This Saturday is every comic fan’s favorite day of the year: Free Comic Book Day! Combining our love of comics with our desire for them to be inexpensive, this day is irresistible and increasingly important for publishers like Marvel and DC when it comes to laying out their publishing lines for the remainder of the year. Just look at this year’s releases, as they feature the introduction to DC’s latest weekly and the kick-off to the upcoming Spider-Man event “Spider-Verse”.
Beyond that, publishers both big and small release comics for all-ages, and that last bit is a huge point of importance: this is the one day a year you’re sure to see comic reading kids loading up your local comic book shop. It’s a great day to be a comic fan.
But with so many releases and so many shops keeping the amount of books someone can get to a minimum (to ensure that everyone gets some), it’s hard to know what the best books to grab are. But that’s why I’m here, as the list below features the five books I am most highly anticipating from this year’s selection. Make sure to check the full list here though, as there really is something for everyone, and enjoy the day and your comics!
5. Tom Scioli on “Transformers vs. G.I. Joe”
It’s not every day there’s a Transformers vs. G.I. Joe comic, and it is certainly even more rare that it is co-written and drawn by Tom Scioli in the process. This FCBD introduces a comic that has the titular characters squaring off with sheer madness taking place on the page if writer John Barber is to be believed. It kicks off an entire mini, and if the cover is any indication, this will be a strange blast of nostalgia in comic form, and I have to say I am really looking forward to it.
4. DC’s The New 52: Future’s End Intro
DAMMIT.
I don’t even read DC Comics, yet this one draws me in. Why? Well, it’s a weekly by a great team (that includes Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire and Ethan Van Sciver), it has a killer Ryan Sook cover, and it features a metric ton of B-Listers. It’s an interesting premise, and it’s a good way for me to try out a book I otherwise wouldn’t read the open of.
Plus, anything that promises the end of the future of the New 52 is something we should all be able to get behind, am I right?
3. Hip Hop Family Tree Two-in-One
As a big fan of 80’s hip hop, it’s bizarre to me that I’ve never gotten around to reading Ed Piskor’s beloved “Hip Hop Family Tree”, but this FCBD, Fantagraphics gives me a free and easy way to check it out. With bits from the first two volumes, pin-ups from varying creators (including Kagan McLeod, I believe) and the best cover of the day, this is a book that fans of comics shouldn’t miss. Even if you aren’t a big hip hop fan.
2. Atomic Robo, All Day, Every Day
For quite some time now, “Atomic Robo” on Free Comic Book Day has been as regular a tradition as the day itself, and Brian Clevenger and Scott Wegener’s creation really is the perfect fit for the day. It’s all-ages, it’s fun for anyone, you can jump in on it at any point, and it’s uniformly good. It’s interesting that “Atomic Robo” as a whole has lost the heat it used to have, but it is undoubtedly the book I know I can look forward to every year from FCBD, and that’s a very cool thing indeed.
1. The Archaia Hardcover Anthology
In 2012, Archaia released a hardcover storybook (complete with a place to write in your name on the inside front cover) on FCBD, and it was by far the best release from that iteration of Free Comic Book Day. This year, they’re bringing that back and I couldn’t be happier. Highlighting David Petersen’s “Mouse Guard” and Royden Lepp’s “Rust” (amongst other books, including a Ramon Perez written/illustrated “Farscape” comic), this release both shines a spotlight on some of the best all-ages comics around AND it comes in a beautiful, unique package. Some might overlook it, but I really, really recommend you do not.
