Free Comic Book Day Special! In celebration of this year’s FCBD, Saturday, May 3rd at participating comic shops, NMAH takes a look at some of the ways comic junkies can get a free fix without resorting to a five finger discount.
FCBD Giveaways
[Oni] Free Scott Pilgrim
Writer/Artists: Bryan Lee O’Malley, Andy Helms
Many of the comics given away on Free Comic Book Day are old material that was easy to find the first time, reissued in an effort to pull in readers, usually kids, who weren’t interested before. Low risk and, sadly, low reward, as FCBD is not known for hooking return customers. Free samples work so well in the drug trade. Not sure why that doesn’t translate to the comic industry. I guess the addictiveness of comic books varies from person to person. Anyways, in among the retreads and sneak previews, you can find some original content created just for FCBD. Like this: an all-new Scott Pilgrim adventure, and the first appearance of Fearless Griggs.
Scott, his girlfriend Ramona, and his cool gay roommate Wallace are off to see Brokeback Mountain – Wallace’s treat, as usual – when they’re attacked by ninja! Ninja in the form of teen sensation Winifred Hailey, a Hilary Duff analogue. Awesomenosity ensues. Pretty much essential reading for Pilgrim fans; the quality’s right up there with the regular series, and while there aren’t any plot details you’ll need to remember later, it fits perfectly into continuity.
Then there’s The Aggressive Adventures of Fearless Griggs, by Andy Helms, wherein Griggs fights a giant fish. It’s silly, and reads like it was cobbled together in five minutes. There’s probably more humor in the regular series, as in Helms’ other work, but it’s not the place to look for depth. If you missed out on it before, the complete issue is available for download at Oni’s website.
[Dark Horse] Star Wars
Writer: Miles Lane
Penciler: Nicola Scott
Just Star Wars. The indicia refers to it as Star Wars – Free Comic Book Day Special 2005, but the cover dispenses with the subtitles that regularly adorn Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics. Books like Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi – The Golden Age of the Sith and Star Wars: Boba Fett – Twin Engines of Destruction. Just Star Wars. Which Star Wars, though? Well, it’s a free comic aimed at younger readers, so naturally it takes place during the second trilogy, the prequels. According to the comic, "four and a half months before the events in Revenge of the Sith," deep in the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker have crashlanded on the planet Ruhe. They’re after Count Dooku *snrrk* Bwahahaha! But, hah, he isn’t home. It’s basically a throwaway story with inconsequential action that doesn’t add anything to the greater history of the franchise, but it’s pretty, and very good for what it is. The characters are handled well, with hints at Anakin’s eventual fall to the dark side as well as signs of the humanity he’ll come to lose and later regain. It’s tantamount to a solid fill-in story, which makes it a good value at zero dollars and no cents.
Online Comics
[Dork Storm/Henchman] ps238
Writer/Artist: Aaron Williams
Most online comics are comic strips, freely distributed by the author for a variety of reasons. Like the fact that there’s no market for unknown comic strips. You can get into a newspaper, where your miniaturized strip, devoid of color and forced into the same pattern as every other strip, might attract an audience from the paper-reading public, who need only make a small investment each day to read your strip, several others, and, I guess, news or something. Or you can put it online, where your audience need only find it, and once they know they love it, you publish it, in the hope that enough readers still remember that there’s a reason we don’t have an endless supply of high quality entertainment that costs nothing.
The market for proper comic books is a bit stronger. No one picks up a comic strip anthology because it’s from the same publisher as Garfield, but the names DC and Marvel carry a lot of weight, and to a lesser extent companies like Oni and Dark Horse can help attract readers simply by sticking their logo on a book. Still, new comics have an uphill climb, and some have taken a cue from webcomics, placing not only sample pages or the first issue online, but everything, hoping to attract those same readers who follow a comic strip for years at no charge, then buy the collection when it comes out. People who don’t mind exchanging money for goods, but who didn’t know about the print comic or weren’t sure it was worth three bucks a pop. Aaron Williams has long posted his comic strips Nodwick and Full Frontal Nerdity online, but until December of 2006, his print comics were only available to paying customers. Then he began posting ps238, one page at a time, three times a week. As of this writing, the archives are up to issue ten. This move has apparently met with some success, as he’s since begun uploading issues of the longform, less gag-oriented adventures of Nodwick, also nominally a print comic.
As its subtitle says, ps238, or public school 238, is "the school for metaprodigy children." In other words, it’s superhero school, a vein that has been tapped numerous times but rarely explored satisfactorily. This is one of the best executions of the concept, and peculiar for its similarities with a certain Marvel comic. Avengers: The Initiative, and by relation Marvel’s Civil War, have much in common with ps238. The Initiative takes place in an army base built overtop the charred remains of a school destroyed by a supervillain. Ps238 takes place in a school below – three miles below – a regular school that is arguably endangered by the superschool’s presence. The Initiative is highly public (as public as any military operation, that is), and treats heroes like soldiers, both in the way they’re trained and in how much Uncle Sam knows about their civilian identities. Ps238 is more in the traditional superhero vein: a secret school where kids are kids, aside from the whole superpowers thing, and are trained to maintain secret identities as well as to control their powers and hide them in casual settings. The Initiative is a cynical look at how superhumans might interact with the real world, where a school’s worth of students get killed and there’s an everpresent sense of dread surrounding the heroes-in-training, who could theoretically all be killed by the time the title ends. Contrarily, ps238 is cheery, low on death, disaster, and decapitation; there’s no real chance that the normal school up above would get vaporized while in session, hundreds of children and teachers killed, nor is it likely that one of ps238‘s kids will die on a given adventure. They’re both good comics, neither as simple as I’ve described them, but they take a markedly different approach to the same subject. Like military "school" versus a school for the gifted.
Because "school for superheroes" is a bit vague for a premise, ps238 largely focuses on one particular student, Tyler Marlocke, the powerless son of two superheroes, who acts as the reader’s POV while attending a school where everyone but him has powers. He’s one of several original characters featured side-by-side with those inspired by DC and Marvel mainstays like Superman and Hulk. The analogues are generally used for parody purposes, though, while the more unique characters are featured in storylines. Tyler has yet to develop superpowers in the issues I’ve read, and probably never will. Instead, he hooks up with a Batman analogue, The Revenant, who trains him in self-defense and the use of gadgets to supplement combat skills. Ps238 is frequently funny, lighthearted without being shallow, and exactly the sort of fun comic people insist isn’t made anymore.
Image.com
Writers: Various
Pencilers: Various
Most publishers aren’t too eager to throw their entire back issue catalog online for free, but they might be willing to offer one or two issues per title, usually the first. Oni Press lets you download .cbr files for various titles, while Image Comics hosts full issues on their site. Like Aaron Williams’ stuff, except after the first issue you have to go out and buy them.
It’s a mixed bag, as Image’s lineup is hit and miss. There’s Lions, Tigers & Bears, written by Mike Bullock with art by Jack Lawrence, about a little boy who’s moving away and gets a special gift from his grandma. Four magical stuffed animals who’ll protect him from the literal monster in the closet. It’s kinda cute, but ultimately it doesn’t work. The timid little boy has the face and expressions of a self-assured teenager. Although cartoonish art fits the tone of the book well in theory, the awkwardly proportioned people look goofy even in the context of the story, where animals come off looking much better. I suppose I shouldn’t expect much depth from a comic that’s clearly aimed at little kids, but having read stuff like Yotsuba, I can’t accept such mediocre writing. It starts out vaguely mysterious, with some question as to what’s real and where grandma got these professionally packaged magic toys. Then Bullock smacks you in the face with the origin story and shatters any semblance of doubt as to what’s going on.
The Portent, written and drawn by Peter Bergting, is your typical fantasy story. Chosen one foretold by prophecy to defend such and such from a great evil. And it’s really, really bad. Stilted dialogue, art that’s constantly enshrouded in darkness, sloppy editing. Bergting can’t decide whether his characters speak like medieval folk, modern people, or just boring schmucks, and uses the same voice for all of them. "Characterization" amounts to having the main characters behave ever so slightly different from everyone else in order to fit into fantasy archetypes. No one has a motivation beyond serving the story, or what passes for a story. If there’s anything worth seeing in this series, it must happen in a later issue.
Man, these freebies are useful. What else can I resolve never to buy? Oh, here’s Gødland, by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli. I’ve heard good things about this, but it doesn’t seem to be my kind of comic. It’s basically going for an early Marvel feel, with Casey playing the part of Stan Lee and Scioli adding Kirbyesque artwork. If you like that sort of thing, you’ll probably enjoy this. It fades a bit after a strong start, but even someone as far from the target audience as I am can appreciate the quality here. There’s a definite story, with a naturally presented superhero origin and subplots cropping up all over. Casey does an excellent job with little details like working the names of characters we’ve never met before into conversation without making it feel unnatural, and again I want to say how well the origin story was incorporated into the active plot. The editing needs work here, too, but it’s not nearly as amateurish as Portent; I only picked up a couple errors.
[Coldwater] Click
Writer: Sara Ryan
Penciler: Dylan Meconis
I hate to say things like this. I hate when other people say it, and it’s how I was introduced to this. Hearing it either gives me unreachably high expectations or gives me a prejudicial bias against the work before I’ve read it. Every every time. But sometimes, it’s true, and what else can you say but the truth? This is one of the best things I have ever seen ever. It’s fifteen pages about a short-lived friendship between two women, and it’s sublimely brilliant. It’s also right here.
Free Samples
[DC] Minx 2008 Sampler
Writers: Various
Pencilers: Various
Free samples are common. Sites like Mile High Comics and Comic Book Resources regularly post four- or six-page previews sent to them by comic companies to help feed the American need for instant gratification. People who have already decided to buy the comics when they come out read these previews and discuss them online, contributing to a cycle of impatience and dissatisfaction when the final product takes days, weeks, even months to come out, and it isn’t anything like what you speculated it would be based on those first few pages.
I’m guilty of that with the Minx sampler, and also of the other reason people read free previews: to get a taste of something they haven’t yet decided to read. I enjoyed Plain Janes, so I’m virtually certain to pick up its sequel, Janes in Love. I don’t know squat about the other five titles that are previewed here, but I’m not going to just read about them when the Janes sneak peek is right in front of me. Can’t… resist!
Minx is a relatively new DC imprint aimed at teenage girls, where talented creators like Mike Carey and Aaron Alexovich tell stories with female protagonists, and DC publishes them in digest format at ten bucks a book. I am not a teenage girl, but there’s such a dearth of this stuff that I can’t help being intrigued. There are so few strong female characters in fiction, let alone in starring roles. Plus, the books are good. The ones I’ve read, anyways; Plain Janes and Kimmie66. I’m hoping to find more good reads via this imprint, and it hope it finds some measure of success in its goal of getting more women to read comics. The world needs more girl geeks.
First up in the sampler is Burnout, written by Rebecca Donner and drawn by Inaki Miranda. The preview is twenty pages long, but I learned more from the short blurb preceding it than the story pages themselves. Something about eco-terrorism, abusive stepfathers, and crushing on stepbrothers. Seeing someone you only just met, who’s only related to you by law, doesn’t really count as incest, but neither is it something I’m in a hurry to read about. Besides, what kind of a name is Haskell? Hask for short? or maybe Kell. The art’s so-so and I’m no more interested after twenty pages than I was before.
Ross Campbell’s Water Baby gets off to an exciting start, with the main character having her leg bit off by a shark. Yikes. This one’s twenty-four pages, but it only takes a few to hook me. It’s gorgeous, and the dialogue is great. It’s also somewhat disturbing. Anything good is, but I can respect a story without enjoying it, and this might be one of those. God damn, it’s good, though. I mean, my only "complaint" is that it’s not specifically tailored to my interests. Like, if only Campbell had read my mind and compromised his vision to please me, it would be so much better. Hah! Seriously, I bet it wins all kinds of awards.
Sigh… Brian Wood. He gets a ton of hype- or should I say critical acclaim? Either way, I’m not sure he deserves it. Demo showed promise, but it was severely disappointing. Twelve unrelated stories, each one too short to get a feel for the characters or convey a clear message. Good ideas, but no follow through. I’ve largely avoided his stuff since that. Now he’s writing a Minx book, The New York Four, with artist Ryan Kelly. In case you weren’t paying attention, this one’s about four girls, specifically four freshmen at NYU. It’s about friendship, meeting people, meeting boys, and finding yourself. Fairly interesting, but I’m gonna skip it. Kelly’s female faces too often look mannish, and although this was far from bad, I still don’t have faith in Wood.
Novelist Cecil Castellucci was a perfect fit for Minx, what with her young adult books written about and for teenage girls. All she had to do was acclimate herself to a new medium, and she had the ubertalented Jim Rugg to help with the transition, himself an obvious choice for the imprint given his small press comic Street Angel, starring a skateboarding, ninjakicking homeless girl. It was almost worth buying Plain Janes for his art alone. Castellucci had a bit of a bumpy first go of it, but I found the writing enjoyable, if light. Light’s good sometimes. The heavy stuff weighs you down, and while it would be a mistake to quit it altogether, you need a break now and again. The first book was about rebellion and dealing with trauma. Janes in Love is about… Well, duh. I’m definitely getting this. Might have a review of it around September.
Emiko Superstar is by Mariko Tamaki, apparently a first-time comics writer, and veteran illustrator Steve Rolston. It’s the story of a geek who reinvents herself as a performance artist, written by a performance artist. Always good to know what you write. Rolston makes this the most cartoonish of the sampled books, but it’s a good cartoonish. Might check this one out.
The last book, Token, comes from writer Alisa Kwitney and artist Joelle Jones. I’ve seen a couple pages of Jones’ art in Fables and nothing at all from Kwitney, which put them in the same company as most of the creators featured here. Like Burnout, the preview doesn’t show you much, and what it does is only mildly interesting. Girl has issues, romance on the horizon but no mention of it early on, not so hot art. Pass.
Truncation
Free Scott Pilgrim – If you like the Pilgrim, you’ll like this. If you don’t know how you feel, this is the quickest, cheapest way to find out. Also, Fearless Griggs is kinda fun.
Star Wars – Solid filler. Not spectacular, but better than the average free comic.
ps238 – Good all ages superhero comic. Worth buying.
Image.com – Nice way to spend an afternoon. Some good, some bad. Check out Elephantmen #1 if you haven’t already.
Click – Superlative.
Minx sampler – Titles range from so-so to outstanding. I’ve yet to see a dud from this imprint.
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