Obsessive folk out there who follow my every tweet will know that I’m not much of a reader. In fact, until recently, I outright refused to read any form of printed fiction. (Personal reasons.) As I see this year as a period of renaissance for myself, where I reject my stagnated self and rediscover things like nature, culture and having a shower more than once a week, I’ve been trying to get back into the lost art of reading for fun. However, years of reading nothing but road signs and flicking through RSS feeds have left me significantly out of practice. I don’t know what makes a book good. What am I supposed to like about them? My family members gave me several recommendations, and I had a few that I, myself, wanted to read.
The problem is that I have not particularly enjoyed any of the books that I have read this year so far. Watchmen had a couple of great moments but I didn’t like the story. The Notenki Memoirs was annoying, self-praising rubbish. Douglas Adams‘ Dirk Gently series would’ve made no sense to me had I not already listened to the radio adaptations. I didn’t find Skellig interesting. The City And The Stars remains unfinished. All of these recommended to me and/or critically acclaimed, and I didn’t like any of them. I still see reading as a chore rather than a joy. So much for getting me interested, guys.
It is surely for people like me, then, that Free Comic Book Day exists. Once a year, usually around the time that a new comics1 adaptation is released in cinemas (the new X-Men film in this case), comics publishers unite to produce a range of comics samplers freely available at comics shops for one day only. It’s a publicity stunt designed to get people into comics stores, and it works.
By the time I reached the local comics house, a great deal had already been claimed by those who woke up earlier than myself. Not knowing which ones I should go for, I grabbed a few from the piles with the most copies left (so as not to disappoint anyone who might turn up later looking for one of the ones with only a couple of copies left).
Whoa. I realised when I got them home that I’d managed to pick up a stack of them. This is going to be a pretty long article if I’m going to read and talk about all of these.
How fitting that the first comic that I grabbed isn’t actually a comic. It’s a collection of articles from a bunch of US-centric comics-related magazines. In keeping with the film tie-in nature of the Free Comic Book Day event, it starts off with a list of the 50 “greatest” comics-based motion pictures. Can you say “flamebait“? Other features include a horrible Death Note “A-to-Z” that misses out six letters of the alphabet and a little Transformers strip consisting of annotated photographs of toys. Right. Moving on.
This next one was double-sided selection of titles from Dark Horse Comics. Side One consisted entirely of a battle sequence from the Star Wars expanded universe. Side Two had a large, eclectic range of titles: Usagi Yojimbo (which translates from Japanese (despite not being a Japanese comic) to “Rabbit Bodyguard”. I suppose that they couldn’t call it “Bunnyguard” because of the The Angry Beavers episode of the same name) about a rabbit who is also a samurai, Emily the Strange (which made absolutely no sense to me), something called Beanworld (same) and a fun Indiana Jones vignette. So far, so meh. I began to notice that the mere touch of my finger on the page left horrible fingerprint marks.
Ah, this looks interesting: The Avengers, featuring a whole host of instantly recognisable Marvel-type characters with a film adaptation in the planning stages. This tale is told from the POV of our favourite web-slinger (that’s Spider-Man for those of you who… eh, never mind) and serves as an introduction to the continuity of this particular series (or a refresher for former readers who haven’t been keeping up). Were I to use Seung Park of insani’s meal metaphor, this would be the main course. It’s not something that’d interest me beyond the festivities of the day, though.
Transformers on one side, G.I. Joe on the other. Two toyetic series whose animated shows maintain large fanbases of children (who watch them) and adults (who remember watching them). I belong to none of the aforementioned groups. Transformers was easy enough, but I didn’t quite get the G.I. Joe strips. I’d probably need some prior introduction to the series to know precisely who is who. Wait, wasn’t that the whole point of the day?
Finally, a series that I’m familiar with. I used to read the Titan-published Simpsons Comics until the price became ridiculous. The Beano could be purchased for less than 70p (I started reading when it was 28p and it got slightly more expensive every few months), whilst each Simpsons Comics issue was several times that amount. Having not read many other comics than those two, I couldn’t quite pick up on the Simpsons Comics’ numerous references to other popular comics series and books, which, to some extent and partially due to the fact that Father would often point them out to me, I can now look back on and smile to myself. This year’s Free Comic Book Day issue takes the opportunity to satirise the very concept of free comics themselves, featuring Comic Book Guy’s annoyance at Bart and Milhouse getting the last copies of Krusty’s (awful) promotional comic. A Futurama short and a spin-off of #FABF15 “Simple Simpson” featuring Homer and Bart as Pie-Man and The Cupcake Kid respectively round off my favourite of the stack.
Great. The one manga title I picked up and it’s Shonen {sic} Jump. This particular imprint targets the 12-17-year-old market with titles like Bleach, One Piece, Naruto et al. For those of you who haven’t heard of them, they’re all rubbish. This particular issue, however, is notable for premiering a new title—Ultimo—based on a concept by comics author and media whore Stan Lee. It’s about a pair of boys who are also robots and they make explosions happen and they go on these adventures and they sparkle and they throw things and there are two of them. There is at least one problem with this: BOYS DON’T SPARKLE.
Fun fact: In Japan, the song Jump by Van Halen (as popularised by a recent episode of The News Quiz) is used to market Jump in Japan, once again proving that the Japanese televisual media just doesn’t (don’t? Curse these plural forms) care about copyright law. Humming the song to oneself makes reading their numerous titles a much more bearable experience.
Resurrection seems to be a post-apocalyptic tale with ambiguous aliens. I continued to hum that iconic synth line from Jump in my head. Despite the distraction, I found it to be a very engaging title. On the B-side (this was a one-sided comics book), we have something apparently executively produced by North American comedian Stephen Colbert, who I am not familiar with. It was pretty funny. All in all, a very good grab.
With its retro-style cover, “Savage Dragon” looked to be another superhero-grade comics, only with less graphical polish than that The Avengers one I’d read earlier (not that this is a bad thing). By this point, I was thoroughly distracted. I still couldn’t get Van Halen out of my head. I just sped through the reading of this one, but I thought that it was pretty well done. It summarised the storyline, and the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger gives one an incentive to read the rest of it. Or not.
And that’s that. Free comicses for one and for all. I’m not any more inclined to start reading comics any time soon, but at least I’ve got a stack of books that, some day, will be worth something. Investing is fun.
There’s probably an ideal comics out there for me somewhere, just as there’s probably an ideal girl. I just can’t be bothered to look for her.
In conclusion: Free Comic Book Day turned out better than Free Cone Day did. But that’s not saying much. ㋼
My thanks go out to the good folk at Destination Venus who didn’t seem to mind me running off with eight of their comics.
- According to Wikipedia, the word “comics” should always be used in its plural form to refer to the medium. Pretentious much? [↩]
“Side Two had a large, eclectic range of titles: Usagi Yojimbo (which translates from Japanese (despite not being a Japanese comic) to “Rabbit Bodyguard”. I suppose that they couldn’t call it “Bunnyguard” because of the The Angry Beavers episode of the same name) about a rabbit who is also a samurai,….”
Considering the first self-titled Usagi Yojimbo story was published in 1984, FIFTEEN YEARS before The Angry Beavers episode you mention, it is extremely doubtful that cartoon episode’s title had any influence on the comic’s title.
While Usagi Yojimbo is not a manga, considering it is created and published in the USA, it is the work of a third generation Japanese-American cartoonist and the stories are set in an anthropomorphic version of 17th century Japan which is based upon extensive research into the cultures and traditions of that period’s society.
Stan Sakai has also been nominated this year for an Eisner Award for best continuing comic series.