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Once again, I collected (almost) all of the Free Comic Book Day offerings, and offer my reviews on what’s good, what’s great, and what should have been better!
Titles are arranged alphabetically by publisher, and the images and summaries come from the offical FCBD website. My comments are in purple.
What did you grab? What did you enjoy?
Kid Friendly Titles
ANTARCTICS ZOMBIE KID
(CA) David Hutchinson
All 6th-grader Bill Stokes wants is to get through middle school unnoticed so he can go on to become a big-time pro video-gamer. Then his mom comes home from her medical research volunteer job with a zombie virus. Now Bill has to deal with skin problems and body chemistry changes that make puberty look like a walk in the park! How’s he supposed to realize his dream when his life has become a festering, rotting, undead nightmare?
MOUSE GUARD LABYRINTH & MORE HC
(C) David Petersen
This Free Comic Book Day, Archaia offers readers the chance to experience history in the making with a FREE, gorgeous, 48-page, 6″ x 9″ full-color original anthology hardcover featuring all-new material! David Petersen returns with an all-new Mouse Guard tale that’s guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings! Lose yourself once again in Jim Henson’s amazing world of Labyrinth, featuring a fantastical story from Eisner Award-nominee Ted Naifeh (Courtney Crumrin) and Cory Godbey (Fraggle Rock). Get a new perspective on Jet Jones in Royden Lepp’s
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Got kids? Nieces? Nephews? Students? Or just love reading something fun and not too heavy-handed? Here are some new titles you might enjoy!
(But first, the serious boilerplate:)
So, here’s what caught my eye. Please comment below, and please feel free to mention titles I may have marginalized or overlooked. My tastes are eclectic, but there’s stuff which doesn’t interest me, or doesn’t evoke much of a response. I respect everyone who manages to publish something, but with some 400 graphic novel titles a month, I have to be selective.
CAVEAT: As I discovered while doing the publisher posts, that some titles have been canceled or postponed. The titles below, the information is subject to change. Some may already be out and on sale, some may be vaporous. Covers and text are supplied by the publishers.
Oh, and the advisory: I am employed as a bookseller. Nothing I say here or anywhere else online has any connection to my employer. I know my employer can take umbrage at any association people may make between my private and professional activities, so I’m careful to let Lions Mane Jellyfish be.
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Betty & Veronica: Best Friends Forever
Dan Parent
Trade paperback, $9.99
9781879794764, 1879794764
Author Bio: Dan Parent (born 1964 in St. Albans, Vermont) is an American comic book artist and writer best known for his work for Archie Comics. A graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Parent began working for Archie immediately after graduation. His writing of the Love Showdown series from 1994 received widespread attention. Parent has also illustrated Felix the Cat, Barbie, Disney Adventures, and a wide variety of other titles.
Summary: Betty & Veronica’s very first full-length graphic novel story is another major step forward for the Archie book line! A follow-up to the successful full color Betty & Veronica: Storybook graphic novel collection of fun fairy-tale sendups—Best Friends Forever should continue to gain ground with girls in bookstores and libraries.
Features an engaging story celebrating the power of friendship featuring the most famous BFFs in all of comics in an all-out reality show friendship competition!
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Hades: Lord of the Dead
George O’Connor
Hardcover, $16.99
9781596437616, 1596437618
Author Bio: GEORGE O’CONNOR is the author of several picture b
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Zenescope is one of those publishers that hangs around the middle of the pack; they’ve been at it for a while, and if they don’t sell giant numbers or have household name hits, they are still at it, occasionally pacting with Discovery or putting out a kids line or doing something else to expand their line.
But the bread and butter that keeps Zenescope afloat is cheesecake — especially of the variant we like to call “loincloth comics.” It’s like the ’90s “Bad Girl” era never went away for GRIMM FAIRY TALES, their flagship title, which features skimpily clad girls thrusting their body parts at various fairy tale based characters on the covers. Sometimes tacky, but harmless.
Just how popular is this stuff? At the recently concluded C2E2, Zenescope released a special edition of issue #57 of the title by bad girl artist Eric Basaldua (also known as ebas). This is the regular cover by Joe Brusha and Pasquale Qualano.
And this is the special C2E2 variant:
But there was also a super duper, extra limited 250-copy “Naughty Variant” cover by Basaldua in which the comely lass is exploring new frontiers in naughtiness by making a rude gesture, wearing sunglasses and wearing even skimpier panties.
Copies of this variant are currently selling for over $150 on eBay.
Paging Wimbledon Green! Just who are these rabid collectors willing to shell out a benjamin for a little extra ass?
There’s gold in them thar panties!
Yo Gabba Gabba AND Mike Allred together at the same time? Oh wow!
The Guild is a show on YouTube and Dark Horse occasionally releases comics based on it written by Felicia Day and drawn by one of the greatest comic artists alive, Jim Rugg.
I badly want the KaBoom book with the Adventure Time story.
I’m really jealous people live in places where they can get these books. I’ve never had such an opportunity.
Sources at Diamond tell me that stores can order FCBD titles by the PIECE. Given the lead time in announcing the titles, one could conceivably preorder a complete set of comics very cheaply. (25 cents a copy?)
Of course, this is a slippery slope… some stores might start selling complete sets on eBay.
Thanks for this! I didn’t get a chance to read all the ones I wanted, like the 2000AD one, so this was helpful. I took my friend and baby cousin to Graham Crackers Comics in Chicago, and everyone got a copy of The New 52 freeborn with a special cover that allowed 3free Comics from select boxes… in the future! I think it was a good way to get pepper in the door and KEEP them coming.
The Pedestrian Palm was probably the best five pages I read on the FCBD. “Sell-outs assemble!” So awesome!
In hindsight, I should have grabbed that Mouse Guard HC but this was a great opportunity to pick up some kid-friendly books for my students.
Marvel’s Season One hardcovers are coming out approximately bimonthly. Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and X-Men were all on my retailer’s shelf yesterday.
“The Rock of Eternity and what may be the seven letters of Shazam! ”
Shazam has only 6 letters, unless the exclamation counts. But there are 7 deadly sin (and possibly there opposite?)
Love “The Guild” and pretty much everything Felicia Day touches. She first caught my attention in “Dr. Horrible.” I am surprised to see that you were unaware of the web series. Day has a new channel on YouTube — http://www.youtube.com/user/geekandsundry — where you can see “The Guild” and other projects.
My local stores had very few FCBs left by the time I came by, but the Bongo comic caught my eye. I flipped through it and left it there.
Mostly it was a day of saying hello to the managers, and browsing the sales they offered on ‘already read’ copies of GNs.
One shop had 20 people in line at the cash at 2pm, the next shop had ‘zip’.
Torsten: The Guild is a webseries written, produced and starring Felicia Day from Dr. Horrible and Eureka (and last week’s episode of Supernatural). There have been five seasons — each equivalent in combined time to one episode of a TV series. They have aired via Xbox, MSN and a couple other places I forget and each season but are also available on DVD, which is how I got it. The first season is *very* rough — hey, nobody else had really done a webseries to this extent back then — but the DVD I got had both season 1 and season 2, so I can tell you that it grows in quality.
The Guild is an hilarious look at a group of players of an unnamed World-of-Warcraft-like game. Very droll comedy that should appeal to the geekiest, nerdiest fans of The Big Bang Theory and Community.
So far, Dark Horse has published eight comics, a 3-issue miniseries, siumply called “The Guild,” written by Felicia Day and centering around her character, Codex. (All of the characters are referred to by the names of their in-game characters.) And five more one-shots each co-written by Day each charater’s corresponding actor: Vork, Bladezz, Clara, Tink and Zaboo. The miniseries has already been collected into a TPB and I expect that a TPB of the one-shots will be published before the end of the year.
You don’t need to have seen the webseries to appreciate the comics. They’re mostly backstory. Hilarious backstory, especially the absolutely insane Zaboo tale illustrated by Backy Cloonan. I’ve never been a gamer, but this was one of those circumstances where I was hooked by the sample pages of the first issue of the miniseries that ran in Previews.
Hope that helps! The series is a blast!
Something curious I’m noticing about FCBD comics, as each year goes by. I could swear when it first began most of the books were full done-in-one stories. Now many of them appear to be nothing more than glorified teaser previews. I’m not sure that’s the best way to get people to read comics. I mean, I get it, but still. My boyfriend came to his very first FCBD, and he was disappointed to learn most of the books weren’t full stories, but rather teasers of things he was going to have to buy down the line…
Doh! Forgot about the 2000 AD one, oh well, my store didn’t have it. Love Atomic Robo’s free comic book day…love Doctor Dinosaur.
Interesting comment about the teasers…
Most of these comics did have at least one complete story, even if the rest of the comic was teaser/ads.
Bongo, Dark Horse (both), Boom (all three), Valiant (half), Donald Duck, My Favorite Martian, Archie (both), 2000 AD, Avengers, DC Nation (half), Atomic Robo, Yo Gabba Gabba…
My store limited subscribers to two comics so I picked up the Bongo and the Kaboom issues.
I really liked the Adventure Time story in the Kaboom issue. Oddly it was paired with a Peanuts story, which I understand was a limited series and now finished? Should have paired it with Snarked, another excellent Kaboom title.
The Peanuts content was already available as a #0 issue last November. They should have paired it with the new Garfield series using cover #1B!