free comic book day

An exchange between a parent and a kid in our store:

Kid: “Hey, Free Comic Book Day is May 6th! That’s next Saturday!”

Parent: “We saw the comics they’re giving away, remember? There’s a reason they’re free.”

No love for the free comics, I guess.

Speaking of FCBD, I thought I’d do a search on the eBay to see what Free Comic Book Day 2006 goodies are already being auctioned off…and found someone selling the Superman/Batman reprint:

“I KNOW MANY OF YOU WONT GET THIS BOOK AT YOUR LOCAL COMIC SHOP. IT WAS OFFERED LATE, AFTER THE ORDERS WERE DUE AND COSTS MUCH MORE THAN THE STANDARD FCBD BOOKS. IT IS BRAND NEW, NEAR MINT & NEVER OPENED OR READ. IN SHORET SUPPLY. GET YOURS NOW WHILE I STILL HAVE A FEW TO SPARE.”

You know, if it’s in shoret supply in your area, e-mail me after May 6th and if we have any left over, I’ll send you one for free so long as you cover the shipping. We ordered pretty heavily on them, and should have some extras…unless FCBD is especially busy this year.

And, by the way, the wholesale price we paid for this comic is 29 cents per copy. For comparison, the Justice League, Donald Duck, and X-Men/Runaways giveaways were cheaper by a few cents, while Funny Book, Deadbeats/Soulsearchers, Scott Pilgrim, and Owly cost more. Keenspot is nearly twice the price. So the price for Superman/Batman isn’t really that out of line…it may be a little pricier than about half of the books, but it’s only 13 cents more expensive than the cheapest one.

---

Here, have an old Atom cartoon to watch…perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon:

“The Eternal Lady Death joins CGC”

“Scoop has just learned that The Lady Death Universe, published through Avatar Press, and CGC collectibles grading company today have announced a deal which makes CGC the official grading service of the Lady Death Universe.”

“The official grading service of the Lady Death Universe.” There’s no part of this that doesn’t hurt my head.

---

Former employee Kid Chris (see also 1, 2) is back and blogging. HUZZAH! Keep a closer eye on the comment spam this time, youngster.

---

Some random thoughts as I was sorting out the Free Comic Book Day offerings at work:

• A few of the contributors to FCBD seem to have missed the point: you’re trying to attract new readers, not drive them away. Woo boy, a couple of these things are downright stinky.
• A certain indie publisher might want to look into hiring a proofreader that knows a little something about how apostrophes are supposed to be used.
• So not only are there shit and balls jokes in the Wizard offering, but they’re the same shit and balls jokes from last time, since it’s basically the same book as the one they sent out last year (with some minor revisions in their Top 100 trade paperbacks list).
• For God’s sake, don’t give Fantagraphics’ Funny Book to kids. Or teens. Or uptight adults.
• It’s too bad the Star Wars/Conan comic Dark Horse is offering is a flip book…I would have given anything to see Conan fighting clone troopers on a shared cover.
• So far, the Owly comic looks like the best item for this year’s FCBD. Very charming, very appealing.

…brought us a new issue of Alias Comics’ Victoria’s Secret Service:

“Thrust yourself crotch-first — into danger!”

Anyway, unlike previous weeks, our distributor managed to do a good job this time around with shipping us everything that appeared on the invoice, with only minor shortages (missing one copy of Blue Beetle) and a damaged comic. We even got a couple more copies of that issue of Spider-Girl we’d been shorted.

However, speaking of Blue Beetle…all you people who gnashed your teeth and tore your garments over the previous Blue Beetle biting the big one a few months back, all you folks who never read a single issue of a Blue Beetle comic and had fading memories of his appearances in 15-year-old Justice League comics who claimed your great love for the character, you’d better damn well buy this new Blue Beetle #1 or I’m going to go to your house and kick your ass.

Why, yes, I am well-regarded for my customer service, why do you ask?

We also received our t-shirts for Free Comic Book Day (May 6th, mark your calendars) with a reasonable amount of lead time, this time. That year we got them the Wednesday before the FCBD event…well, what good did that do, really? We need more time than that to be walking billboards, and thankfully we got that time this year.

Other new comic day notes:

Zombie Tales: The Dead #1 – another zombie-anthology, served up Boom! Studios-style, which short, (mostly) dark-humored stories about the shambling dead. All are good, but the standout to me was “Deadest Meat” by Keith Giffen and Ron Lim (whose work I haven’t seen in a while). This first person point-of-view story, told from the zombie’s perspective, gives us a look at a zombie semi-society that forms on a remote beach. Unique and particularly pathos-ridden, given the lead character’s awareness of the hopelessness of his situation, and the fate that awaits him. Worth the price of admission, but the rest of the book is entertaining as well.

All-Star Superman #3 – One of the stated purposes of this series was to evoke the Silver Age-era Superman stories, which short tales crammed full of bizarre ideas and memorable characters. The first two issues, while beautiful and engaging, and filled with odd concepts, still seemed just a tad…off from the Silver Age ideal, I guess. But this issue…Superman is confronted by competing heroes, who challenge him for Lois Lane…a challenge resolved in a remarkably schoolyard fashion. And I think that was the difference necessary. The Superman family of the Silver Age are immature, reacting to each other in childish ways. Just this wee bit of callback to those days in All-Star Superman was all it took to bring the Silver Age feel rushing back, at least for me.

Savage Dragon #124 – I love covers that look “pre-distressed” (even if they constantly make me do double-takes as I come across them in back-issues). Plus, this cover “liberates” one of my favorite Marvel story titles ever: “The Dismal Dregs of Defeat!”

Robin Screwso #1 – I can’t decide if this adult comic’s title is genius or stretching for a joke. It apparently involves a gal on an island, if you need help with the pun.

Superman/Batman #24 – I just read this comic, and I have no idea what’s going on. I think once #25 comes out, I’m gonna have to read the whole story from beginning to end and puzzle it out. Perhaps refreshing my memory with previous installments will help.

Star Wars: Return of Tag & Bink Special Edition #1 – Never enough funny Star Wars comics, for my money. Tag and Bink bumble their way through the movies’ events, with a particularly amusing revelation regarding just how exactly a blind Han Solo was able to so easily defeat Boba Fett on Jabba’s skiff. Fett fans who are utterly convinced of the character’s “coolness” may not want to read this issue.

East Coast Rising #1 – A Tokyopop original American manga…no, wait, don’t run away! This is a good’un, by a certain Becky Cloonan whom you may remember from Demo, and it’s all piratey and stuff. Give it a look.

---

For reading this far, you get a Superman Peanut Butter commercial, as found on the YouTube.

Things Kid Chris said to me at work today:

“Say, I like Blue Beetle…what’s he up to nowadays?”

“So, is Gladstone Gander like the Longshot of the Disney Universe?”

---

Given some of the comments left on my post from earlier today, I thought I’d describe how we handled the Free Comic Book Day event at our store.

As pal Dorian had noted, we divided up the FCBD comics into three packages…All Ages, Teen, and Adult, to be given away to the appropriate age group. And we didn’t limit the customer to just one of the packages…if they were old enough, people could take one of each package, thus allowing them to get every FCBD comic that was released this year.

We rearranged the front of the store, placing two large tables right inside the front door where we had the packages laid out, as well as copies of FCBD books left over from previous years, and extras from this year’s assortment. Oh, and not to mention the free Batman Heroclix and the little FCBD Mini-mate. We planted a couple people behind the table to greet the customers (including the cheeriest of our crew, the aforementiond Kid Chris) and pass out the goodies.

Within about three hours we blew through all of our previously prepared packages of comics and had to rush to make more. We had a steady flow of customers throughout the day, with only the very occasional lull. Plus, nearly everyone who came in didn’t just grab the freebies and run. Most people bought something as well (sometimes just a comic, sometimes a stack of trade paperbacks).

So, all in all, it was a successful day. We gave away a lot of comics, made a lot of people happy (including our regular customers, a bunch of new customers, including lots of kids), and we managed to make a little money that day as well. Well done, well done…drinks are on me!

Plus, as per usual we had a few people come into the store today going “oh, wait, Free Comic Book Day was yesterday?” Don’t worry – we gave ’em free comics anyway.

---

I know someone else out on the Comicsweblogosphere must have linked this sometime recently, but it took my old pal Evilbeard to finally get me to look at Something Awful’s photoshopping shenanigans regarding the Brandon Routh Superman. It’s all worth it for the Composite Superman at the bottom of this page.

---

As announced in this post of mine, I have an extra copy of Couscous Express to give away, and all you gotta do is send your name and address to contest (at) progressiveruin.com to enter the random drawing. Deadline is Friday, May 20th…please see this post for rules and restrictions.

Pal Dorian‘s Free Comic Book Day polo shirt with the tasteful embroidered logo arrived today, so he can now show us FCBD t-shirt-wearin’ types just how high-falutin and fancy-pantsian he is with his “collar” and his “buttons.”

Well, that’s fine, because I have an even better article of clothing with which to advertise the coming free funnybook event: my Free Comic Book Day Speedos:

As customers enter the store between now and the magic day, I can approach them, my tanned and oiled body glistening in the light of the fluorescent fixtures, and, with an exaggerated flair, gesture toward the logo emblazoned upon the front of my snugly-fitting trunks while proclaiming the day of free comics is soon, so soon, upon us all! And I shall know, by the looks in their faces, their mighty gratitude for this timely and effective reminder.

Look at what we dug up from the back room…a pristine Walt Simonson Thor promotional poster, featuring Beta Ray Bill! Cool, huh?

Anyway, that darn Free Comic Book Day…in the week or so prior to the day in question, pal Dorian, Kid Chris, and myself divided up all the FCBD comics into age-appropriate packages (more or less how Laura split them up). We had several long boxes filled with these packages…and halfway through our day, we’d given them all away. We had plenty of spares of most of these books so we slapped together more packages…plus we had tables filled with some leftovers from previous FCBDs. Altogether, we had plenty of happy customers with armloads of free books…including several people I’d never seen before, which was the very purpose of FCBD, wasn’t it?

Traffic through the store was steady, without being swamped…and we had relatively few problems, aside from a kid who kept badgering whoever happened to be monitoring the FCBD tables for the “adult” bag of freebies (Dorian was about one nose-hair away from tossing him out), and there was a group of people at the end of the day that, while they seemed nice enough, had some…odd requests, but Dorian called dibs on telling you about them, so watch his space.

By the way, despite the fact that we did order it (I double-checked!), the FCBD book A Bunch of Baboons was a no-show for us. Apparently some stores got them (Joanna got her mitts on a copy which she reviews here), so I’m kind of wondering if they’re going to show up in a couple weeks…and if they do, we darn well better not get charged for them.

In other news:

• I was taking a look through my girlfriend’s copy of the Amazing Spider-Man: 500 Covers hardcover book…it’s a nice, if slightly overpriced, overview of Spidey’s history, featuring clear color scans of all the issues, alternating between 1 to 4 images per page. Now, I can understand if the conditions on the earlier issues are a little shaky…after all, Marvel Comics of the period were printed on really awful paper. However, once you start getting into the 1970s, better-conditioned copies of the books should be a lot more common. If you’re going to be putting together an archival book like this, you’d make an effort to get the nicest-looking books possible, right? Again, I’ll cut them slack on the early issues…but if you get a chance, take a look at the copy of #159 (from 1976!) that they used. It’s a rag, with serious tears and flaking along the edges. So no one working on this book could find a copy of this comic in at least fine? Okay, maybe there were deadline issues that I don’t know about and they didn’t have time to go searching for a replacement, and I’m sure the people working on this book weren’t happy with the conditions of some of the comics either, but it’s still a shame.

  Oh, and I did spot a minor typo: it’s “Liz Allen,” not “Allan.” Also, in the cover credits section in the back, they indicate that the cover artist for #267 is unknown. You’d think Marvel would have records on an issue that recent…I mean, someone had to get paid for drawing that picture, right? Well, this site says it’s Bob McLeod, and that looks right to me.

• Regarding John Byrne’s Doom Patrol…well, pal Tom relates his story about how, upon finding out from me that Doom Patrol #1 picks up from the recent Claremont/Byrne JLA arc, he couldn’t put it back on the shelf fast enough. And, unfortunately, that’s mostly been the case over the last few days…people pick it up off the shelf, briefly look inside, then put it back. That doesn’t exactly bode well. And before anyone in the Byrne fan forum claims it’s because I’m a bad retailer, let me counter the reasons they usually give in their retailer horror stories:

  1. I don’t badmouth comics or creators in the store. In fact, I happen to be a fan of Byrne’s comics.

  2. We ordered plenty of copies of Doom Patrol #1, and they’re prominently displayed.

  3. We even put the promo poster for the series right there above the new comics racks.

  4. I really like the Doom Patrol (I even own all the original 60s issues), and want to see a series featuring that team do well.

  Unfortunately, that first issue just isn’t grabbing people so far…perhaps, as I’d mentioned last week, it’s because it feels too much like part 7 of that JLA arc, and people may have had enough of that vampire story. Not kicking off with a brand new storyline may have been a mistake, and possibly the focus on the new characters at the very beginning of the issue may have turned off those people expecting more with the original members of the team. (And yes, I know, the original members dominate the last 2/3rd of the comic.) I’ve seen the solicitations for future issues of this series, and they sound much more interesting to me, but if people aren’t starting with issue #1, they’re probably not going to jump on with #3. (Though if there’s good word of mouth, it does occasionally happen…it’s happening right now with She-Hulk.)

• Found via Chris Karath’s weblog: Toonzone has a list of forthcoming Justice League Unlimited episodes, which includes an adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s story from Superman Annual #11, “For The Man Who Has Everything.” I’m sure everyone else knows about this already, but hey, I’m excited!

Just a quick rundown of a couple of today’s new comics, since I’ve got to run like the bunny to the theatre tonight for that Spider-Man movie.

• Star Wars Tale #20 was probably the single best-selling issue of this series ever at the store…we only had a couple left by the end of the day. The reason? This is the all-indie creators issue! If a James Kochalka Boba Fett story, Jar Jar Binks stories by Peter Bagge and Tony Millionaire, and “Young Lando Calrissian” by Gilbert Hernandez don’t convince you to buy this comic, then truly there is no love in your heart. (Bagge drawing Jar Jar…never has there been a greater match of a cartoonist to a character.)
  

• Batman: Harley and Ivy #3 is probably the strongest issue of the three-issue series…a big Hollywood movie is being made of our favorite felonious damsels, and H & I decide that there’s big money to be made by taking over production of the film and skimming off its overblown budget. You’ll see the ending coming a mile away, but it’s still a lot of fun.
  

• Doom Patrol #1 is really sort of all over the place…I am a fan of John Byrne’s art, so I think it at least looks nice. The story…well, it would have been nice if it didn’t feel like “Part 7” of the JLA story this series spun out of, and the new Doom Patrol members don’t really do anything for me. Hopefully once we’re done with the whole vampire thing, we can get on to more interesting storylines. I really do like the new visual interpretation of Negative Man, however.
  

Also of note is the arrival of three more Free Comic Book Day comics…Slave Labor Stories #2 (with all new Milk ‘n’ Cheese, Street Ninja, and Dr. Radium strips, among others, plus an excerpt from the forthcoming Bill ‘n’ Ted collections that will make more sense in context, I promise), that Avatar Press thing I didn’t even get a chance to look at, and, a special surprise comic, Dungeons & Dragons: Crisis in Raimiton which is…um, fairly dire. It’s supposed to give you the flavor of what a Dungeons and Dragons game is like, with kids gathering around a table, rolling up characters, and going on an “adventure,” which is of course dramatized with drawings of stock fantasy characters running around in stone corridors fighting zombies and whatnot. Also, all the lettering (captions and dialogue) are just printed in white letters against colored backgrounds…not a caption box or word balloon to be found. Hoo boy.

Ack! Look at the time…I gotta run. Tomorrow I’ll let you know how Spider-Man 2 is…assuming I’m not in jail for beating the daylights out of some idiot talking on his cell phone during the movie. (Not that any jury would convict me.)

1. Hey, I beat Rich Johnston to the punch on the whole “Vanlentino” thing with my post last Friday. We both even used variations on the same “mistreating the former boss”-type jokey reference. (Yeah, I know, big deal.)

2. Over in Tony Isabella’s most recent column, Tony writes a nice tribute to this son that includes images of classic Superboy comics. (Two words: “iron booties.”)

3. I’m going to blatantly steal from Laura and post one of these things right here:

to remind those five of you reading this webpage who didn’t already know that free comics are to be had from your local friendly comic book retailer, unless of course you’re out of town since it’s the Fourth of July weekend and all (darn you, Marvel!).

3a. Speaking of Free Comic Book Day, A Bunch of Baboons hasn’t shown up on our invoices yet…we received most of our books last week, and Slave Labor Stories and that Avatar book are coming in this week. We did order A Bunch of Baboons, but it may be this year’s “late to the FCBD party” book. If any of you folks out there get copies of this from your local store, please let me know.

4. Totally stolen from pal Andy: the Lines on Paper Cartoonist Business Card Gallery.

As I’d mentioned earlier in the week, we’ve received our Free Comic Book Day swag this week…well, most of it, anyway, so hopefully the couple of titles that are still AWOL will arrive next Wednesday. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon sorting out the books and deciding what funnybooks go in what package — what we’ve done for the last FCBDs is divide the comics up into three different assortments intended for different age groups. We have an All Ages bag, a Teen bag, and an Adult bag, and we plant someone at a table by the front door to distribute these goodies to all interested parties. It’s worked fine so far.

I took a few home with me today, and pal Dorian took one of each home, so you can expect him to post a pretty thorough overview of the titles sometime next week, prior to the actual Free Comic Book Day event itself. Since he’s gonna do that, I’ll just make some brief notes:

• Okay, so Jim Valentino is no longer publisher of Image Comics — is that any reason to misspell his name on the Image freebie’s normalman back cover ad? (“Vanlentino.”)
  

• On the other hand, the Image book does have a new Invincible story, so that’s nice.
  

• The Sore Thumbs Election Special digest from Keenspot was a pleasant surprise…cute, and very entertaining, though probably not recommended for those of you who prefer Dennis Miller’s political humor over David Cross’.
  

• Wild About Comics! from About Comics is worth picking up just for the Licensable Bear story alone. (The rest of the book is pretty good, too.)
  

• Keenspot Spotlight 2004 is a nice package…digest-sized like the Sore Thumbs Election Special, and it’s 112 pages long with over a couple dozen different series represented. You’re bound to find something in here to enjoy. And heck, it’s free, don’t complain.
  

• James Kochalka (Superstar) is in two, count ’em, two FCBD comics this time around — Alternative Comics and Top Shelf Tales. His Peanut Butter and Jeremy comic was one of the break-out hits of FCBD past for us (Queen and Country and Courtney Crumrin being a couple others), so it’s nice to see him participate again.
  

So, here’s hoping the rest of our FCBD books show up next week…the Slave Labor Stories issue is being greatly looked forward to by our customers, and that’s one of the missing ones, so it better come in with our next shipment!

EDIT: Glad to see no one (as I post this, anyway) is trying to sell the new FCBD books on eBay (just the ones from previous years), but some people are trying to sell the FCBD Catwoman movie promo cards. Hmm.