I was several paragraphs ago, you may have missed this entry I made just prior to my End of Civilization post, with some weekend convention news involving some of my fellow Chiefs.
Warning: I will be bringing 3-5 5 year olds to the store. Prepare to be drained of comics. I will try to make sure the ramp doesn’t get totally trampled.
Today is Arbor Day. Tomorrow is FCBD. Take time today to celebrate trees. Then take time tomorrow to collect media garishly printed upon their destroyed and mutilated remains.
The Sonic comics are some of the first I ever read as a child.. I remember them fondly and even enjoy some of the older stories. I tried reading them again about a year ago.. There really aren’t any words for how terrible they’ve become. I have a ton of friends who still read these things, and they look at me like Satan spawn when I tell them I couldn’t. This is coming from some one who has a fairly advanced knowledge of the characters and universe.. I think I would rather pick up a X-book.
That the Overstreet book exists makes me sad.
Ah, geez, I don’t look at this site for a few days and miss that it was Free Comic Book Day, which I normally don’t care about, but finding out I missed out on something by Jim Woodring is a real soul-crusher.