Free Comic Book Day

[Red Oak Kid]

Just wondering what Free Comic Book Day means to the posters on this forum.

[Rob Allen]

It's the one day a year that I go to the local comic shop. I was busy this year so I couldn't stay and browse, but I always pick up as many of the FCBD freebies as they let me. This year they raised their limit from 5 per person to 10, and by the time I got there they only had 10 different books available. Some of them are flipbooks, so I almost picked up 2 copies of some of them before discovering that they were duplicates.

[The Confessor]

To me, it means FREE COMICS!

Actually, I don't partake in FCBD any more because Diamond Distribution made it prohibitively expensive for my LCS to partake in the event (or so the owner tells me). However, up until 2 or 3 years ago, he used to hold the event at his shop and I was always down there on the day. But I've gotta say that with the exception of a few Amazing Spider-Man one-shots that were rather good, and an EC horror sampler I picked up a few years back, every comic I've ever taken home from the event has turned out to be crap...and I used to make damn sure I got a copy of most things that were on offer in any given year.

[Romero]

Well, this year I brought both daughters with me, ages 5 and 8. They seemed into it, especially the younger one who is getting more interested in super-heroes, actually. Our shop gave out 10 books each. We all got some interesting stuff. The Archaia hardcover anthology book with the Mouse Guard story and a couple of other things was amazing. That Spider-man Season One book was crap. I didn't realize it was the 1,305,097th retelling of his origin. The flipbook thing gets a bit old because I would like a longer more complete story. However, FCBD did introduce to some books I truly love like Courtney Crumrin and Leave it to Chance.

[berk]

I've never really understood it. There aren't enough comics out there that appeal to me to make it likely that a random free one will be something I'll want to read.

But I have nothing against the idea. I suppose it just doesn't make any difference to me one way or another.

[inferno]

I got some FCBD editions of reprint classic comics.

One reprinted Crockett newspaper strips from 1942, another Moomin newspaper strips from 1956, and another a My Favorite Martian comic book from 1964.

The second LCS I went to had run out of most of the FCBD books, so they had put out some beat-up stuff from the $1/less box on the free table... I picked up the first two issues of Doug Moench's Captain Marvel (1979) and a 1982 issue of Roger Stern's Doctor Strange for free.

[Slam_Bradley]

The nearest comic shop is at least 70 miles from me. It means absolutely nothing.

[BlackagarBoltagon]

The nearest comic shop is at least 70 miles from me. It means absolutely nothing.

I'm in the same boat, except mine's a little closer. Not enough to make me drive there. I miss having a shop locally :(

[Jezebel Bond]

Just wondering what Free Comic Book Day means to the posters on this forum.

It means freebies...I give them away in sets of 3-4 especially if the kid is cute. My dealer and I also have Free Playboy day for our better customers...but that's another story.

[benday-dot]

I think Romero is onto the real purpose of FCBD. I haven't attended for a few years, but when I did it really seemed it was all about the kids, a neat opportunity for children to pick up some possibly fun reading material for free. That doesn't happen too often, so I think its a good thing. It seems to work as there were lineups of kids with their parents looking to discover or further expansion into the fun world of comics. I personally, as berk said, am not likely to find much in the random assortment of comics out there. Although, I did manage to pick up the delightful Cap and Avengers one-shot with great Chris Samnee art from a year or two ago.

[dupont2005]

I would have liked to attend, but I had plans this year for Cinco De Mayo. I've gone a few times. Sometimes fun, sometimes it's just "give me the free comic." The new LCS tries to be a hangout place. I don't hang out there, but I would have liked to stop by on Saturday and say Hi.

[Kid Montana]

I dont really get the concept as I have never participated. I have bought a few 'free' comics from Mile High over the last year however. Didn't make the connection until they arrived with FCBD on the cover. This year I bought a $50 book so I could get 10 of the FCBD books I wanted. Well, I want them for my kiddie section. I keep those out for my kids and their friends to read. I was waiting to buy that particular book until they had a decent give away, so it worked out well. Looking foreward to that Mouse Guard book though. For me the best free comics are the digital ones I download to the Ipad.

[grizla]

FCBD is great! I was really glald i remembered in time this year! I really liked the dark horse flip books adding up to 5 short stories (love buffy and firefly) i am planning to follow one new title that i found out about because of FCBD. The sales many stores put on are great for me too, i never have any $$$ for comics, so 25% of the whole store is a big deal for me, a chance to fill gaps in my titles without feeling too guilty. The hardback mouseguard is a very nice little book too.

[rasx]

I love getting anything free especially comics.
I got a few classic floppies like: predator vs magnus robot fighter, DC's judge dredd#1 and Star Trek#50.
Under the Avengers hype I also picked up Avengers X-sanction#1-4.

[dan bailey]

Just checked Wikipedia, & I see the promotion started in 2002; I would've first encountered it in 2005, judging from the publishing date on one of the books I bought. Don't recall what (if any) free ishes I might've picked up, but there must've been some decent sale on TPBs, because I picked up Essential Ant-Man (my first ever Essential) & the previously alluded to 2005 Gigantic volume Teenagers from Mars, because it looked interesting. I was also drawn to the long boxes out on the sidewalk offering some nominal number of comics for some nominal amount, probably something like 18 for $5. Having been away from the field for some 25 years, I had to struggle to make that minimum number, but my most significant choice, considering what came later, was Captain America #289. That was several hundred issues of various Cap series, & around 15,000 comics in general (not to mention somewhere in the neighborhood of probably 500 TPBs & HCs), ago.

The last two years, at least (I skipped 2010 out of a sense of guilt & embarrassment after financial difficulties forced me to drop my extensive pull list lock, stock & barrel only a few weeks earlier), the LCS in question (we've got two, the second of which moved across the street from the first one about 1 1/2 years ago, but I haven't darkened its door in 4 years or so) has run 50 percent off sales on new & used issues throughout the FBCD weekend, so well over 90 percent of my year's non-online (nonline?) shopping occurs then. (Otherwise, I drop by maybe 3 times a year to scour the $1 boxes.) Last year, that also extended to TPBs; this year, those were buy-2-get-1 or buy-5-get-5, so I stuck to comics. This time around, the half-off sale applied to brand-new releases as well; I think those were excluded a year ago.

No FBCD issues were left this year by the time I swung by (around 5:30 p.m., no doubt after lots of traffic from the Avengers showings across the street at the biggest cinema in town), so I don't know if I would've been interested in any of those. Last year I picked up, I believe, a Bongo Comics sampler of sorts & I think some sort of Archie special; those are always fun.