Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow, and there’s been a ton of mainstream news coverage over the past week or so — everything from the New York Times to local smalltown papers profiling their local store. As I’ve been collecting Spider-Man 3 movie news links all week, I’ve also been saving FCBD links in Bloglines … and currently I have just short of 50 of them saved. And since it’s tomorrow, I guess I need to post them today, don’t I? So let’s get to it …
Who’s doing what?
Let’s start with a recent one … Chris Butcher has a conversation with himself (I think) about the Comics Festival book he put together, as well as what The Beguiling in Toronto will be up to tomorrow.
Colleen Coover, meanwhile, posts on her blog that she’ll be at Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland … and provides a link to their commercial on YouTube:
On Creators Direct, Kody Chamberlain talks about Punks, the new comic he and Joshua Fialkov are putting out, and where the two of them will be on Free Comic Book Day.
And Robert Kirkman is hitting not one, not two, not even three, but four different states this weekend to promote his new Image Book, Wolf-Man, which will be available free tomorrow.
And of course, there’s always CAPE in Dallas.
For a complete list of creator signings, check out the FCBD web site.
What to get
Some shops limit the number of free comics you can take … so what do you pick? Well, Dorian, Popwatch, Pop Candy and our own Graeme McMillan have read’em and listed their favorites.
Media coverage
Over at Metroactive, Richard von Busack talks about the secret origins of FCBD:
The sixth annual Free Comic Book Day on May 5 seeks to hook up a new generation to comic book reading. All over North America and in 34 foreign countries, retailers will give away a free comic book to anyone who shows up. Some 10 million comics have been given away worldwide so far. The event originated locally in Joe Field’s Concord-based Flying Colors Comics, a direct comic sales store doing business now for almost two decades. Field says that he floated the idea in an article in the late 1990s in the Diamond Comics Distributor’s industry newsletter. “Originally it was going to be an open house,” Field remembers. He agrees that comic book stores can sometimes be intimidating to people who aren’t hardened rabid fans. Field was then inspired by local ice cream vendors Ben and Jerry and Baskin-Robbins’ practice of giving away free samples. At first, Field remembers, the comics given away weren’t the top of the line special editions made up for the big day today. But the event caught on. It spread from comic book stores to local libraries, which were eager to use comic books as a gateway drug to further reading.
The El Paso Times looks at a local creator whose book debuts on FCBD:
One El Pasoan is showcasing the mythology of El Paso in comic books and he is using a Hispanic superhero — El Valiente, born and bred in the Sun City — to fight these evil spirits.
“I’ve done comics in town for more than 10 years,” said Ray Ramos, the creator and writer of “El Valiente.” “Back then we talked about what makes a good story or a good character, and all those things pointed to the icons like Superman, Batman and heroes like that. But there were no real Latino characters that people could look up to like that.”
So it is appropriate — and coincidental — that the debut of the “El Valiente” comic book series will take place Saturday, also Cinco de Mayo and National Free Comic Book Day.
More stories …
–Arizona Republic
–Cleveland Plains Dealer
–Chicagoist
–Free-Lance Star (Va.)
–Green Bay Press Gazette
–Huntsville (Ala.) Times–Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin
–Miami News Times
–The Northwestern (Wisconsin)
–The Olympian
–Press & Sun-Bulletin, NY
–The Signal Item
–Times-Union, Indiana
–Torontoist
–WCAX, Vermont
The Blog@ team will be out and about at their various comic shops this weekend, so look for reports from them later on …
Comics must be free … so go free them this weekend!
May 5th, 2007 at 12:33 am
We started our Free Comic Book Day event at All New Comics 33 minutes ago (at Midnight), and it’s been terrific already with nearly a dozen raving Canucks already ordering their Free Comics and it’s just after midnight!