Once again, Free Comic Book Day has come and gone. Thanks to the good people at Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, Okla., we were able to tell you in advance what was worth picking up and what was worth leaving on the shelf. (Remember, kids: Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s good.) Whether you missed out or have yet to crack the stack, here are looks at 25 of the 2008 freebies.
EC SAMPLER (Gemstone) – It may just be a reprint, but this four-story sampler was the most fun for me of all of this year’s FCBD offerings. From the pages of WEIRD SCIENCE, SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES and other EC classics come tales of astronauts on Venus, Korean soldiers, werewolves and Klansmen, each with the requisite twist ending, and art by the likes of Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein. The Venus one is especially sweet. This makes me want to buy all of Gemstone’s extremely expensive hardcover collections of all the EC titles. Must resist … must resist …
DEL REY & DABEL BROTHERS 2008 PREVIEW (Del Rey/Dabel Brothers) – I haven’t been interested in Dabel Brothers’ comics efforts with Marvel, but they appear to be on the right track (largely) with sci-fi publisher Del Rey. This book offers fully finished tastes of four new titles, adapting Jim Butcher’s THE DRESDEN FILES, George R.R. Martin’s WILD CARDS and two from Dean Koontz: ODD THOMAS and FRANKENSTEIN. ODD is drawn as a manga, strangely, but it’s better than FRANKENSTEIN, which makes the creature look like Fabio after a car accident. Looks like Harry Dresden is the most natural character for making the jump to comics.
IGNATZ (Fantagraphics) – Fantagraphics usually has the most interesting – not to mention grown-up – offerings for FCBD, and this year’s presents excerpts from its line of international, duotone graphic novels. David B. chronicles his brother’s life with epilepsy, Richard Sala reinvents “Snow White” and Kevin Huizenga recounts life as a programmer during the dot-com boom of the 1990s. There are plenty of other titles previewed, most of which make you want to see more.
HELLBOY (Dark Horse) – I can take or leave Hellboy. The lead story in this three-piecer, “The Mole” is a bit of a throwaway gag for the overgrown devil. He’s absent from “Out of Reach,” but it’s set within his B.P.R.D. universe, utilizing second-string characters. The final tale is the best: “Bishop Olek’s Devil,” a good-old-fashioned ghost story with a Lovecraftian bent. My enthusiasm for seeing this summer’s HELLBOY II? Completely unchanged.
X-MEN (Marvel) – This adventure focuses so much on a new character – Pixie, a British redhead with pointy ears and wings – that I forgot it had anything to do with X-MEN. Then toward the end, Cyclops, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and the others show up to help Pixie fight some dragon demons. It’s a bit of change of pace for the X-MEN I’m used to seeing, but I liked it – well-told by Mike Carey and well-illustrated by Greg Land.
SALEM: QUEEN OF THORNS (Boom!) – This new series focuses on a shadowy cloaked do-gooder who seems to be a direct life of Solomon Kane and VAN HELSING. Certainly, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, especially since he hunts down evil witches and fights spider people in colonial Salem. This prequel’s a bit sketchy on details, but looks like it could shape up to be a solid horror-actioner. I’m still trying to figure out who the QUEEN is if the lead is a dude.
KIDS LOVE COMICS!: COMIC BOOK DINER (Sky-Dog) – A little kiddie comics can go a long way with me, so thankfully this is made up of bite-sized stories, making it easy to digest. Best are two half-pagers of Patrick the Wolf Boy, but brief stories starring Roboy Red and Buzzboy are fun. Equally brief stories featuring fairies and a monkey named Banana-Tail are not. Oh, well – you can’t win ‘em all.
THE DEATH-DEFYING ‘DEVIL (Dynamite) – The title refers to one of several superheroes who comprise Alex Ross and Jim Krueger’s PROJECT SUPERPOWERS team, and here band together to battle The Claw, an alien spectre who once was a pal of Adolf Hitler. It ends just as it gets interesting, allowing Dynamite to fill the second half with plugs for ZORRO, THE LONE RANGER, RED SONJA, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and just about everything else it prints.
IMAGINARY (Radical) – Talk about a wasted opportunity. I’ve never heard of Radical Comics before, but it seems to have a great lineup planned judging from the previews here: an Arthurian Western called CALIBER, updates on HERCULES and ALADDIN, a robot-laden FREEDOM FORMULA and a Steve Niles sci-fier called KHROME. Every damn page has a painted quality that looks awful pretty … yet there are no words. Not a one. That’s frustrating.
ARCHIE’S PAL JUGHEAD (Archie) – Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica take a trip to Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (a real place in Baltimore, so this is quite the commercial), where our boys become nightwatchmen as a crazed collector tries to steal the toys and comics there. Hey, it’s Archie. You can’t really knock it even if it nauseates you, right? The bigger question remains: Betty or Veronica? Why not both?
MARVEL ADVENTURES: IRON MAN & HULK & SPIDER-MAN (Marvel) – ‘Twas smart of Marvel to pair up the stars of their two summer blockbuster hopefuls with Spider-Man, and they’ve also thrown an uncredited Ant-Man into the mix for an all-ages adventure that finds the heroes fighting The Mandarin, who has 10 rings, each with a unique power (mind control, impact beam, etc.). Their quest takes them to the lost city of Machu Picchu, where a giant ant awaits. Nothing special, but definitely fun, and bonus points are awarded for multiple references to Richard Matheson’s TRILOGY OF TERROR telefilm. A single-page “Mini Marvels” strip rounds it out.
BONGO COMICS FREE-FOR-ALL! (Bongo) – Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve ever read a SIMPSONS comic. I can’t say I’m all that impressed. While they have the look of America’s favorite cartoon family down, the wit of the writing is sorely missing. But unlike the show, this seems aimed squarely at kids. The first story finds Bart, Lisa and Maggie as superheroes stripped of duty, while the second one puts Bart on a bathing strike, much to the disgust of everyone around him. The third story is the best, only because it satirizes manga and imagines Little Lulu as a divorce attorney in other countries’ comics.
SHONEN JUMP SPECIAL (Viz) – Speaking of manga, the popular SHONEN JUMP compilation magazine gets a sampler that spotlights three of its regular features: “Naruto,” “Bleach” and “Slam Dunk.” For the uninitiated, each story is preceded by a series introduction, which is a nice thought, even if I remain baffled. There’s a lot in this little package, too, with recommendations of other titles, a pull-out checklist of all SHONEN JUMP publications and a full-color pinup for those inclined to utilize that sort of thing (not me, for the record).
COMICS GO HOLLYWOOD (TwoMorrows) – It may not be a comic, but give credit to TwoMorrows Publishing for doing something different: in this case, a magazine of stories related to comic-book movies. There are storyboards from JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER (a direct-to-DVD film I recommend), an interview with Jeph Loeb that primarily concentrates on his work for TV’s HEROES and a look at The Joker’s transition from page to screen. Jack Kirby is the focus of a gallery of his film-inspired work (including THE BLACK HOLE, 2001 and THE PRISONER), and Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway discuss – and provide excerpts from – their screenplay for the X-MEN film that never came to be. (Hey, it sure beats THE LAST STAND.)
GUMBY (Wildcard Ink) – Art Clokey’s clay creation gets sick from a computer worm, so he and horse Pokey visit a mad doctor who chisels off a piece of Gumby’s head to form a mini-Gumby to enter Gumby’s body to combat the problem. Got that? As mini-Gumby sets off on his mission, things grow increasingly weird and surreal, to the point that younger readers – for whom this is intended – may be freaked out. Therefore, I kinda dug it, even if I didn’t want to since it also presents itself as a combo comic/coloring book. Two pinups reimagine Gumby as Kong and Sinbad; guess which reference will not register with the kids of today.
WALT DISNEY’S GYRO GEARLOOSE (Gemstone) – Instead of Scrooge McDuck, it’s nice to see Gemstone going for spotlighting a second-tier character this year: the prone-to-screwball-antics inventor Gyro Gearloose, inspired by Rube Goldberg. Despite cover art by the legendary Carl Barks, who created the chicken (or is he a goose?), this five-story collection only features one vintage Barks tale, from 1960. The others are culled from the 1990s, but at least they retain the look and spirit of the old Disney comics, if not quite the ingenuity and charm. I wonder how many kids get intrigued by these freebies and want to check out the monthly issues, only to be turned off by Gemstone’s insane price scheme ($7.99 an issue).
DAN DARE / THE STRANDED (Virgin) – Garth Ennis revives British hero Dan Dare in the old-school, sci-fi style – i.e. green aliens with long tongues – but the real reason to pick this up is to see what Mike Carey is hatching with THE STRANDED, which may eventually become a show on the Sci Fi channel. Its premise certainly lends itself to one, with people learning that their whole life has been a lie. This preview plays with high action and a telepathic rat, but thrills are cut short by space limitations. Still, I’m intrigued. But not by the brief excerpt of RAMAYAN RELOADED that bridges this flipper – it looks purty, but that’s it. I like that with these two new titles, Virgin is utilizing actual comics talents, rather than its usual random film personalities (Guy Ritchie, Ed Burns, Jenna Jameson).
TRANSFORMERS ANIMATED (IDW) – In stark contrast to the impenetrable TRANSFORMERS comics of years past, IDW goes the kiddie route with this one, based on the Cartoon Network series. As a result, the damn thing actually makes sense. I like the uncomplicated character designs and simplified look of the whole thing, which makes up for having a little girl interact with and befriend the Autobots. And I may be wrong, but this issue looks like it may be comprised of frame grabs from an actual episode, because some of the panels appear pixelated.
TINY TITANS #1 (DC) – The Teen Titans just got time-warped into pint-sized preschoolers in this new series. It will take you all of two, maybe three minutes to read the whole thing, but they’ll be well-spent. This is as inoffensive as a comic book can get, but yet somehow it exudes a lot of charm, partially because of Art Baltazar’s renderings of the heroes into fresh-faced, fleshed-out doodles. That includes Robin, Kid Flash, Beast Boy, Aqualad, Cyborg and all the rest. Super-silly, super-colorful, super-painless.
ATOMIC ROBO / NEOZOIC (Red 5) – I’ve been hearing a lot of people rave about ATOMIC ROBO, and now I can join them. This tongue-in-cheek sci-fi story presents tons of action in its tale of a robot built by Nikola Tesla to undergo secret missions for the government. It’s fun and funny, and Scott Wegener’s art is terrific. I cannot, however, muster a fraction of the enthusiasm for the other series promoted here: NEOZOIC, a humans-live-among-dinosaurs fantasy that is rote where its counterpart is irreverent.
ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #1 (DC) – Here’s another book I’ve heard big buzz on, yet never had the chance to check out until now. Here, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely reimagine the Man of Steel. There’s much drama in this first issue (from 2006), with Lex Luthor finally figuring out a way to kill Superman, and Clark Kent letting Lois Lane in on a little secret. It’s not unlike the recent Richard Donner run on ACTION COMICS, swept up in big, mythological terms, but delivered in digestible doses.
THE MOTH (Rude Dude) – I almost didn’t read all of this superhero title because of two separate poop jokes in the first four pages. Luckily, it gets better, even if it doesn’t really tell a story, but presents “greatest hits” of the crime-fighting Moth from previous adventures. What initially is too goofy (“My father will stir-fry your testicles for dinner – with noodles!”) gets “gooder” as The Moth whacks his way through a variety of baddies, all with a good-natured sense of humor (minus the fecal matter, of course). Rude’s art is great.
BROKEN TRINITY: PRELUDE (Top Cow) – This is a prequel to a new series that combines WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS with something called ANGELUS. I couldn’t make any sense of it, which is exactly like my previous exposure to those properties. Stjepan Sejic turns in some nice painted art that has fanboy fave all over it, but this is not for anyone who’s not already into the characters. It’s comics like this that aggravate the onset of migraines.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (Archie) – For a comic book based on a video game that’s annoying and Ritalined out, I suppose this is a faithful adaptation. Between short stories that barely qualify as such, there’s a recipe for Sonic chili dogs and Sonic “bumper stickers” they tell you to cut out and place on your parents’ car. If any of my kids did that, they would find themselves living elsewhere.
GRAPHIC CLASSICS: SPECIAL EDITION (Eureka) – Ethics prevent me from reviewing this one since I scripted part of it, but I certainly can remind you of its existence. Right? Like the many separate GRAPHIC CLASSICS trade paperbacks – but comprised of never-before-published material – this 64-pager adapts works from Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley and Lord Dunsany into comic-book form. Simon Gane, Gerry Alanguilan and Milton Knight are among the artists. –Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF FREE COMIC BOOK DAY:
• Free Comic Book Day 2007 Roundup
• Free Comic Book Day 2006 Roundup
