Today Is Free Comic Book Day 2009



Today is Free Comic Book Day, a promotion by participating stores in the Direct Market of hobby and comics shops whereby they provide free comic books of various types to their faithful customers and to interested members of the public that may become their customers. Several of the stores turn the event into a wider celebration of comics with sales, creator appearances and the like. This year it's set to tie into the Wolverine movie, I guess to facilitate feature-article interest by local media and maybe even piggyback onto anyone that might see the movie and wish to read a comic book. I'm only guessing about that part because there doesn't seem to be any promotional comic tied directly into that movie, although there is a video by actor Hugh Jackman that nearly made Dave Olbrich's head explode.

Here's the page for the promotion. Start there. Not every store does it, and not every store does it with an equal amount of professionalism and passion, so if I had a comic book shop in my area -- or several shops -- I'd just find them in the yellow pages and then call them and ask if they have anything going on.

That's my way of saying I was sort of super-confused by the FCBD stuff I received this year. It may be my fault; I'm not sure. It seemed like I got very little that painted a bigger picture and a lot of stuff that painted smaller, diverging pictures. I received material from a few comic book stores about their individual goings-on, but none that I can recall from an official representative of the promotion. I got stuff from a few publishers calling attention to their books, one even saying which stores were carrying their books. That's nice to know and everything, but I can't fathom doing much more with a bunch of different lists or individual appearances except running them in my letters page as PR. So I did. As much as I feel compelled to cover the event as an event, my site's not really a publicity platform to make sure everyone's specific FCBD gets as much of a boost as possible.

I'd suggest that next year one of the aims of Free Comic Book Day be a more thorough gathering all of the Free Comic Book Day information into one place because that seems to me what an industry-wide event means. As it is, I can't even imagine those sites that run every single comics-related press release with breathless wonder being able to make sense of what I got this week. I didn't even get close to everything.

Anyway, here's what I received as PR.

* J. Chris Campbell On Appearing In Greenville, Wide Awake Press Free Download (PR)
* JP Coovert On One Percent Press And FCBD (PR)
* Eric Reynolds On FCBD at the Fantagraphics Store (PR)
* Josh Blair On Candy Or Medicine FCBD Special (PR)
* Dylan Williams On Sparkplug's, Teenage Dinosaur's and Tugboat Press' FCBD (PR)
* John Kovaleski On Free Bo Nanas And Appearing In York PA (PR)
* Robert Brown On FCBD In Athens (PR)
* Paul Richardson On Starting FCBD A Day Early (PR)
* Jeremy Cesarec On Zot! FCBD Giveaway (PR)

And here are covers for every FCBD comic that I would pick up (in addition to the Fantagraphics effort shown above) were I closer to three hours from a comic shop. I will look to pick up at these books at future convention appearances if they're offered. (The Comics Festival one, for instance, should be all over next week's TCAF if you're going.)










Finally, here's Kiel Phegley with some tips on how to make the day more enjoyable.

It's a great day to go to a comic shop, and I hope you'll look into visiting any that are near to where you are.
 
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