Wow, I just checked the calendar and it turns out there are only fourteen more shopping days until Christmas. And, more importantly, there are only 141 more days until Free Comic Book Day!

The FCBD Committee just released the slate of titles that their “Gold” level sponsors will be producing to have participating retailers give away on May 1st.

Newsarama.com proper has a list of the titles here, if you’d like to see who’s doing what and start getting excited about one of ‘em now.

I know 141 days seems like quite a ways away yet, but I don’t think it’s too early to start judging the books yet, right? At the very least, we can judge the covers, and start congratulating or complaining about the various publishers’ outreach efforts.

So let’s do so, after the jump!

War of the Supermen #0 (DC Comics)

This is probably the book we know the most about at this point, given that DC announced some details regarding it this week, which has been a pretty big week of DC announcing things.

It’s going to be by the Blackest Night: Superman creative team of James Robinson and Eddy Barrows, and lead into an event that the Superman franchise has been building to for the past year.

It strikes me as a bit of an odd choice, given the fact that the Superman titles are relatively unpopular at the moment (and while those creators are definitely representative of the quality of a lot of DCU books at the moment given how many they work or have worked on, they don’t seem to have a lot of beyond-the-Direct Market appeal).

On the other hand, it’s not hard to see why DC is going this route. Blackest Night is enormously, even historically successful for the company, and it kicked off in earnest with last year’s FCBD offering. War of The Supermen is, similarly, a franchise-specific mini-event that can easily be grown to include more of the line if it hits with the audience.

(For some more judging this book by its cover, you may want to check out Christopher Butcher’s post “The 5 Things Wrong With DC’s War of the Supermen #0 Cover.” Wait, I don’t see Krypto on that cover—that makes six things wrong.)

Iron Man/Thor (Marvel Comics)

As the title indicates, Marvel’s offering will be focused on Iron Man and Thor, two-thirds of the trio that traditionally made up the core of the Avengers team. Where’s Captain America, exactly? I don’t know, but it may have something to do with Iron Man 2 opening six days after FCBD, and the Thor film opening the following May. The First Avenger: Captain America won’t open until July of 2011.

Whether or not this ends up being a good jumping on point will likely hinge on the exact focus of the book. If it’s able to translate the things people seemed to like about the Iron Man movie into a comic book and promising that more of it exists in Marvel’s line of books, it could work (Matt Fraction seems to have done a pretty decent job of that in the Invincible Iron Man monthly, so there’s certainly hope).

Doctor Solar/Magnus (Dark Horse Comics)

Perhaps the most interesting superhero release of the day is this one, which features “The dawn of a new age of superhero excitement” presenting “the return of two of the most legendary characters in the annals of comics.”

They’ve got the hyperbole part down!

Dark Horse is going to be launching new comics featuring the two characters, and they’re going to be written by Jim Shooter, who is one of the industry’s more experienced hands and colorful personalities. Both characters are long-lived, but were perhaps most recently popular as part of Shooter’s own Valiant Comics line of books.

Of all Dark Horse’s properties, these don’t seem like the ones most likely to hook DM outsiders, but I could certainly see it appealing to readers already making a weekly trip to the shop—particularly those who enjoyed Valiant back in the day.

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #155 1/2 (IDW Publishing)

Now that’s a nostalgia comic done right! Marvel may have long ago lost the license to publish G.I. Joe comics, but theirs remain the ones that fans are most fond of. IDW is apparently picking up where Marvel left off, complete with writer Larry Hama and the numbering (The Marvel series ended with #155 back in 1994).

The G.I. Joe concept seems a perennially popular one, so while this is most likely to appeal to those of us who remember the Marvel series and still read comics, I can see nine-year-old boys of all ages—even actually nine-year-old boys—picking this up.

Archie Summer Splash! #1 (Archie Comics)

Well, it’s got Betty and Veronica in bathing suits on the cover…

Mouse Guard/Fraggle Rock (Archaia Entertainment)

The title made me pretty excited at first glance, as I pictured a crazy-ass team-up between the two franchises (a la Superman/Batman), but the description says “Two amazing all-new stories in one fantastic flip-book!” so it’s safe to assume the guard mice and the Fraggles won’t cross paths. (But imagine two mice sword fighting atop a Doozer tower while a Fraggle, unaware of the conflict, eats it right out from under them!)

It’s interesting to see a Fraggle Rock comic though. Boom! has the Muppets, Tokyopop was doing Labyrinth and Dark Crystal comics…and Archaia since acquired the rights for those two licenses, plus MirrorMask and The Storyteller. Now all we need is someone to start doing some Sesame Street comics and we’ll have the Henson-verse just about covered.

David Petersen’s Mouse Guard is a perfect comics advocate in and of itself, appealing to a rather wide swathe of comics readers and potential comics readers, so it’s a good choice for a book like this. I’m not sure how much appeal the Fraggles have these days, but they’ve been off my radar—beyond the theme song being stuck in my head for almost 30 years now—pretty much since I was part of that target demographic.

Kizoic Presents: Shrek & The Penguins of Madagascar (Ape Entertainment)

I guess Boom won’t be the only publisher cranking out comics based on popular computer-animated movie franchises.

This book will feature four stories of upcoming Shrek and Penguins of Madagascar comics. Given his picture book to film origins, Shrek seems like a pretty natural fit for comic book expansion. I’m less sure of the penguins’ ability to go from film to comics stars—they don’t operate in the fluid, flexible premise that Shrek does—but kids sure seem to like those movies, so who knows.

Toy Story (Boom Studios)

And speaking of Boom and their comics base d on popular computer-animated movie franchises, this book will be out just before the summer in which Toy Story 3 comes out, so it’s well positioned to capitalize on whatever enthusiasm kids may have for it.

Yow! The John Stanley Library (Drawn and Quarterly)

According to Drawn and Quarterly’s blog, this will feature Nancy, Melvin Monster, 13 Going on 18, Choo Choo Charlie and Tubby (Yes! Tubby!). It’s going to be designed by Seth, whose been doing the design work for the John Stanley Library volumes DQ has been publishing. They’re all-ages friendly kids books, so should appeal to kids as well as fans of great comics of any age.

Fractured Fables (Image Comics)

This title’s similarity to a segment of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show makes me a little uncomfortable. It’s apparently going to consist of a preview of an upcoming anthology from Image’s Silverline imprint, and there are a lot of talented folks doing work for Image and Silverline, so it’s definitely one to take a look at.

So, what looks good to you guys so far? Anyone super-excited about any of these?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 11:07 am and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.