My FBCD experience!

Ah, Free Comic Book Day? Is there nothing sweeter? My LCS was relatively crowded when I went there to enjoy the wares. And what wares there were!

In addition to the plethora of free comics, there was also a huge box of free trading cards. They were awesome and I scrounged a bunch. See pics of my favorite ones here!

There was also huge boxes of 50 cent comics, and I got a BUNCH of those. I love my LCS. It’s so bright and cheery and full of cool stuff. Here’s the 50 cent stuff I got:

Catwoman #62 (Catwoman tells the story of how she got herself knocked up by Slam Bradley’s son. Decent.)

Catwoman #64 (Catwoman steals stuff from Lex. Also decent.)

Spidergirl #74 ( I couldn’t really get the gist of what was going on or get into it, since it as in the middle of some convoluted plotline. Dialogue is as awkward as it usually is for this comic.)

JLA Classified #49 (I really enjoyed this one, which was about Alfred and Lois hanging out together and worrying about Bruce and Clark who are off in some fate-of-the-world-hangs-in-the -balance battle. Interestingly set before Lois even knew Superman that well. I love Lois and Alfred, and there were a lot of awesome, quiet character moments here)

Batman confidential #20 (The Babs and Selina one. I knew it was good, just wanted to own it)

Manhunter #9, #10, #27, and #29- In the middle of various storylines, so I really couldn’t get what was going on. I liked them though.

Girl Frenzy: Lois Lane (Lois kicks ass. ’nuff said)

Also Gotham Central and Detective comics issues I haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

In addition to these buys, I also got The Battle for the Cowl Underground one shot, since it had a bunch of characters I adored in it, and a Sandman Dream Catchers mini, which I haven’t read yet and an awesome little trade called Zombies Calling.

Yes, she is attacking the zombies with a spork. Yes, she does that in the comic. Yes, the comic is the best thing in existence.

It’s about a geeky girl named Joss who’s obsessed with zombie movies. She’s figured out the “rules” for all of them. (one of them is, no matter how untrained the main character of a zombie movie was before a zombie attack, they will instantly become a badass when the zombies do attack.)  Then real zombies attack! Hilarity and asskicking ensues. It really is very funny and entertaining. And the characters are great, and the dialogue. Joss’s goth friend who is, ironically, the most normal person in the group and her lovable perv guy friend are both great. I recommend this so much, it’s awesome, even though the ending was kind of rushed.

The art’s really cute too. Kinetic and dynamic.

Check out Hicks’ website, it’s rad: Zombies!

Anyway, moving on. There were several people at the LCS which made me really happy. Even someone who was looking for a kids comic (I recommended the free DC Comics sampler), and a girl who scrounged for Superman cards with me. Here are my reviews for the free comics I got.

DC Kids Mega Sampler: This was a collection of the new Johnny DC Line of comics: snippets from Brave and Bold, Shazam!, and Tiny Titans. I’d read all the excerpts, and they were all of course very good, as the new Kids line DC’s putting out has been stellar. In my opinion, the excerpts here were well picked and did a good job introducing the various comics. I especially liked the choice of Brave and Bold excerpt, because Jaime rocks.

Wolverine: Wow, I didn’t know Wolverine was so stable. And nice. And that he read stuff so ardently. Yeah, this was obviously aimed for kids. It was decent story, with clean art.

Blackest Night #0: A nice intro into Blackest Night, which will clearly be about the nature of death in the DCU, namely that it is a huge revolving door. I liked the flashbacks with Bruce and the discussions of him, and the profiles of the various corps were very cool. Although I despise the Star Sapphires fashion choices. Since when is love a female emotion anyway? All of the female members of the various corps seemed to be going for a “less is more” kind of thing, actually, for no particular reason. Get your heads out of your pants, writers and artists.

FCHS: This was supposed to be a comic about high schoolers. Wow, this was a walking pile of cliches and awkward dialogue. Most of the characters were flat, stereotyped and boring. Despite the valiant attempts to appear hip by adding in cuss words, references to sex, and slang, it was clear the writer hadn’t been to high school in a long, long time. It was about as relevant as Archie, only it attempted to add in mature stuff and appeal to adults and wasn’t even vaguely funny or cute! There was also some weird superhero-ish gag comic that attempted to be funny but was not. At all.

Buck Rogers: Meh. I know nothing about Buck Rogers, so this was boring. I just skimmed it.

Archie and the Mighty Archie Art Players: Actually, this was good. Okay, I’ll admit I have a weakness for Archie. I used to read it a lot when I was a little kid. It was my first foray into comics. So sue me. But these were basically a bunch of cute skits, where the Archie characters were in different settings a stories. There was an old West one, which ends with Moose Mason about to shoot Archie, only Betty pops up from a barrel and jabs Moose in the ass with a huge hatpin. Come on, that is awesome, you have to admit it.

Also, Cinderella, Archie style! (With hilariously awkward modernizations and Archie as, and I quote “The handsome (?) Prince”. Yes, that’s how they referred to him every single time, complete with question mark. Then there’s a rather cute one where Betty, Veronica and Archie reenact a bizarre version of Antony and Cleopatra (with lines like “The nerve! If I wasn’t a slave, I’d quit!” Wow, dark humor for Archie…) And this one where Betty was mermaid. That story gave me a weird dream, since this was the last thing I read before I went the bed. In it, Betty was a mermaid who saved this ship and abolished racism, and also beat up three people at once. I told you it was weird.

Whoever wrote this really liked Betty, as she outdid Veronica in nearly every story. I’ll admit I’ve liked Betty since I was eight, because as a little girl I liked how she cared about the environment, and could fix cars and play baseball like I can. Also, she wears her hair in a blonde ponytail, like little me did. They young’s reasons for liked things are not complex. Anyway, that affection has stuck (even though I despise it when Betty’s a doormat. She should ditch Archie and go be with Dilton. And Jughead. They can have a three way, like my friend Scotty suggested.), so I didn’t mind this aspect.

And my LCS guy said I can sell him my old Archies, when I mentioned I had some!

All in all, it was rockin’ free comic book day.